Zum Wandel von Krieg und Kriegslegitimation in der Neuzeit

Abstract

On the Transformation of War and its Legitimation in Modern Times

The history of war in the twentieth century is characterised by two overriding developments. 1. The state's monopoly over war declined. 2. The separation between combatants and the civilian population was systematically undermined. Thus two important developments that had been under way since the seventeenth century were put into reverse. The article first discusses the typical war of the twentieth century: namely the asymmetrical war. Then the anthropological factors common to the situation of human beings at war are summarised. The main part of the article recounts how in Europe wars for the purpose of state-building have been acknowledged as legitimate ever since the Middle Ages. But around 1800 the idea of the nation as the embodiment of the principle of legitimacy reached new heights, signifying a major international turning-point in the history of the legitimation of war. From then on the concept of a people's war or a national war dominated political thinking, though wars in Europe during the nineteenth century would henceforth be managed according to the tradition of ‹limited› war – one of the important achievements of that century in thinking about questions of nationality.