Where are peace going?
Photo: PfandbriefService.de
This is called point landing. That day at the end of August, when the Federal Cabinet decided to set up a national security council and set the course for a “new military service”, the comment came into the book trade. Two lawyers polemize in an essay against the current cries of war, against the militarization of language and thinking. According to your profession, you advocate peace and international law. One worked as a scientist until his retirement at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg i. Br., Where he also lives. The other author was a lawyer throughout his life – apart from a trip to politics – and as such unchanged in Zislow/Mecklenburg. His name is known. Some love him, others fear and hate him because he does not take a leaf in front of his East German mouth. He only recently read the Levites in a letter because the East Germans are also discriminated against 35 years after the state unity was produced. The continued violation of the principle of equality would be justified with a “lying historical picture”. Of course, Robin Hood alias Peter-Michael Diestel speaks here.
Arnold and Diestel, one in the west and the other in the east, have teamed up and put on the right to the current policy. The key words in your book are peace and prohibition of violence. As a lawyer, they complain factually the violations of applicable national and international law and intentional omission or its consistent application. For example, on July 15, 2025, the Federal Constitutional Court clearly undermined the peace requirement of the Basic Law when it made a slim foot when it comes to Ramstein. “Although it is undisputed that the US Air Force Base Ramstein plays a central role in the control of drone missions abroad,” the court saw no legal obligation in Germany to act against the use of the base for drone attacks by the United States “. The court failed to “set a strong sign,” said not only the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights Berlin (Ecchr). Do not contradict but means agree.
Or: international law is increasingly replaced by a “rule-based order”, ie by “legally non-binding norms, standards, behavioral and moral rules”. Their wording and one -sided application gives politics “a maximum of flexibility” in order to no longer feel bound to contracts and the liability of international law. The authors refer to the 2+4 contract of September 1990 in the context of the peace bid. »Article 2 contained the strict commandment that only peace will emerge from German soil. The governments of the FRG and the GDR said that the United Germany would ever use any of its weapons-unless in accordance with its constitution and the UN Charter. “As is well known, Diestel belonged to the government of the Signatar State of the GDR, it was its vice prime minister and is therefore more than anyone else to refer to that document and to urge it to comply with it. “Germany pursues upgrade and militarization that is contrary to the 2+4 contract,” says his book, which was written together with Arnold.
One also reads: weapons for Israel, which are used in the Middle East, “are to be seen as support and aid in a war of extermination”. Measured by the ban on violence and the peace requirement, Germany would be obliged to immediately stop this »support and aid. Insofar as the Federal Government relies on the German State Räson to justify its actions, it applies that it must not break international law. «
In this way, the two work at the current focal points, bring them from the sphere of politics into the area of judiciary. This is not unimportant, although there is no easy food for the normal reader. This is also aware of the writer Eugen Ruge, who in his foreword for understanding the text of the two advertises. Arnold and Diestel showed “the neglect in the legal understanding of the powerful”. And ties in with the expectation that “the words of the two lawyers sound in their ears or, since this hope may be too daring, will become the beneficial contribution of an upcoming peace movement”. The fact that there are an above -average number of lawyers in the Bundestag could be useful in this case.
Jürgen Arnold/Peter-Michael Diestel: War. No thanks. Plea for peace and international law. With a prologue by Eugen Ruge. The new Berlin, 112 pages, Br., 12 €.