1 Introduction

The new EKD Peace Memorandum 2025 is controversial. This is not surprising, as many (if not all) official statements by the Protestant churches on issues of war and peace over the past 75 years have always been more or less controversial and have taken place in the context of pronounced controversies. Nevertheless, the current debate about the memorandum of the year 2025 is particularly bitter. There is probably no precedent for the publication of two volumes full of critical statements and perspectives, so-called "Umdenkschriften", from within the Church itself within just a few weeks of the publication of the actual peace memorandum (Bürger 2026a, 2026b). For some, the defense of the concept of "war capability" (paragraph 59) is intolerable. For some, the rejection of Christian-motivated pacifism "as a universal political ethic" (paragraph 17) is particularly offensive. For others, it is unacceptable how peace ethical ideas, which arose in East Germany in its own line of tradition, are reduced to the context of the GDR regime. (KKL 1965: 256; paragraph 177). And for many, a boundary is crossed at the latest with the fundamental acceptance of nuclear deterrence (No. 145).

This article would like to draw attention to something that precedes these controversies and largely explains the positions of the Peace Memorandum: the remarkable proximity of the entire argumentation to the state and, as a logical consequence, to state means of violence. The problem here is that the EKD's new peace memorandum not only exaggerates the state with a view to (just) peace, but also overlooks central current debates on the state, liberal democracy and global conflicts, which should have had significant consequences for the argumentation of the peace memorandum. These gaps lead to a closeness to the state in which the critical distance to all types of state violence must necessarily be lost.

How and why does the new peace memorandum bring the EKD so close to the state? This works primarily through the hierarchization of the four basic dimensions of "Just Peace", which are not new, but have been slightly modified from the 2007 Peace Memorandum. What is new, however, is that priority is now given to "protection from violence" because this is what makes progress in the other dimensions possible in the first place (key point 1, paragraphs 39 and 40). Of particular interest for the present considerations is the fact that protection against violence is explicitly linked to the state monopoly on the use of force, territorial integrity and sovereignty - the classic core elements of statehood (key point 1, paragraphs 23 and 72). In a nutshell, the argumentation of the peace memorandum can be summarized as follows: From the primacy of protection against violence follows the primacy of state sovereignty and, accordingly, the necessity of the military defense of the state in the service of this sovereignty (paragraph 62). Thus, the state logically precedes the dimensions of just peace, because only the latter makes this possible. As a result, this leads from the theologically well-founded "primacy of the renunciation of violence" (paragraphs 3, 4, 14, 15, 62) to the justification of the entire canon of state-military defense policy (paragraph 62) - and even to the justification of the possession of nuclear weapons (paragraph 145).

This line of argument can be questioned at various points. For example, Werkner (2026: 9) criticizes the priority given to protection against violence over the other dimensions of just peace, pointing to their interdependence. The AGDF (2025) considers, among other things, the underlying assumptions about the effectiveness of state use of force to be questionable. Others warn against equating conventional and nuclear deterrence (Speyer 2025). I would like to start a little earlier and draw attention to three central problems that go hand in hand with the entire nexus to the state.

2. just peace and the state

States are by no means a prerequisite for protection from violence, let alone guarantors of just peace. In the past and present, sovereignty and the monopoly on the use of force (read: organized state means of violence) have been and are very often used against one's own or foreign populations or exclusively in the interests of those in power, accepting the harm to one's own or a foreign population. And it does not look as if this will change in the future. On the contrary.

