ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses German foreign policy in the late 1990s with a particular view to the country’s contribution to the NATO mission in Kosovo 1999 and the broader context of a changing understanding of sovereignty in world politics. It advances the hermeneutic methodology introduced previously through a focus on personal and collective horizons, especially of members of the German Green Party. The analysis argues that the topos of “Humanity” enabled a re-interpretation of Germany’s foreign policy and for it to ultimately accept military intervention as a means to stop genocide and human suffering. The findings of the chapter speak to debates over the role of sovereignty in world politics and how hermeneutic encounters shape its trajectory.
