FORCE, STATECRAFT AND GERMAN UNITY:

THE STRUGGLE TO ADAPT INSTITUTIONS AND PRACTICES

Edited by Thomas-Durell Young

Strategic Studies Institute

U.S. Army War College

Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania 17013-5244
ii

A Strategic Studies Institute Publication

Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, Carlisle

Barracks, PA 17013-5244, USA

The Strategic Studies Institute, co-located with the U.S.

Army War College, is the strategic level study agent for the

Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans, Department of the

Army. The mission of SSI is to use independent analysis to

conduct strategic studies that develop policy recommendations on:

strategy, planning and policy for joint and combined employment

of military forces; the nature of land warfare; matters affecting

the Army’s future; the concepts, philosophy, and theory of

strategy; and, other issues of importance to the leadership of

the Army.

Unless otherwise noted, SSI publications are not copyrighted

and may be quoted or reprinted without permission. Please give

full publication credit.

Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or

implied herein are solely those of the authors and do not

necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the

Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S.

Government. This publication is cleared for public release;

distribution unlimited.

First printing, December 1996.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Force, statecraft and German unity: the struggle to adapt

institutions and practices / Thomas-Durell Young, editor.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Germany--Military policy. 2. Germany--Foreign relations. 3.

Germany--Politics and government--1990- I. Young, Thomas-Durell.

UA710.F56 1996

355'.033043'09049--dc20 96-1610

CIP

For Earlene
iii

Acknowledgements

This work is the product, in large part, to the efforts and

assistance of the Strategic Outreach Research Program Office of

the U.S. Army War College. Its Director, Colonel John O'Shea, and

its Deputy Director, Major Carl Griffin (and the latter's

successor, Major Lisbon Williams), strongly supported the concept

of bringing together under one title a series of essays

addressing contemporary German statecraft. They were also

instrumental in obtaining financial support for this project from

the Defense Nuclear Agency. I should like to express my sincere

gratitude to Major General Richard H. Chilcoat, Brigadier General

John W. Mountcastle, Colonel Richard H. Witherspoon, Colonel

William Allen, and Dr. Earl J. Tilford, Jr., for their support

and encouragement in this endeavor. Special thanks are due to

Professor Donald Abenheim for his insightful foreword, suggesting

the title for this compendium, and his overall encouragement. Ms.

Marianne Cowling and Lieutenant Colonel Dianne Smith provided

excellent editorial assistance in this project, and Mrs. Kay

Williams was ever helpful throughout the preparation of this

work. Mrs. Mary Jane Semple formatted and composed the text.

Neither this volume, nor the individual essays in it, should

be construed as reflecting the official policy or position of the

Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S.

Government. I alone remain responsible for any errors of fact.

Thomas-Durell Young
iv

Select Glossary

Bundesministerium der Federal Ministry of

Verteidigung (BMVg) Defense

Bundestag Federal Parliament

Bundeswehr Federal Armed Forces

Bundeswehrplanung Federal Armed Forces

Master Planning Document

Christlich-Demokratische Christian Democratic Union

Union (CDU)

Christlich-Sozial Union Christian Social Union

(CSU)

Innere Führung "leadership and civic 

education"

Freie Demokratische Partei Free Democratic Party

(FDP)

Konzeptionelle Leitlinie zur Conceptual Guideline for

Weiterentwicklung der the Future Development of the

Bundeswehr the Federal Armed Forces

Sozialdemokratische Partei Social Democratic Party of

Deutschlands (SPD) Germany

Sonderrolle special role

Sonderweg special way

Staatsbuger im Uniform citizen in uniform

Verteidigungs Defense Policy Guidelines

politische Richtlinien (VPR)
v

FOREWORD

German Statecraft and Arms at the End of the 20th Century

Surely the beginning of this little collection on German

security and defense policy should contain some reflections about

the past, present and future of an issue that excites strong

sentiments and much confusion in the Atlantic world. The

bloodless unification of Germany in 1989-1990 led observers of

Central Europe to recall earlier, yet fundamentally different,

events in 1870-1871. For a generation of Germans raised in the

Borussian school of Prussian-German history (e.g., the historical

works of Heinrich von Treitschke), the unification of the empire

in 1871 was embodied in a heroic canvas by the Prussian

academician and court artist, Anton von Werner. His Proclamation

of the German Reich, set in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles,

France, existed in several versions painted from 1877 until 1885.

