Historic--and Right--Step by Germany : Court permits role in enforcing U.N.-ordered ‘no-fly zone’ over Bosnia

On Monday, NATO aircraft are scheduled to begin enforcing the U.N.-ordered “no-fly zone” over Bosnia, an action prompted by hundreds of Serbian violations of Bosnian airspace since last fall. Patrols, flown by U.S., Dutch and French fighters, will be supported by AWACS surveillance planes, about 30% of whose crews will be German. History will be made as German uniformed personnel for the first time since World War II become involved outside of Germany in a situation of potential combat.

It took a split decision by the Federal Constitutional Court this week to resolve a challenge to German participation in the operation, and that decision was based on political rather than constitutional grounds. The court refused to grant a temporary injunction barring a German role in the operation, contending that if it did so “a loss of confidence by the allies and all our European neighbors would be unavoidable, and the resulting damage irreparable.” Germany’s 1949 constitution permits its participation in international security alliances, like NATO. Left unclear is whether the German military can operate only on its own territory and that of its alliance partners. The court deferred ruling on this issue.

The external political pressures it did explicitly note are likely to increase in coming years. A united Germany, once its backward eastern regions are fully integrated, seems fated to become the dominant continental power. Already the third-largest contributor to the United Nations’ budget, Germany is interested in permanent membership on the U.N. Security Council. But Germany, like Japan, can hardly claim such status while it still regards itself as unable to take part in U.N.-authorized military missions. Both Germany and Japan have been testing the boundaries of their constitutional barriers; both, for example, have contributed noncombat units to the U.N. mission in Cambodia. But the larger question of a possible armed role in international operations has not been addressed.

Suspicions of revived German or Japanese militarism have clearly not disappeared in Europe and Asia. But it is not militarism, nor does it pose any regional danger, when a member state honors the U.N. Charter’s recognition of the right of collective self-defense and international peacekeeping by participating in multilateral military operations. Germany is doing the right thing, on a very restricted scale, by sending 450 or so of its technicians to help in the U.N. mission of keeping Bosnia’s skies free from Serbian intruders.