Münkler, Herfried

Prof. Dr. Herfried Münkler is a political scientist at Berlin's Humboldt University. He is a member of the Academy of Sciences of Berlin-Brandenburg and is a scientific consultant of the German Federal Academy of Security Issues in Berlin-Pankow.

The history of political ideas is Prof. Münkler's theoretical base of operations. This is an immense field, and to delineate clear-cut contours for this paradigm is no easy task. Societally and scientifically relevant approaches to it are subject to historical fluctuations, but this discourse on the history of ideas can be defined to a large extent as European tradition extending fromThukydides to Aristotle, from Cicero to Augustine, from Machiavelli to Martin Luther, from Hobbes, Hume, Locke, Kant and Hegel to Marx and Engels, from Max Weber to Carl Schmitt, from Foucault to Habermas and onwards. According to Münkler, the basic issues of the history of political ideas are: "the forms, institutions, practice and norms of political order." Herfried Münkler writes for a wide audience on the more specialized areas of power, the state, empire, and war. In a recently published comprehensive textbook, Llanque/Münkler, Politische Theorie, 2007 (i.e. Llanque/Münkler, Political Theory, 2007) two women, Hannah Arendt and Rosa Luxemburg are also listed among the 154 relevant authors of political concepts and theories from antiquity to the present.

War and Its Metamorphoses

All too often, women are at the center of the diffuse front of the so-called "new wars," an issue for which Münkler is also well-known in the eyes of the wider public. Recently, the proportions to be found there have been diverging noticeably from those of the past; the ratio of civilian and military casualties is now approximately 9 to 1 – the civilians mainly consisting of women and children. Seen from a global perspective, the front of the "new wars" is being formed within an altered context of warfare per se; war is no longer necessarily being conducted according to the classical model of state against state. "Asymmetrization" is Münkler's key term here, and his core concept is that of the "partisan," better known today in his incarnation as "warlord" or "terrorist." "Warfare during the transition from the 20th to the 21st century is characterized by the return of massacre as a tactic as well as by independent mercenaries, warlords and child soldiers. Preventing or at least limiting the effects of this development on the global community is perhaps the most important task of military interventions for the protection of human rights today." (H. Münkler, Über den Krieg, 2004; i.e. H. Münkler, On War, 2004).

The Decay of the State and the Anarchization of War

Seen from the perspective of the history of ideas, the "new wars" are the result of an increasing disempowerment of states and the return of anarchic, commercial, and self-centered models of warfare that had been held in check to a great extent from the Peace of Westphalia (1648) to the end of the east/west balance of terror. In Münkler's view, counterforces to this development are enjoying only minimal support at present: "All the evidence indicates that in the future as well as at present, argumentation in support of human rights, to say nothing of the idea of world civil rights, are not going to be the factors that induce the wealthy states of the northern hemisphere to engage in armed interventions in civil wars, but rather the degree of threat to their economies resulting from the increasing interlinkage of organized crime and civil war economy."

Failed States

In Münkler's view, supported and discussed among other things in the contexts of Enzensberger's theory of molecular civil war and Huntington's theory of the "clash of civilizations," "strong states" today are no longer clearly in a position to "contain" war. The concept of "failed states" for Third World countries is relevant here, but is not Carl Schmitt's concept of the "state of emergency" or "state of exception," creeping back into the discourse of political theory? What would Münkler, a political consultant, advise the German Defense Minister, who has stated publically that he was prepared to violate the law if necessary, if terrorists were to hijack an airplane and use it as a weapon ("state of exception")? Münkler did not wish to make a statement on this issue for this article. Academic consultants are expensive, and we therefore have no choice but to study the history of political ideas for ourselves if we wish to determine whether Carl Schmitt, the most controversial German theorist of constitutional and international law of the 20th century (key terms: sovereignty/state of emergency(or state of exception); distinction between friend and enemy), is once again playing a role as an (publically unacknowledged) security advisor.

Theory of the (European) Empire

Circles involved in security policy are currently developing a new security architecture in which the capacity for foreign intervention and defense against terror is to be enhanced. In Münkler's thinking as a theorist of empire (n.b.: not as a critic of imperialism), new historical perspectives are emerging. "The Logic of World Domination from Ancient Rome to the United States", the subtitle of his book on the concept of empire, indicates that after the end of the the Soviet Union, the USA must count as an empire. But to meet the requirements of policies aimed at advancing the interests of the west in the long term, Europe must not entrust its interests in its border regions to the arbitrary and changeable strategies of the USA, but instead must " be in a position to take on the previous role of the USA both in terms of its political doctrines as well as its capabilities." It seems as though the logic of world domination does not ultimately lead to the "end of history" – at least not for historians of political ideas.

Books by Herfried Münkler: Über den Krieg. Stationen der Kriegsgeschichte im Spiegel ihrer theoretischen Reflexion. Velbrück Wissenschaft 2004. 294 pages. The New Wars, Polity Press, 2004. (Die neuen Kriege. Rowohlt Taschenbuch 2005. 285 pages). Empires: The Logic of World Domination from Ancient Rome to the United States, Polity Press, 2007. (Imperien. Die Logik der Weltherrschaft – vom Alten Rom bis zu den Vereinigten Staaten. rororo Hamburg 2005. 332 pages). Machiavelli. Die Begründung des politischen Denkens der Neuzeit aus der Krise der Republik Florenz. Fischer Taschenbuch 2004(1982). 506 pages. (Ed.): Politikwissenschaft. Ein Grundkurs. rowohlts enzyklopädie Hamburg 2006. 736 pages. with Marcus Llanque: Politische Theorie und Ideengeschichte. Textbook. Akademie Verlag 2007. 480 pages.