I would like to focus on three points in my introduction:
FirstlyAre there any restrictions arising from the special characteristics of military service that make soldiers less capable of peacekeeping than their fellow citizens?
SecondlyI will briefly outline the crises and conflicts that we are likely to face, thirdlyThe question is whether, in view of the tension between the commandment in all monotheistic religions not to kill and the need to kill in operations if necessary, a situation could arise in which the military set up to protect society becomes a foreign body.
We are discussing the question of whether mankind is capable of peace in a situation that we all hoped we would never have to experience again: Europe is confronted with a forbidden, illegal and in no way provoked or justified war of aggression, waged by the Russian Federation in Ukraine. We are living on the brink of a war whose duration is unpredictable and which will change Germany, Europe and indeed the world. It will probably lead to a new world order in which it will be essential for us to uphold the rule of law and not open the door to a world in which only the law of the jungle applies. This is the core issue behind the suffering in Ukraine.
For me, the war brings back memories that were ultimately suppressed, memories of the bombing nights in Munich in 1944/45, not far from here in Hohenzollernstraße, or the memory of what the post-war period actually meant, expressed by the image of my unheated school, just around the corner here in Haimhauserstraße, whose windows were usually only closed with paper even in winter, where in 1945 only the school meals provided by American occupying soldiers offered warmth and which, in distant memory, were even delicious. Perhaps these memories played a role in my subconscious when I decided to become a soldier in 1958 to help ensure that war could never happen again in our country, even though my school-leaving certificate really did offer me all the options. Above all, however, the fresh memory of the Soviet subjugation of Hungary in 1956 played an important role.
In my 41 years as a soldier, I witnessed the Cold War and then its extremely happy and successful end for us and was able to make a small contribution to shaping what was perhaps the best peace order in Europe, laid down in the 1990 Charter of Paris and expressed in the hope of a peace zone from Vancouver to Vladivostok, and then, in my last year of service in March 1999, I had to recommend to the NATO Council, as NATO's top soldier, that acts of aggression be ordered against the former Yugoslavia to prevent a possible genocide, even without a mandate from the Security Council. Once again, as during the bombing nights in Munich in 1944/45, I was able to witness indirectly that the American General William Sherman was right during the American Civil War in the 19th century when he said: "War is hell. But now, in the 21st century, war is the hell of all hells, because man today not only has the ability to kill other people on a massive scale, he also has the ability to cause globally effective, lasting and permanent destruction of large parts of our world."
You all see the images of death and destruction from the heart of Europe every day, some of you have experienced and felt the trauma that the refugees from Ukraine have brought with them to our peaceful country and many of you suspect that this is not the last war and that there are other risks and dangers lurking out there in our troubled world, some of which will also affect us or could even force our country to get involved.
If we only look at all this, then the question of our topic already seems to be answered: Man does not seem to be capable of peace. Can there even be a military view on this and on Professor Frühbauer's statements?
Soldiers are part of society. There are only special rules for them within the legally defined framework. In the German case, none of the special regulations in the Soldiers Act preclude soldiers from being capable of peace. Moreover, in my 41 years of service, I have never seen a single soldier, either nationally or internationally, who wants war. Soldiers know what war means and they certainly want to keep the peace, even more than any politician or any of their fellow citizens. But soldiers also know, as we all do, that there is a dark side to us humans. Since Cain and Abel, this dark side of man has been part of our nature and it cannot be eliminated. The soldier's obligation to fight in a politically decided war and, almost inevitably, to kill in the process, can certainly lead to this dark side becoming dominant in individual soldiers. Good military leadership is therefore characterised by the fact that it prevents the evil in people from coming to the fore and then, if it does break out, deals with it with the full force of the law. Whatever the environment may be in a specific situation, war crimes as the most extreme expression of the dark side of man must never be tolerated. They must be dealt with severely and immediately. This is the only way to prevent recurrences and ensure that the offender is brought to justice.
