'Talking Intervention‪'‬

Sie machen sich keine Vorstellung, welch ein ungeheurer Druck auf der Regierung lastet, wenn irgendwo auf der Welt eine humanitäre Krise ausbricht, und zwar Druck insofern, als gefragt wird: „Und was macht die deutsche Bundesregierung? Warum seid ihr nicht schon längst da unten und helft?“ (Michael Gerdts)3

Changing the terms of the debate from ‘right to intervene’ to ‘responsibility to protect’ helps to shift the focus of discussion where it belongs – on the requirements of those who need or seek assistance. (ICISS 2001, 18)

This section has three goals. First, I outline the inspiration and underlying assumptions of my general argument and show why and how political discourse on intervention is relevant for foreign policy-making. Second, I describe major premises of the standard account of framing and highlight important deficiencies. An alternative approach is suggested, emphasizing the conditional character of framing effects. Third, I flesh out the notion of competitive framing by investigating the German Bundestag debate on the Lebanon mission and deduce hypotheses about the impact of interventionist talking and its counter-rationale on individual attitudes.

Note that I deliberately depart from the common practice to dedicate a separate section to a literature review. The character of this thesis is rather unusual insofar as the substantive argument (i.e. the German discourse on intervention influences individual attitudes towards foreign assignments) comes with a theoretical and methodological argument (i.e. the framing literature has to resort to an interactionist perspective and make use of more sophisticated research designs). In my view, the in this chapter offered tripartite breakdown in the background of the general argument, motivation for the theoretical /methodological refinement, and explication of the hypotheses is the most feasible and intelligible approach. Of course, I incorporate relevant literature throughout the section.

Making sense of foreign affairs used to be simple with the Cold War paradigm providing ideological schemata and a powerful national-interest frame for policymakers and the public alike (Entman 2004; Nacos, Shapiro, and Isernia 2000; Risse 2000). The unexpected and sudden collapse of the Soviet Union, however, eviscerated the demonization of communism and other familiar clichés, and opened the space for new interpretations of global politics. The mounting complexities of regional conflicts, multilateral peace-keeping missions and other kind of interventions demanded a convincing and comprehensive substitute for the traditional tenets of realpolitik.