Germany's gremlins

Just four weeks ago, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle was cheered by the crowds on Cairo's Tahrir Square for his support of the cause of freedom. An early champion of the Tunisian & Egyptian protest movements, Germany led Europe's increasingly unified response to the revolutions across the Arab world with France and Italy still reeling from their cozying up to Arab dictators until the very last minute.

What a difference a month (and a crucial vote in the Security Council) can make. Today, following Germany's decision not to support the UN Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force to protect civilians in Libya the picture looks very different. Europe is again divided on a key issue of war and peace. Berlin left what remains of common European foreign policy-making at the mercy of the maddening grand-standing of French President Sarkozy.

Germany now appears closer to Russia, China, India and Brazil than its key European, US and Canadian allies. Within NATO the decision to swiftly remove all German forces from operations in the Mediterranean caused further consternation.

Price worth paying

This all would be a price worth paying had Germany been able to make a convincing case that supporting the humanitarian intervention went against its core interests and values. There is no point in going along with a decision for the sake of blind solidarity among allies. However, Germany failed to make this case. True, by harking back to the treasure trove of his high school Latin lessons ("Respice finem!"), Westerwelle invoked prudence as a guiding star.

He pointed to the downsides of intervention into an unfolding civil war: high risks, imperfect information, an unclear endgame. At the same time, the foreign minister stressed that his "position toward the Gadhafi regime remains unchanged: The dictator must immediately stop the violence against his own people." He argued that tougher sanctions would do the trick. This is the Westerwelle/Merkel doctrine of the protection of civilians through immaculate conception.

As US President Obama has made it clear, at the very moment the German foreign minister uttered this doctrine "we knew that if we waited one more day, Benghazi (…) could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world."

Lack of courage

In this situation, no amount of sanctions would have made a difference on the ground. UN Security Council members had to make a choice: to go with a misguided version of prudence or to enter the risks that using force to protect civilians inevitably entails. It was a lack of courage that led the foreign minister, the chancellor and the two most prominent leaders of the Social Democrats to not support the Security Council resolution to protect civilians.

It is plausible that the fear of the German voter contributed to the lack of courage. In this case, however, it would have been unwarranted fear. The German voter is certainly wary of military adventures in general and the German involvement in the war in Afghanistan in particular. But it would have taken just a modicum of leadership to convince a majority of the German public to support the effort to stop Gadhafi's murderous actions: with a clear Security Council mandate, limited objectives and many Arab states in support.

It would have been an easier case to make to the German public than Kosovo more than 10 years ago where Germany decided to act without a Security Council mandate. The German public might well have supported limited German military involvement, for example through AWAC planes.

Making matters worse

That the German government now tries to redeem itself by expanding its AWACs role in Afghanistan, only makes matters worse. It looks like calculated selling of indulgences. This cannot be the way forward. Rather, Germany needs to have the nuanced debate on humanitarian intervention and the protection of civilians it never had because of the dominance of extreme views.

In the Kosovo case in 1999, then Foreign Minister Fischer employed the reference to Auschwitz as a last resort to justify military action against Serbia. The debate on the Iraq war in 2003 was equally emotional. When Germany (alongside its fellow EU members) signed up to the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) in 2005, it was unable and unwilling to have the thorough debate on the institutional and political preparedness that this commitment entails.

This is now overdue - within Germany and in Europe as a whole. This includes discussions on the Responsibility to Prevent that is an often overlooked cornerstone of R2P. Reassessing the grounds for arms deals with the Libyan regime or all too cozy relationships with Uzbek dictators would be a step in the right direction. This would be true prudence.

Thorsten Benner is co-founder and associate director of the Global Public Policy Institute (www.gppi.net ) in Berlin.

Editor: Rob Mudge