133In the early 1980s, a reheating of the Cold War between the
super powers had far-reaching consequences for West German
politics. The four-year-long debate over a North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) decision to station nuclear missiles in West
Germany, known as the “Euromissile debate,” broke up the Social-
Liberal coalition in 1982 that had ruled for thirteen years. Helmut
Kohl became chancellor in 1982, a position he would hold for the
next sixteen years. This new phase of the Cold War produced die
We n d e (the turn) in German politics. The years surrounding die
We n d e d rew H ab er m a s i nto t wo m ajor publ ic debate s. T he fi r st con-
cerned the Euromissiles, the second the Historikerstreit, or “histo-
rians’ controversy.” Underlying both, according to Habermas, was
the agenda of Helmut Kohl, whom he described as a “neoconserva-
tive.” In response to this neoconservative challenge in both foreign
policy and vis-à-vis the memory of the Nazi past, Habermas formu-
lated three new theoretical positions that have left a lasting imprint
on his oeuvre. The first was a theoretical defense of civil disobedi-
ence; the second was an articulation of modernity, identified with
an Enlightenment notion of public, rational critique, and a “project
worth completing”; and the third was an explication of “constitu-
tional patriotism,” a source of national pride for Germans centered
on the idea of constitutional rights. The connection between the
three theoretical positions has been neglected by scholars. Viewed
together and in the political context of die We n d e, the three posi-
tions gain a powerful intellectual coherence. Together they offered
a solution to the major political-cultural problem West Germany
faced in the first half of the 1980s: the problem of Germany’s link to
or integration with the West (We s t bi n d u ng). The essays Habermas
wrote between 1978 and 1987 on the subjects civil disobedience,