The artist depicted the moment in which Chancellor Bismarck had

just finished reading the statement establishing the empire and

the assembled officers and officials respond to the call of the

Grand Duke of Baden for three cheers for the new Emperor William

I. The ensigns behind William lift high the battle flags and

standards of their regiments; the officers and officials beneath

him raise their spiked and plumed helmets and sabers toward the

ceiling as they cheer. As the scholar of German politics and

culture, Peter Paret, writes of this painting in his Art as

History, "unification and the empire were announced in enemy

country, with the ceremonial trappings of war. The new state was

born on the battlefield, a fact and an image that were to remain

powerful in the history of the empire to the day of its

dissolution." Unity in the nineteenth century and the German

statecraft that followed from 1890 until 1945 were joined with

the fortunes of mostly unlucky or downright disastrous

politicians, diplomats and generals. Unity further combined with

the troubled character of military institutions in a rapidly

industrializing society amid a turbulent international system of

states.

The diplomacy of crisis and war that brought Prussian-German

unity-in-arms in 1871 contrasts with the statecraft of the

Federal Republic from its foundation in the spring of 1949 until

the existential crisis of the German Democratic Republic and the

onset of the "Two-plus-Four" negotiations in 1989-1990. The

latter series of events led to whirlwind unification and to

disarmament along the old Atlantic/Warsaw battle lines in Central

Europe.

Most important, however, for the subject of this volume, at

midnight on October 2/3, 1990, soldiers in uniform were nowhere

to be seen in front of the Reichstag as the German black-red-gold

flag was hoisted and Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker
vi

read the new preamble to the German Basic Law amid cheers and

popping champagne corks. Nor did there follow, as the late Erich

Honecker had so often warned in his glory days, a Bundeswehr

victory parade of massed battle standards and military bands

through the Brandenburg Gate and up Unter den Linden along a path

of past victorious Prussian-German armies. All could be thankful

that unity in 1990 had proceeded without a latter-day equivalent

of the battle of Sedan beforehand.

Sadly, however, the dissolution of the Soviet imperium has

brought forth no "perpetual peace," as many had hoped in 1990-

1991. Instead, the reappearance of European warfare has revived

the worst of the 17th and 19th centuries and challenged the

diplomacy of the fin-de-siecle western democracies to adapt

rapidly.

This process of diplomatic, strategic, and indeed

collective-psychological readjustment has affected Germany in

particular, as this volume attests. The future of war and peace

in Europe and the fate of security and defense policy as an

expression of Germany's aspirations in the world system of states

are subjects for those responsible for Germany's statecraft in

parliament, the ministries of government, the political parties,

the press, and the armed forces.

Have the euphoria of unity, the vanishing of Cold War

restraints, and the return of war to Europe all driven the makers

of German external policy to embrace neo-Wilhelmine strivings for

world power? Since 1990, critics deplore what they see as a

"militarization" of German foreign policy, with soldiers playing

far too prominent a role in external affairs--such figures as

General Klaus Naumann loom in their view as a kind of latter day

General Friedrich von Bernhardi (author of the 1912 work, Germany

and the Next War). Or, conversely, has a flaccid and inward

looking Germany, indifferent to its responsibilities and envious

of Swiss neutrality, grown so effete that Atlantic collective

defense teeters on the brink? In the years since 1990 this set of

issues became identified in the public mind with the phrases

"out-of-area" and "Germany's responsibility," with the security

and defense clauses of the German Basic Law, and with "new

mission for the armed forces." All this would have remained quite

abstract to, and remote from, the broad public had not Iraqi

missile barrages at Tel Aviv during the 1991 war and the

televised suffering of millions in the war of Yugoslav succession

startled Germans out of their complacency.

In a 1994 volume of essays on Germany's new foreign

relations from the German Foreign Policy Society, Professor Helga

Haftendorn, an outstanding expert, described the Federal Republic

as a "Gulliver in the middle of Europe." Germany is hemmed in not

only by the immutable circumstances of its geography, namely the
vii

deutsche Mittellage (a situation of "being in the middle" that

now applies to other central European countries, too), but by the

moral and ethical burdens of the past, by their weight on German

political culture, and by the fog of peace that obscures the way

forward for the continent as a whole.

Yet, from the perspective afforded by six years of the new

strategic era, the German Gulliver appears to have freed itself

somewhat from the encumbered state that particularly affected

external policy in, say, 1991-1993. The 1994 Constitutional Court

ruling on the collective security clauses of the Basic Law

(Article 24 versus Article 87a) and the 1995-1996 German

contribution to the NATO Bosnian Implementation Force stand out

in this regard. However halting and incomplete such progress

might seem to hard-boiled American observers of strategy who

desire a more muscular German bearing of the collective defense

burden in its pan-European dimension and beyond, this effort

nonetheless deserves recognition in the United States. Such a

generalization applies especially to members of the U.S. armed

forces, who are likely to read these lines and to have a vital

interest in the subject matter.