For the past, a brief recollection of feudalism, imperialism, colonialism, fascism and real socialism is enough to make it immediately clear that the historical record of "the state" with regard to just peace is dismal. For the present, it can be shown empirically that - globally speaking - contrary to the decades-long dominant paradigm of intervention and development policy - there is no connection between the state's ability to act and - in the terminology of the peace memorandum - "the reduction of inequality". A strengthening of the state, including in terms of its use of force, is by no means necessarily accompanied by an improvement in the situation of the population (Lee et al. 2014). In its current annual report, Human Rights Watch states that 72% of humanity currently lives in autocracies (HRW 2026: 1), for which the Peace Declaration itself doubts that they are committed to the principles of just peace (paragraph 35). And for the future, we have paid dearly for the realization that the idea that we are in a kind of transitional period, at the end of which the Democratic Republic of the Congo will also look like Denmark, that this idea of the "end of history" after the Cold War was nothing more than euphoric naivety and Western triumphalism. If you have any doubts, think back to Afghanistan and briefly reconsider whether you can really assume that "the state" should be thought of as a sufficient or even just a necessary condition for just peace, or whether the question should not be much more about how to promote just peace despite the state .

And precisely because it is the case that the state is very often the cause of massive discord not only between states, but also within society, and can even degenerate into genocide, this is why even the United Nations, although it is a state organization, established the principle of theResponsibility to Protect (R2P) in 2005 in response to the genocide in Rwanda, among other things. Although the peace memorandum recognizes this principle (paragraph 44), it only talks about the difficulties of its application (which in fact consists primarily in the fact that it is thwarted by states). It overlooks the implications for its own argumentation: the great innovation of R2P in international law lies in the fact that it links sovereignty to the condition of protecting one's own population. A state that does not fulfill its responsibility to protect forfeits its right to sovereignty. Even the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, which is often interpreted as the birth of an international system of sovereign states, linked a right to non-interference and territorial integrity to the protection of religious minorities (or, conversely, stipulated a corresponding right to intervene; see Milton 2023) - an extremely important regulation, especially for Protestant Christians at the time.

The decisive implication is that the exact opposite of what was claimed in the Peace Memorandum should apply: State sovereignty is not the prerequisite for the protection of life, but rather the protection of life is the prerequisite for the granting of state sovereignty. The state is at best a means for the pursuit of the goal of just peace, but it can in no way be a goal in and of itself under the mere assumption of a connection between sovereignty and just peace that does not exist empirically. Here the peace memorandum - one is tempted to write: in the Hegelian tradition of German state theory - has lost sight of fundamental priorities.

3 Just peace and the crisis of liberal democracy

At this point, one would have to object to the peace memorandum that this is of course not what is meant - although the constant reference to "the state" suggests a universal reading. No, one would have to say, the state as an instrument for the protection of life and thus as a prerequisite for just peace is of course not assumed for all states, but only for those with a "liberal order based on the rule of law and fundamental and human rights" (paragraph 35). Again, this can be summarized only slightly abbreviated: In terms of peace ethics, defense, possession of nuclear bombs and ultimately military deployment are only justifiable for liberal democracies, but not for autocracies, because only the former are committed to all dimensions of just peace. This raises the problem of the implicit assumption of a dichotomy that does not exist empirically. But if one thinks of democracy and autocracy as the end poles of a (possibly even multidimensional) continuum - which is significantly more plausible - what would be the consequences for peace ethics? The peace memorandum is silent on this.

Firstly, this is a problem because the fully developed liberal democracy of the past and present is an extreme exception - see above. And secondly, it is an even greater problem because of the current major internal crises of almost all liberal democracies, which are discussed under the term "democratic regression" (Schäfer/Zürn 2021), among others. The historical exception is about to become even rarer - as a long-term trend that has affected practically all democracies. The Peace Memorandum mentions this problem (paragraphs 35, 115, 116) - even if the term "right-wing populism" is only used once (paragraph 95). But the implications for its own argumentation are not thought through. How can it be that the crisis of democracy - one of the greatest problems of our time - is only marginally discussed in the peace memorandum, while at the same time the central justification of peace ethics considerations is linked to a state that is committed to this internal constitution? Consider this: the entire burden of justification of the argumentative chain, which then extends to the possession of nuclear weapons, hinges on the character of the state as a liberal democracy, since only in this can just peace unfold (paragraph 188). And yet the global crisis of liberal democracy is only touched on in the peace memorandum? This is far more than a theoretical problem for the argumentation. Numerous concrete questions arise:

