Realpolitik

The numbers of deaths in Syria and Iraq are deeply disturbing. But the numbers create the false impression that civilians are merely victims of violent conflict, passively waiting to be overwhelmed by violence or exhaustion.

After the end of the Cold War and the renaissance of nationalism and of the concomitant abuses of human rights of the worst kind, the pacifism that had been one of the German Greens’ founding principles came into increasing conflict with its active defence of human rights.