But the certainty also seems to remain: human beings are capable of doing an infinite amount of good and constantly improving the world, but they also remain capable of doing a tremendous amount of evil. That is why I turn to the second question: What is likely to happen in the world of the future?
We are experiencing the birth pangs of a new world order. Our world is in a process of ongoing change, triggered by dramatic changes that transcend borders and continents and affect all areas of life, accelerated and possibly made even more dramatic by climate change, which could lead to a shortage of resources that triggers war and numerous disasters that are likely to become more frequent in the future, on the scale recently seen in Turkey and Syria. Many things are changing simultaneously and interacting with each other. Many of the conflicts, some of which arose a long time ago, remain unresolved and, in addition, transnational, non-state actors are increasingly breaking the states' monopoly on the use of force. The multilateral, rules-based international system of order is threatening to disintegrate.
In such an area of tension, conflicts are almost inevitable. They are likely to be caused by 1. disputes over access to and disposal of existential resources such as water, food, energy and healthcare, 2. migration-triggering consequences of the expected global climate change, 3. the disproportionality of population growth and prosperity development, 4. These new causes of conflict are exacerbated by traditional causes of conflict such as unresolved territorial claims, membership of foreign ethnic groups or tribes, unequal distribution of power or religious tensions and 5. the disintegrating power of states in a world in which non-state actors, by no means only criminal actors, but also industrial and economic cartels, which are not subject to any control but increasingly have all the means of power at their disposal. 6) The emergence of new aggressive and expansionist ideologies is also conceivable. They could exacerbate and decide each of the aforementioned causes of conflict through agitation and skilful use of now global communication before they become recognisable as a conflict. This would be the perfection of hybrid warfare.
These new conflicts will often be characterised by the coexistence of state and non-state actors. The latter will soon have the full potential for violence at their disposal. The state's monopoly on the use of force will therefore break down and non-state actors, not only criminal, but possibly also industrial cartels, will use force without restriction and without any commitment to law or moral norms.
The conviction of our Western world to regard human rights as universally valid values and to stand up for their enforcement is likely to lead to further conflicts in a world networked by global real-time communication, in which human rights will continue to have regional validity at best for the time being.
It is very likely that the world of the future will be entangled in a systemic conflict between democracy and autarchy, i.e. a competition between the so-called Western world led by the USA and the world of oppression and autarchy led by China. This could give rise to the obligation to intervene in extreme cases to protect human life. The basis for this is the "responsibility to protect" (R2P) concept approved by the United Nations General Assembly, which I had the honour of helping to develop. Incidentally, in his speech to the United Nations in April 2009, Pope Benedict XVI considered the use of force to be justifiable in exceptional cases in order to implement R2P.
In this world, it will hardly be possible to avoid taking risks by invoking a supposedly higher morality. In this world, freedom can only be preserved by those who are prepared to take responsibility. That can mean taking risks and that can lead to violence and war being seen as an undesirable but necessary means of politics, but it must be used.
War and violence will therefore not disappear from the instruments of international politics. What has changed and will continue to change are the nature, extent and form of war, but violence to achieve political goals will remain a faithful but also despicable "companion" of us humans. I do not expect eternal peace any more than Kant did in 1795. Unfortunately, I have to assume that there will continue to be violent conflicts, even war, and I would add that in a turbulent world in upheaval this could unfortunately be the case even more frequently than in the years since 1945.
There will therefore continue to be the claim that a just war is being waged, but the question is whether war can still be just at all today. This is not a question that soldiers have to answer, but rather the politicians who decide on war and who, in this country, take responsibility for the deployment of soldiers by claiming to be a parliamentary army.
This brings me to my third question, namely whether soldiers who, because of the continuing need to kill in politically mandated missions in the future, do not run the risk of becoming foreign bodies in a society that ultimately only recognises peace as a just solution, even though the soldiers are dependent on the support of the population, especially in their missions.
