BY DANNY FAIRFAX
On February 15, 500,000 people converged on Berlin, and 50,000 in Stuttgart, to say "Keine lust auf krieg!" (We don't want war!). This is despite the fact that the federal Social Democratic Party (SPD)/Greens coalition government, led by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, oppose the US war on Iraq.
Indeed, Schroeder and foreign minister Joschka Fischer (a member of the Greens) have reached such an impasse with Washington that US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld have bracketed Germany with Cuba and Libya as the countries most opposed to a military strike on Iraq, which prompted protesters in Berlin to brandish placards with "Welcome to Cuba" scrawled on them.
Schroeder and his government have not suddenly embraced pacifism. In fact, up to 10,000 German troops are stationed in former Yugoslavia, Africa, Kuwait, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan — a foreign military presence not matched since World War II. Schroeder and Fischer were some of the foremost proponents of NATO's bombing of Serbia in 1999.
Berlin's opposition to an Iraq war stems from the German people's overwhelmingly anti-war sentiment, and especially within the ranks of the SPD and Greens. Surveys have consistently shown that 75-80% disapprove of attacking Iraq, even if endorsed by the UN. Schroeder tapped this sentiment to win the 2002 election on a strong anti-war platform and knows he cannot get away with a backflip on the issue.
A second reason is the simple fact that the economic gains for German imperialism from an overthrow of Saddam Hussein are too slight for participation in a war — against the wishes of the vast majority of the population — to be worthwhile. Like France, German big business has significant interests in Iraq which could be threatened by a US invasion.
The radical wing of the movement sees war as part and parcel of the neoliberal economic system promoted by the SPD and is resisting the ruling parties' attempts to coopt and moderate the movement. On February 8, tens of thousands mobilised outside the annual NATO Security Conference in Munich in a show of strength by the radical wing of the movement.
Former BMW director and conference organiser Horst Teltschik described the conference as being "what the World Economic Forum in Davos is for the representatives of the international economy, so the Security Conference in Munich is for the representatives of the strategic community".
Growing numbers of young Germans have come to realise that "war and economic exploitation are two sides of the same coin", Indymedia Deutschland explained, and the "military Davos" was the perfect target for their wrath.
The SPD mayor of Munich, Christian Ude, last year banned protests during the conference; this year he followed a different tack, officially endorsing a peace parade. He even claimed that if he had not been required to officially welcome conference participants in Munich's town hall, he would have preferred to have taken part in the protests.
In reality, Ude's "strategy of embracement" was designed to drive a wedge within the movement and isolate the more radical elements from the government-endorsed "peace movement". Ude issued diatribes against "naive anti-war fundamentalism" and warned of violent protesters ready to "bring Genoa to Munich". Ironically, it was the police who brought the spectre of the violence to Munich. The day before demonstration, police raided an activist centre, arresting one person and detaining 22 others until after the NATO conference ended.
This did not deter activists. Following the SPD-sponsored peace parade on February 8, attended mainly by trade unions and church groups, the radical wing organised a second action hours later which attracted 10,000 people under the banner, "Stop the global war of the NATO states; protest against the meeting of the world's military elite". The Munich action strengthened the radical, more explicitly anti-capitalist wing of the anti-war movement.
The media attention received by the protests provided a huge boost to the Berlin mobilisation a week later. The 500,000 demonstrators came on trains and buses from more than 300 towns across Germany, far outstripping organisers' expectations. The sentiment of protesters was also unexpected, as Victor Grossman, who attended the rally, reported on the left-wing US e-list Portside: "A minority praised ... Schroeder and ... Fischer for standing up to Washington. Many more, however, urged the government to stick to this position, but also to prove its intentions by withdrawing German tanks from Kuwait, barring fly-over rights for US warplanes and not provide guards at US bases in Germany, thus permitting US soldiers to be sent off to destroy Baghdad and Basra."
The isolated right-wing of German politics, represented by the Christian Democratic Union, has charged that the movement is "anti-American" and supports Saddam Hussein.
However, the media coverage of the massive protest showed these charges to be false. In fact, the mass media provided an unusually fair and positive portrayal of the anti-war movement (or at least the "respectable" side of it), which reflects not just the weight of German public opinion, but that of most Germany's ruling class.
From Green Left Weekly, March 19, 2003.
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