"Schießen wie die anderen?"

This commemorative book reprints articles by Reinhard Mutz which promote a security policy compatible with peace and a peace policy compatible with security. After the end of the system-driven global conflict, hopes for an era of peace, unity and democracy were high. However, Reinhard Mutz soon realised that the West had made a different choice. A resilient pan-European form of security or even peace did not emerge. Instead, Germany threw off its shackles concerning the use of troops, and NATO mutated from a defensive alliance into a hegemonic power and intervention cartel. Military interventions in a changed conflict environment became routine. The humanitarian reasoning behind them also intensified disputes within the peace research community. Reinhard Mutz did not only see the noble ambitions fail in action; he also identified the price the Western states were prepared to pay: the erosion of the prohibition of violence as the basis of every peace policy.