One can venture the following historical-political

observation: the evolution of German security and defense policy

since 1989--with its stops and starts--has more or less adhered

to a pattern of making-strategy-in-a-democracy which has been

visible since the beginning of the republic in 1949. In this

regard, the Federal Republic has distinguished itself greatly

from the ill-fated first German republic of 1918-1933, which

never achieved a harmony between the elements of mass politics,

statecraft, and armed force--something, in the end, which eluded

the German Democratic Republic, as well.

The transformation of German defense since 1989 sparked a

great, albeit incomplete, debate in government, society, and the

military (the latter surely apart from neither government nor

society) about power in the state, the efficacy of armed force,

the legacy of war and totalitarianism, and Germany's role in

collective security and collective defense. This process has

resulted in a series of "small steps" (and perhaps a few

missteps) by the Kohl government toward a more "responsible"

security and defense policy, with a reform of the Bundeswehr in

line with new NATO strategy and operations that has been anything

other than a "militarization of German foreign policy." Even

among those skeptical about such changes of arms and the state, a

rough convergence of views has emerged in the society of 1995-

1996 about the necessity for a new German role within United

Nations (UN) collective security and North Atlantic Treaty

Organization/West European Union (NATO/WEU) collective defense.

This generalization applies particularly to certain leading

personalities of the Left.
viii

To be sure, specific circumstances of this strategic debate

after 1989--national unity, the disappearance of the NATO/Warsaw

Pact hosts, reductions in German force structure amid a widening

extra-European strategic horizon, and, most important, a

reappearance of actual warfare--differ from earlier episodes.

This most recent debate about force and statecraft has brought

into play actors in state and society within a general pattern of

domestic strategic interaction, if one can wield such a

cumbersome phrase. This pattern of interaction has been present

at least in four earlier instances. In their sum, these five

episodes characterize Federal German statecraft and strategy

before 1989 and after. This subject in its full dimension is not

fully exhausted by the now popular term "policy of reticence."

The first of these great strategic episodes arose from the

foundation and subsequent armament of the Federal Republic of

Germany in the era 1949-1955. This period corresponded to the

multinational effort to add the "O" (that is, organization) to

the North Atlantic Treaty. The forging of the practices of

Atlantic collective defense marked the first trials of the second

German democracy. The Bonn government avoided the perils that

befell the men and women of Weimar. The Adenauer government

embraced the integration of Federal Germany into the West by

means of a union of policy, arms and society that held up despite

national division, life on the nuclear front line and the weight

of the Nazi past.

Indeed, no sooner had this first, opening phase passed, than

a second period of trial and debate (1956-1961) ensued about the

Anglo-American nuclear strategy of massive retaliation as it

applied to continental Europe and dual-use weapons for the

Bundeswehr. This episode, too, ended without a Weimar-style

parliamentary crack-up with worrisome implications for Federal

Germany's position in Europe. Rather, a kind of national and

international consensus about security emerged from the smoke and

noise at the end of the 1950s. This agreement was only to be

tested yet again by a series of civil-military events in the

1960s that concerned the spirit of the army, the mission of the

Bundeswehr, and aspects of the alliance's nuclear and

conventional strategy of "flexible response." The strategic

interaction of state, society and arms underwent continual

testing from the latter half of the 1970s until the mid-1980s in

strife that resembled rather too closely the first episode of

1949-1955.

A brief third phase of debate surrounding the neutron bomb

struggle of the Carter/Schmidt years (1976-1977) immediately

preceded the fourth instance, where nuclear weapons once again

caused West Germans to reflect and debate their country's role in

Atlantic security. The last great nuclear confrontation of the
ix

Cold War erupted in the late 1970s over NATO Intermediate Nuclear

Forces. This event greatly unsettled Federal Germany, and, in a

fateful way, East German society. The episode ended in the

steadfast solidarity of the West, with the failure of Soviet

nuclear intimidation in the mid-1980s, and with the rise of

enduring, popular opposition in the German Democratic Republic

that bulked large as an agent of change. The full repercussions

of the struggle--the 1988-1989 fight over the Follow-On-To-Lance

missile--were felt in Germany until shortly before unification

itself.

