Wieduwilts week: One year later: What we fight for

The war has been raging for a year.

Wieduwilts week: One year later: What we fight for

The war has been raging for a year. Ukraine is fighting against the aggressor, with the support of the West. But the most important goal in this war is somewhat lost in Germany.

A year ago, Russia began its invasion of Ukraine. Since then we have had to learn a lot. We now know a lot about guns, like how many barrels a cheetah has (two), that there aren't just two leopards, but quite a lot, and if you're really into it you might even know why the gun barrels are "smooth" and not " drawn" (modern tank ammunition is not supposed to rotate and fly faster).

Some things, on the other hand, seemed to get a little out of sight. Ukrainians are fighting the invaders and fighting for survival, sure - but are they fighting for something? NATO membership? EU accession? No, much bigger: They fight for democracy.

We hear that surprisingly rarely in Germany - the Americans say it loudest when they visit us. US President Joe Biden not only campaigned for "freedom" and "sovereignty" in Warsaw - he campaigned for democracy.

And what a quiet renaissance democracy is experiencing! This system is based on the humble admission of one's own fallibility - and through arguing leads to the best result. Recent history shows that autocracies may act faster, but not better.

China guided the people through the pandemic with a free and iron hand until it was no longer possible - now the People's Republic is heading for 1.5 million corona deaths. How bitterly we fought in Germany for measures and the right behavior! It is part of the background noise of democracy that its enemies castigate every error as treason. All in all, we managed to do better.

The war in Ukraine is the second major example. Many observers initially expected that Russia would soon take over Ukraine. It was probably a democratic, naïve view of a country weakened by anti-democracy. Where there is no dispute, contradiction and criticism, the military also crumbles quietly.

This is not a vague assumption, but a well-researched connection that political scientists Dan Reiter and Allan C. Stam recently reported on in the Washington Post. In three respects, they write, autocracies have lagged behind. First: Autocracies would more often throw themselves into risky war adventures, they sum up, because nobody is allowed to object - after all, Putin even has a 7-year-old imprisoned for her peace protest. Second, dictators lived in constant fear of overthrow. Third, dictators would surround themselves with yes-men.

So Russia also loses because it competes against democracies. Biden said it in Warsaw with a typical, namely short, Biden sentence: "Democracy was too strong".

In Germany, of all places, the public seems alienated by such statements. Worse still: the value of democracy is downright underestimated, at best accepted as a natural, original state of coexistence. Biden's statements seem too bombastic, somehow American. The fact that a country like Ukraine could fall under the tyranny of an autocracy is accepted by all too large sections of the public as fateful. As if annexation were one of several options on the way to a peaceful history.

Many of them will therefore follow the call from Alice Schwarzer and Sahra Wagenknecht on Saturday and rehearse an "uprising for peace". They collected a good 600,000 signatures under their manifesto. The criticism of the two stimulus figures was sharp, a Spiegel columnist even makes a "witch hunt". She is right about one thing: it is precisely the essence of democracy to endure exchange and errors.

What might move the 600,000 signers? Peace ideals from workers' struggle songs maybe - and a toxic relativism. After all, the states of the world have the same status under international law, regardless of their form of government. Democracy or not has no weight in this perspective. In her speech before the United Nations - not organized democratically herself - Annalena Baerbock never once mentioned the word "democracy".

The historical-political turn towards a post-colonial view of undemocracies in the "Global South" also contributes to the fact that democracy as a political motif is going a bit out of fashion.

But neither the agnostic view of the state order nor post-colonial humility should hide the fact that democracy is more valuable to us than autocracy. When Putin rules over parts of Ukraine, it's not just the country's flag that changes. Along with their freedom, the Ukrainians there are also losing their democracy. Is it worth it to us?

The fate of Ukraine is not the tragic affair of a neighbor whom one can press to compromise for the sake of peace. Pity for Ukraine is definitely the right sentiment: but only if it means that we see ourselves as a community with a shared fate, not as onlookers.

It's about defending a political achievement. "Today we are Roosevelt," said former federal constitutional judge Udo Di Fabio in a speech recently at the turn of the year. He was referring to Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Quarantine Speech". In 1937, the US President implicitly referred to Japan, Germany and Italy as states that must be quarantined - so that "lawlessness" does not spread.

But today's Germans have mistrusted the idea of ​​exporting democracy since the Iraq war and at least since the withdrawal from Afghanistan - for good reasons. However, the attack on the Ukraine shows that the autocracy is also capable of violent export and, see above, tends to do so particularly quickly.

That's why it's not just a slip-up when the Green Foreign Minister says "we" are at war "against Russia". That's why it's not an empty formula when Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that the "Ukrainian-European way of life" is being defended.

It's about democracy. You can say that louder.