The philosopher Jürgen Habermas is concerned. The arms deliveries to Ukraine had developed a momentum of their own, “which could drive us more or less unnoticed beyond the threshold of a third world war.” That’s why he calls for talks – but admits a problem.
With regard to the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, the philosopher Jürgen Habermas spoke out in favor of negotiations. The West is providing military aid to Ukraine for good reasons, the 93-year-old wrote in a guest article for the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. But with that comes responsibility. “From the perspective of victory at all costs, the increase in the quality of our arms supplies has developed a momentum of its own that could propel us more or less unnoticed beyond the threshold of a third world war.”
Habermas laments the public debate and an “acceleration of the well-known game of morally indignant calls for more powerful weapons”. At the same time he criticizes the “bellicistic tenor of a concentrated published opinion in which the hesitation and the reflection of half the German population do not have a say”.
In the meantime, however, Habermas is also making out critical voices that urge people to think about the difficult path to negotiations. “If I join these voices, it is precisely because the sentence is correct: Ukraine must not lose the war,” wrote Habermas. He is concerned with the preventive nature of timely negotiations. These prevented a long war from claiming even more human lives and destruction – “and in the end confronting us with a hopeless choice: either actively intervene in the war or, in order not to trigger World War I among nuclear-armed powers, leave Ukraine to its fate .”
Despite his plea for negotiations, Habermas also concedes: “For the time being, there are no signs that Putin would get involved in negotiations.” So he made decisions that made it almost impossible to start promising negotiations. With the annexation of Ukraine’s eastern provinces, he “created facts and cemented claims that are unacceptable to Ukraine.”
In fact, Putin has repeatedly made recognition of Russian conquests a condition of negotiations with Kiev. In January, for example, the Kremlin announced that Putin was ready for a dialogue – “on condition that the authorities in Kiev fulfill the known and repeatedly made public demands and taking into account the new territorial reality”. In the fall, Putin officially annexed the Ukrainian regions of Cherson, Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhia. Moscow’s conditions for ending the war of aggression against Ukraine also include Kiev’s recognition of annexed Crimea as Russian, “denazification” and “demilitarization” of Ukraine, and its non-aligned status. Ukraine, on the other hand, calls the withdrawal of Russian troops from its territory as a precondition for negotiations.
Habermas attests that Ukraine “is probably still a nation in the making”. He does not go into detail about the consequences of the Russian occupation for the Ukrainians. Rather, he sees the core problem of the debate in the fact that the goals of Ukraine and its supporters are unclear. “Is it the aim of our arms deliveries that Ukraine must ‘not lose’ the war, or are they not aimed at a ‘victory’ over Russia?”
However, Moscow has made clear the Russian goals again and again: According to Putin, Ukraine is a historical mistake, and the war should correct this mistake. Almost every day on Russian television, Kremlin politicians and propagandists are calling for Ukraine to be wiped out.
