Civil Disobedience and Modernity, 1978–1987 145
leading Germany down the path of “neutralization,” conjuring the
image of a gloomy anti-Americanism reminiscent of the SPD before
it committed to NATO at the Bad Godesburg Conference in 1959.
As Kohl said of the demonstrators who had massed in Bonn to pro-
test the missiles: “The real problem in Bonn is that the contours
between democrats and the enemies of democracy are blurring.”^42
Like the protestors, Habermas rejected Kohl’s claim that the peace
movement blurred the boundary between the friends and enemies
of democracy. Did this make Habermas a “neutralist” or “soft on
communism”? Where did Habermas fit in this constellation of
political language, and how much influence did he exert on the pro-
test movement?
Habermas agreed with key premises shared by the leading intel-
lectuals of the SPD’s left wing – Willy Brandt, Egon Bahr, Oskar
Lafontaine, and Erhard Eppler: The missiles were not necessary for
West Germany’s defense and endangered Europe as a whole. While
he was not aligned with all the peace movement’s positions, he stood
close to Lafontaine and Joschka Fischer at this time.^43 Habermas
asserted no moral equivalence between the superpowers. He had
expressed no interest in German reunification since the early 1950s.
In 1984, he stated: “... the German question is no longer open. The
talk about a new German nationalism I consider meaningless.”^44
Habermas did not believe West Germany should withdraw from
NATO or cultivate a broader Gaullism of the left.^45
One comprehensive study of the Euromissile crisis and its broad
ideological repercussions argues that leading partisans of German
withdrawal from NATO, such as Erhard Eppler, were influenced
by the Frankfurt School critique of instrumental reason in general
and Habermas’s critique of technocracy in particular.^46 Eppler, the
author of two of the most widely read critiques of the Euromissiles,
was a Protestant member of the SPD Executive Committee and
considered by Habermas a serious and thoughtful intellectual.^47
(^42) Ibid., 137.
(^43) Author’s private correspondence with Habermas, June 7, 2005.
(^44) The context was a recent speech delivered by Willy Brandt in Munich.
“The West German left has not the slightest reason to repeat this error.” In
Habermas, “Interview with the New Left Review,” 251.
(^45) See Herf, War by Other Means, 139, 149.
(^46) Ibid., 124.
(^47) Habermas, “Testfall,” 45; Erhard Eppler, Weg aus der Gefahr (Reibek bei
Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1981 ); Die tödliche Utopie der Sicherheit (Reinbek bei
Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1983 ).