Would US soldiers in a defense mission today already violate these stipulations of the peace memorandum because the conditions that make their state worthy of protection in the sense of liberal democracy as an instrument of just peace are only present to a limited extent? And what would the Peace Memorandum tell us if the AfD were to join the government in Germany and set about restructuring domestic political structures? For whom or what and, above all, why should the "citizen in uniform" then put his/her life at risk? What does the peace memorandum have to say about this if there are good reasons to doubt that government action is inspired by the spirit of just peace (e.g. in social and migration policy) even far beyond the AfD's participation in government? How liberal must a democracy be for it to be assumed that its violent defense, accepting an unspecified number of victims, ultimately serves just peace? At what point does one have to be afraid when right-wing populists in "not-quite-so-liberal" democracies sit at the "red buttons" for nuclear weapons, and what does this mean for the peace-ethical assessment of the possession of nuclear weapons as a whole? What would be the criteria for what kind of consideration? The EKD peace memorandum - 2025! - in the same year in which Donald Trump celebrated his second inauguration, the AfD emerged as the second-strongest political force in a federal election with almost 21% of the second votes and nationwide protests broke out in France following the condemnation of Marine Le Pen, because her candidacy in the 2027 presidential election was in question. The idea that any deviation from the principle of the "normal case of fully developed liberal democracy" is a transitional phenomenon or a "minor industrial accident" has always been wrong with regard to the vast majority of the world and is clearly the case in the OECD world today.

Against this background, further questions arise: What does the crisis of liberal democracy mean for the peace ethics assessment of military alliances and NATO in particular? At present, just 13 of the 32 NATO member states (!) can still be considered "full democracies" in the sense of the Economist 's Democracy Index (TEIU 2025). In nine of the 32 NATO countries, right-wing populists are involved in or support the government, and it is to be feared that this number will continue to grow. What does it mean for the justification of defense measures to be prepared to fight side by side in an emergency with soldiers from right-wing populist countries that are not committed to the goals of just peace? How should talk of a European nuclear umbrella be judged when a president from the ranks of the Rassemblement National is in power in France -a scenario that will unfortunately be anything but implausible from 2027?

And what does the linking of peace ethics to the state and liberal democracy mean for the ethical assessment of the duty to provide assistance? In this area, the peace memorandum argues in a differentiated manner, weighing up the pros and cons of the debate on arms deliveries to Ukraine (paragraphs 152, 153, 154, 155), but it largely misses a core question that should have emerged from its own line of argument: Does one have to stand by a state even if its internal constitution violates the principles of liberal democracy and it cannot itself be considered a guarantor of just peace? And if so, under what conditions, to what extent and, above all, why? What would have happened, for example, if Russia had attacked authoritarian Kyrgyzstan (with which it actually has numerous conflicts)? The peace memorandum speaks of "legitimate governance" as a prerequisite for arms deliveries (paragraph 153), but what exactly does this mean and how does it relate to the criteria of liberal democracy (paragraph 35) and the dimensions of just peace (paragraph 22)? Or does the peace memorandum want to dissolve the link to the internal constitution of states and place itself exclusively at the service of sovereignty law - regardless of the empirical fact that states are much more often the cause of threats to peace than their solution (see above)?

It becomes clear that the EKD Peace Memorandum 2025 not only ties its argumentation to "the state" in a dubious manner, it also places the state as a liberal democracy at the beginning of a chain of justification, but only begins to reflect on its current major crisis and its implications for its own line of argumentation. In doing so, it not only overlooks the historically exceptional character of liberal democracy, but - and this is indeed dramatic! - it overlooks the fact that defending the normative principles of liberal democracy and just peace is primarily an internal task in which no military in the world can help. It thus implicitly and uncritically adopts the new global conflict narrative of "democracy versus autocracy" without recognizing that the corresponding line of conflict does not run between states but within states and therefore completely eludes classic state defence concepts. Especially if just peace is made a primarily domestic matter, this should have been a central problem to be discussed.

