Coalition of the Willing

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Original list from March 21, 2003

As a coalition of the willing or coalition of wills (in the English original "coalition of the willing" ), particularly the designated US founder of the Coalition an alliance of countries that the US attack in the spring of 2003 on Iraq in the Third Gulf War politically and militarily supported. The term is in contrast to the expression “ axis of evil ” coined by George W. Bush , to which Iraq was counted. The exact number of member states was and is unclear, as some of the members - especially the Gulf states - did not want to be named or denied their membership.

Participating countries

Coalition of the willing at the beginning of the war

According to the USA, the coalition of the willing comprised 43 members at the time it was founded: Afghanistan , Albania , Angola , Armenia , Azerbaijan , Ethiopia , Australia , Bahrain , Bulgaria , Costa Rica , Denmark , Dominican Republic , El Salvador , Eritrea , Estonia , Fiji , Georgia , Great Britain , Honduras , Iceland , Italy , Japan , Jordan , Qatar , Colombia , Kuwait , Latvia , Lithuania , Macedonia , Micronesia , Nicaragua , Netherlands , Norway , Oman , Palau , Philippines , Poland , Portugal , Romania , Saudi Arabia , Singapore , Slovakia , Slovenia , Spain , South Korea , Thailand , Tonga , Czech Republic , Turkey , Ukraine , Hungary , Uzbekistan and the United Arab Emirates . In September 2004, Costa Rica, which has no army and offered political support, was removed from the list at the country's official request.

In Italy , Spain , Great Britain and Turkey , the majority of the population opposed this war, according to surveys. In the Czech Republic the majority of the population was against and the outgoing President Václav Havel was in favor of this war.

The coalition of the willing was primarily political: after the UN Security Council rejected a resolution that would have supported the attack on Iraq, George W. Bush wanted to demonstrate that the US would not go to war alone. The practical meaning of this coalition is considered unclear.

Three groups of states participated in the coalition. First, the USA were allies from the Cold War era, i.e. old NATO or ANZUS members such as Great Britain , Australia, Italy or the Netherlands. Second, former Eastern Bloc countries campaigned almost unanimously for war, including not only new NATO members, but also countries like Ukraine, Georgia, Albania and Macedonia. The third group was made up of developing and emerging countries such as the Philippines (until July 2004), Thailand (until July 2004) and the Dominican Republic. The Pacific states of Palau and Micronesia have permanently linked their defense policy with the USA through so-called Free Association Agreements .

After the withdrawal of the Spanish soldiers in mid-April 2004, the coalition of the willing began to crumble. Shortly after the decision of the new Spanish government ( Cabinet Zapatero I ) followed Norway , Honduras and the Dominican Republic. The Philippines and Thailand followed in mid-July 2004. Italy ( Berlusconi II cabinet ) announced in March 2005 that it would withdraw its troops from Iraq in autumn 2005. After the change of government in Poland , the new Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced in November 2007 that from 2008 the Polish troops would be withdrawn from Iraq. Following the general election on November 24, 2007 , Australian Prime Minister-designate Kevin Rudd announced that Australian troops would withdraw from Iraq by mid-2008.
In August 2008, Georgia withdrew all 2,000 soldiers from Iraq. This had no political, but military reasons: these soldiers were supposed to intervene in the Caucasus War (conflict against Russia over South Ossetia and Abkhazia ).

The following countries had troops stationed in Iraq in June 2006:

Coalition of the Willing, March 2006
Proportion and origin of the occupation forces in Iraq, 2006
  1. USA : 138,000
  2. UK : 8,900
  3. South Korea : 3,200
  4. Italy : 2,754
  5. Poland : 2,500
  6. Ukraine : 1,650
  7. Netherlands : 1,260
  8. Australia : 1,300
  9. Romania : 865
  10. Georgia : 850
  11. Japan : 550
  12. Fiji : 500
  13. Thailand : 443
  14. Bulgaria : 418
  15. Denmark : 409
  16. Honduras : 378
  17. El Salvador : 380
  18. Czech Republic : 317
  19. Hungary : 300
  20. Azerbaijan : 150
  21. Latvia : 136
  22. Lithuania : 150
  23. Portugal : 128
  24. Mongolia : 100
  25. Philippines : 100
  26. Slovakia : 85
  27. Albania : 120
  28. Armenia : 46
  29. Estonia : 43
  30. Dominican Republic : 42
  31. Bosnia and Herzegovina : 37
  32. Macedonia : 33
  33. Kazakhstan : 29
  34. Moldova : 12
  35. Micronesia: 15
  36. New Zealand : 9

These have all returned now.