I don't want to bore you with statements on just war. You know the development from Cicero to St Augustine to Hugo Grotius and then ultimately to the outlawing of war in the League of Nations and above all in the Charter of the United Nations, which sought to ban war and expressly prohibited aggressive war. However, you are also aware of the reality that more than 100 wars have been waged since 1949 and that all permanent members of the UN Security Council, including the self-proclaimed bringer of peace China, have waged or participated in wars of aggression, now above all Russia in Ukraine, which is particularly reprehensible due to the well-founded suspicion of numerous war crimes.
War thus remains outlawed, but the use of force remains an option for political action by states, and can even be legalised by the Security Council.
This ambiguity of political action called on the Christian churches to define their moral and ethical positions. As early as 1948, the 1st General Assembly of the World Council of Churches stated: "War shall not be according to God's will". I recall a conversation with the Holy Father in February 1991, in which he repeated this statement even against the backdrop of the United Nations-approved attempt to liberate Kuwait and was unable to approve of the coalition's action against Iraq at the time. War should not be God's will is still the common denominator of Germany's Christian churches.
However, there will still be two cases in the future in which the use of force has a secure legal basis and can therefore at least be considered politically justified:
1. individual and collective self-defence in accordance with Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations. It can lead to war in self-defence, but excludes wars of aggression.
2. the use of force by member states of the United Nations authorised by the Security Council in accordance with Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations. It leads to combat operations, including offensive operations, but not to war.
In each individual case, therefore, the question will be raised as to whether action or rather inaction is justifiable and in many a part of the Christian world the famous question posed by the war captain Assa von Cramm to Martin Luther as to whether the man of war can be of blessed honour will arise again.
The question of just violence is therefore as virulent as ever, despite the outlawing of war. Politicians who have to decide on the use of lethal force by the state must be aware of both the legal and the moral dimension, because the people who carry out their decisions must be able to trust that they are going on life-threatening missions for a just cause. The real question in the 21st century is therefore no longer: Can war be just? When and under what conditions can the use of military power be justified in the 21st century and whether states, whose first duty is and remains to protect their citizens, can afford to entrust this protection to pacifist concepts.
Therefore, summarised as a catchphrase, there are two concepts that stand in opposition to each other. One is the classic one: if you want peace, prepare for war (si vis pacem para bellum), i.e. self-defence as a weakened form of a just war. And the other: If you want peace, prepare for peace (si vis pacem para pacem), i.e. the radical pacifist solution of just peace.
Our country could also choose between the two alternatives. We all need to think about it: do we want to entrust the best and freest state in German history defencelessly to the goodwill of our troubled world and hope for peace? Or, conscious of our country's dependence on the protection of allies, on free world trade and exports, on the import of energy and raw materials that are vital to our survival and also in view of our dependence on social peace, do we want to ensure that the state's obligation to protect can continue to be honoured, even militarily if necessary?
Renouncing any form of security provision and protection by the state is an idea that, for me, is beyond conceptualisation given the dual nature of human beings. In the world in which we will live for the time being, pacifist renunciation of any form of protection ultimately means nothing other than submission, i.e. renunciation of freedom and the protection of the individual through the power of law.
For me, there is only one answer to this: never. I do not want to and cannot live in a state that is no longer prepared to fulfil and protect the promise of Article 1 of the Basic Law.
This brings me back to St Augustine and his less frequently mentioned "two swords" solution. In his doctrine of the two kingdoms, St Augustine says: "Two swords are just enough for life outside paradise and before the dawn of the last day, but two must also be enough in view of the twofold nature of human beings: ideally as baptised children of God and actually as human beings under the influence of evil."
Even in the 21st century, violence below the threshold of war remains a faithful companion of the human species. Ensuring that violence increasingly becomes the exception and that states are constantly looking for ways to limit even the legitimisable exceptions more and more remains one of the great and ongoing challenges facing humanity.
That is why we should never stop looking for what we all want, a state in which the sentence applies: "Peace is the highest good of all." 
