Obligations of Ukraine

The required resistance against an aggressor can also turn into injustice. Is this point in sight in the Ukraine war? A conversation with the criminal lawyer Reinhard Merkel, a co-author of the open letter published by “Emma”.

The open letter that you and 27 other first signatories published last Friday on the website of the magazine “Emma” contains the sentence: “Morally binding norms are of a universal nature.” the “cost” that the war in Ukraine generates in terms of civilian casualties. In legal philosophy, one speaks of the fact that norms have addressees. Open letters are also addressed – in this case to the German Federal Chancellor, via the German public. Are these the right addressees?

We’re talking about duties and their limits, and the primary focus is on the duties of decision-makers in Ukraine. If we are right in asserting that the behavior of the Ukrainian government may become inadmissible above a certain normative red line, then we are not invoking legal competences, the scope of political decision-making power, but fundamental principles of political ethics. Nevertheless, we are not addressing our considerations to the government in Kyiv, as if to say: We are now lecturing you about how long you can continue this. That would be presumptuous. We are turning to the German government and telling them: If it is true that the behavior of the Ukrainian government is illegal beyond this red line, you should stop supporting it. The German arms deliveries make less of a military difference than Ambassador Melnyk claims. But also symbolically one does not participate in behavior that is wrong. It must therefore be clarified whether and, if so, when and why even the victim of violent aggression, who defends himself with every right in the world, can use this self-defence to exceed the limits of what is permissible.