4 Just peace and the right of peoples to self-determination

The peace memorandum repeatedly mentions territorial integrity and the inviolability of borders - certainly also in the spirit of the UN Charter and in particular Article 2, paragraph 4 (key point 1, paragraphs 23, 42, 72, 77). There is no doubt that this (like so much of the memorandum) is influenced by the (internationally unrecognized) Russian annexation of Crimea and the invasion of Ukraine, which blatantly violates precisely these basic principles. At the same time, however, the peace memorandum also mentions the "right of peoples to self-determination" (paragraphs 36 and 44) - also a fundamental principle of international law (e.g. UN Charter, Art. 1, para. 2). What it does not seem to see, however, is the fact that there is a fundamental, unresolvable tension between these two principles, in which territorial integrity always has the upper hand, both in international law and in realpolitik. Thus, the principle of territorial integrity is regularly used within and outside the UN to deny the realization of the right to self-determination or to justify the use of state force against social groups striving for self-determination, autonomy or even statehood.

In purely legal terms, the long shadow of "peoples'" law as "states'" law (Georg Jellinek) still lingers. Although there have been various waves of development in international law since 1945, in which social groups and even individuals have also become bearers of rights, this does not change the fact that there are still narrow limits to the pursuit of autonomy or even statehood from a purely international law perspective, which are much more in line with the interests of existing states than the interests of ethnic minorities with autonomy aspirations, for example. Unfortunately, this is by no means an academic problem or a problem of international law alone. Rather, conflict statistics such as the data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP 2025) show that 60% of all violent conflicts worldwide (in the terminology of the UCDP) are "territorial", i.e. they revolve at least to a significant extent around autonomy, self-determination, border shifts, secession or statehood. And nota bene: all major conflicts in the post-Soviet space with Russian direct or indirect involvement after 1990 fall into this category - from Abkhazia and South Ossetia to Nagorno-Karabakh, Chechnya and the conflicts over Transnistria. This will hardly come as a surprise to those who remember how the borders of the post-Soviet states came about.

And for the Ukraine conflict, too, it cannot be denied that the "war" (i.e. organized acts of violence with more than 1,000 dead) began in 2014 as a secessionist conflict (in UCDP's coding: as a territorial self-determination conflict between Ukraine and two non-state armed actors, the so-called "People's Republics" of Donetsk and Luhansk). This is not about ignoring the initially camouflaged Russian support for this war of secession, justifying the Russian annexation of Crimea or whitewashing the invasion eight years later in any way. Rather, the point is that peace ethics considerations must fundamentally address the problem of self-determination and the legitimacy of such efforts. The mere reference to the principle of "territorial integrity" would otherwise be tantamount to an uncritical acceptance of the status quo, which at best ignores and at worst justifies the suppression of autonomy efforts - and this against the backdrop of a system of global borders that are often somewhat arbitrary and run completely counter to the idea of "one people, one state". In this respect too, existing states are by no means guarantors of just peace.

But what does the memorandum say about the problem of collective self-determination, which fuels the majority of all conflicts worldwide - and has also played an important role in the dynamics of the Ukraine conflict, which is the central reason for the reformulation of the memorandum? She says surprisingly little. In the first dimension of just peace - "protection from violence" - violence against minorities is not mentioned, but the violation of state borders is (paragraph 23). In the second dimension - "promotion of freedom" - it is recognized that "freedom is exercised in coexistence" (paragraph 24), but this coexistence is linked to "national community" and the "social cohesion" of the same - there is no mention of the freedom inherent in collective self-determination. In the third dimension, which is formulated over several paragraphs - "reduction of hardship" - there is no link at all (paragraphs 25, 26, 27) - remarkable in view of the fact that minorities in particular often find themselves in hardship - especially when they demand autonomy. This should perhaps be expected all the more from the fourth dimension - "dealing with plurality in a way that promotes peace" (paragraphs 28, 29, 30, 31). And indeed, it does say in a somewhat disconnected sentence that "dealing with plurality in a way that promotes peace includes the protection of minorities" (paragraph 29). But such "protection of minorities" is hardly the same as self-determination, autonomy or even a right to statehood. In particular, there is no consideration of the problematic content of existing borders and no criterion for assessing the relative importance of "territorial integrity" on the one hand and the "right to self-determination" on the other (see question 5 in the opening contribution by Picker/Weller).