In addition, around 2008, according to official information, an estimated 190,000 PMCs ( mercenary ) employees were deployed, 25,000–30,000 of them in the security area.

Germany's role

The support from Germany , a declared war opponent, by granting overflight rights , taking over the guarding of US bases by several thousand Bundeswehr soldiers and allowing the use of locations for fighter planes and supplies is often viewed as more important than the support from some coalition members. However, it was not derived from a special agreement, but from Germany's permanent alliance obligations.

Germany was not officially included in the coalition by the USA. Some Islamist fundamentalist websites threatened Germany with attacks - experts from the Federal Criminal Police Office had trained around 230 Iraqi police officers in the United Arab Emirates from March to May. This project was agreed in October 2003 when the then Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder ( SPD ) visited Abu Dhabi . At the end of 2004, Germans trained Iraqis in handling Bundeswehr trucks; the armed forces left 100 used trucks to Iraq.

Legal evaluation in Germany

The Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig in its landmark judgment of June 21, 2005 ; from the written reasons for the judgment, from page 89:

The NATO treaty also contains an express legal reservation, according to which no contracting party can be compelled by the NATO treaty or by subsequent decisions in the implementation of the treaty (e.g. decisions in NATO bodies) to contravene its own constitution violated (so-called "protective clause"). At the urging of the then US government administration of President Truman , the clause was included in the "original version" of the NATO treaty in 1949, which subjects both its ratification and its implementation in Art. 11 Clause 1 to an express constitutional reservation. This provision explicitly states that the NATO treaty "is to be ratified by the parties in accordance with their constitutional procedures and implemented in its provisions". In this way, possible conflicts between the NATO treaty, its implementation and the obligations resulting therefrom (for the member states) on the one hand, and the respective constitution of the individual member state on the other, have been resolved from the outset. In the event of a conflict, the constitutional regulation of the respective alliance and contract partner takes precedence over the NATO treaty regulation (and the decisions made to implement the treaty). According to the NATO Treaty there are therefore no legal alliance obligations beyond the constitutional law of the respective member state and thus also not beyond the binding of the (German) “executive power” to “law and order” as well as to the “General rules of international law” (Art. 25 GG).

Further quotes from ibid (written reasons for the judgment, guiding principles, points 6 and 7):

6. There were and still are serious legal concerns about the war against Iraq, which the USA and the United Kingdom (UK) started on March 20, 2003 with regard to the prohibition of violence in the UN Charter and other applicable international law. For the war, the governments of the USA and the UK could not rely either on the authorizing resolutions of the UN Security Council or on the right of self-defense guaranteed in Article 51 of the UN Charter .
7. Neither the NATO treaty , the NATO troop statute , the supplementary agreement to the NATO troop statute nor the residence contract provide for an obligation on the part of the Federal Republic of Germany to support acts by NATO partners that violate international law , contrary to the UN charter and applicable international law.

and further:

Following the findings made by the Senate in connection with the war against Iraq, the government of the Federal Republic of Germany promised and fulfilled the governments of the USA and UK to grant "overflight rights" to the airspace over German territory , those located in Germany To use “facilities” and to ensure the protection of these facilities to a specified extent; outside of the country, she has agreed to the deployment of German soldiers in AWACS planes to “monitor Turkish airspace”.

Web links

Commons : Coalition of the Willing  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ NATO meeting: Saddam is disarmed, one way or another ... . In: Spiegel Online , November 20, 2002.
  2. ↑ Costa Rica abandons US 'coalition of the willing' , ABC News Online, abc.net.au, September 18, 2004
  3. ↑ Poland ends engagement in Iraq Tusk will withdraw soldiers from Iraq. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . December 15, 2007, accessed June 29, 2012 .
  4. ↑ Tagesschau : Australia wants to withdraw Iraq troops by mid-2008
  5. ↑ Congressional Budget Office Report, as of 2008 ( Memento from September 20, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ bundesrat.de ( Memento of November 14, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 28 kB)
  7. ↑ taz.de April 26, 2005