What should a Kurdish woman think of this kind of unfolding of the dimensions of just peace? What a Uyghur? A Tibetan, a Chechen, a Malay, a Moro, an Oromo, a Sahrui, a Kashmiri - a Palestinian? In this respect, too, the memorandum is remarkably committed not only to the state, but to the status quo of the current state system - and deliberately overlooks the contexts in which "territorial integrity" goes hand in hand with obvious violations of even lay notions of just peace, for which the peace memorandum does not even provide a conceptual toolkit to reflect on.

5 Conclusion: Peace memorandum, church and state

Overall, a remarkable finding emerges: The EKD Peace Memorandum 2025 (1) ties itself to "the state" in terms of peace ethics - without reflecting on its actually extremely dubious record with regard to just peace, (2) makes its internal constitution as a liberal democracy the starting point of a chain of justification, (3) emphasizes time and again the importance of state sovereignty and territorial integrity - without considering the inherent tension with the right to self-determination, which at least partly determines the majority of all global violent conflicts in the world.

Central debates and findings in connection with the state and democracy are overlooked, as is the nature of the majority of global violent conflicts. Instead, the overall view leads to the irritating conclusion that just peace is apparently primarily a domestic matter for liberal democracies. But the fact that these are in retreat worldwide and are facing major structural crises even in the core of the OECD world is hardly worth discussing in the peace memorandum. At the same time, not even a deterrence system involving nuclear weapons is seen as a burning threat to peace between states - but rather, under certain circumstances, as its necessary prerequisite. The latter must seem almost grotesque to those who remember Dieter Senghaas' (1969) famous characterization of deterrence systems as "organized peacelessness".

However, you don't have to be familiar with the history of peace research to be surprised. This conspicuous proximity to the state is extremely unusual for Protestant peace writings, at least after the Heidelberg Theses of 1959. Consider, for example, that the Protestant Church in the GDR has been consistently distant from and critical of the state on defense issues at least since the introduction of compulsory military service in the GDR in 1962 (Garstecki 2022). But the West German EKD has also been much more critical in the past: in 1981, in the first "peace memorandum" described as such, it refused to follow the West German state in the area of deterrence and the arms race just two years after the NATO Double-Track Decision. And even the peace memorandum of 2007 can be read as a sometimes very clear criticism of the practice of state military (humanitarian) interventions at the time - from Kosovo to Afghanistan to Iraq. Where has this critical impetus towards the state and its military actions gone?

Finally, an "institutional sociological conjecture": Germany has not had any state churches (since 1918), but church and state are also not completely separated à la French "laïcité" or US "strict separation". Rather, there is a mixed form of separation and cooperation, whereby the latter also includes military chaplaincy. Accordingly, the church's public statements also move between these poles of distance and closeness. Perhaps it is not surprising that at the moment when the perception of an external threat to the state becomes politically dominant, the cooperative element becomes much more prominent in the EKD than the elements of separation and independence. At the moment of a (perceived) immediate threat, the church clearly takes the side of the state - even at the cost of major argumentative gaps and massive dissent within the church. It is difficult to say whether the editorial team was aware of the former. The latter certainly was. The Council of the EKD no doubt also made a very conscious decision at the last minute not to call the document "food for thought", as originally intended, but explicitly "Peace Memorandum of the EKD". If this train of thought is correct, this document is above all an exclamation mark from the central organization of the Protestant Churchin Germany in solidarity with "its" state. And the state, in the form of the Foreign Minister, consequently showed itself to be literally "grateful for this (...) clear positioning of the Protestant Church" just days after publication, which in turn was worthy of a prominent announcement by the EKD (EKD 2025).

The whole procedure may have raised the status of the church once again in the eyes of the state in times of its long-term social decline. There are good reasons to doubt whether joining forces in this way actually serves the cause of just peace.