The fifth episode that followed unity has roughly conformed

to the above pattern. The external strategic circumstances, as

delineated above, have surely changed, but the basic questions of

war and peace, of national purpose and conscience, and of the

role of force in policy generally recall the earlier episodes

that have been marked by a great soul-searching, a slow crafting

of democratic consensus, loud protest by dissenters, and the

embrace of multilateral, multinational interest. With certain

exceptions, the groups in a united Germany that pose these

questions and those who proffer an answer display more continuity

with the world before 1989 than they betray some radically new

approach to policy and strategy. Manifestly, all concerned show

none of a neo-Wilhelmine, neo-Tirpitzian or neo-Ludendorffian

longing for world power on the old scale a la 1900; nor is there

visible a neo-Seecktian policy that pits both sides against one

another as in the darker moments of the Weimar Republic. The

debate on new missions for the Bundeswehr since 1990, and the

nature of war and peace in Europe and beyond, has a somewhat

familiar ring to anyone who has reflected on the civil-military

conflicts of the Federal Republic and the making of Atlantic

strategy since 1949.

This generalization should form a source of confidence to

skeptical Americans, who as a rule have little familiarity with

the events described above. Since the early 1960s, too few

American observers of policy have given enough attention to the

workings of diplomacy and strategy amongst the Atlantic

democracies. While such alliance studies enjoyed some pride-ofplace in the first decade and a half of the Soviet-American

antagonism, they were later dwarfed by the superannuated

enterprise of Cold War Moscow numerology. The latter came to

over-value the role of technology, to ignore sources of Western

strength, and to forget that great power competition in the EuroAtlantic realm remains prone to such historical forces as the

role of personality, contingency, and exhaustion. Granted that

the problem of relations amongst the leading democracies has

assumed a centrality in today's collective security and

collective defense in the face of actual warfare, the

contributors to this volume deserve great credit for their

constancy and intelligence in putting these issues of force and
x

statecraft before a wider audience.

Donald Abenheim
1

1

Introduction

Thomas-Durell Young

Since the unification of Germany on October 3, 1990, the

question of how Bonn will conduct its foreign and defense

policies continues to be posited. Gone are the days when Paris

"led" Western Europe and the Federal Republic of Germany tacitly

accepted its supporting role. The Federal Republic now has all

the composite elements to be a Great Power, with the exception of

its own nuclear arsenal. Nonetheless, Bonn possesses the largest

economy and population in Western and Central Europe, and plans

to maintain the largest peacetime military establishment east of

the Bug River. Even if Germany were to eschew any Great Power

ambitions, it no longer has the luxury of denying either to

itself or its allies that it does have important international

responsibilities to which it must be prepared to contribute.

One would expect that given the return of full sovereignty

from the wartime powers to the Federal Republic at unification,

Bonn's foreign policy and defense planning would have changed to

reflect Bonn's new status. In fact, some well-regarded German

analysts have written that Germany is on the path to normalizing

its foreign policy1 (as evinced, some would argue, by the recent

consensus in Bonn to participate in peace support operations

under the aegis of the United Nations).2 Yet, since unification

Bonn's foreign and defense policies have not exhibited a

significantly new independent character. In fact, German

officials have been slow to cast off their cautious approach to

foreign affairs and defense policy.

The Federal Republic continues to insist on formulating its

foreign and defense policies within the confines of the North

Atlantic Alliance and the emerging European Union's Common

Foreign and Security Policy. Simply stated, a closely integrated

approach with its NATO allies when exercising national power (as

has been the case since the founding of the Federal Republic in

1949), continues overwhelmingly to characterize German foreign

and defense policy making. Moreover, Bonn exhibits no indications

of changing its traditional, and at times cumbersome, consensus

policy-making process in security and foreign affairs.3

 At the

same time, German policies and attitudes toward the use of its

national power have slowly changed since 1990, however subtly.

While perhaps a unique example, Bonn's approach toward the

recognition of the republics of Slovenia and Croatia in December

1991 demonstrates that Bonn is capable of pursuing national

policies, which may be at variance with its allies.4

It is this uneven, and at times confusing, record of German
2

foreign and defense policy formulation and policies exhibited

since unification that requires study and reflection. The

intended purpose of the essays included in this compendium is to

address specific aspects of German statecraft and the use of

national power in the post-Cold War era. If there is any

consensus amongst the authors of the essays presented here, it is

that the Federal Republic has yet to come fully to terms with its

new status in Europe and the world. Indeed, the modalities and

approaches to external policy practiced by Bonn often seem

familiarly reminiscent of those of the Federal Republic pre-1989.

By this, among many politicians and officials, one can discern a

residual degree of uncomfortableness in even acknowledging, let

alone dealing effectively with, Germany's new status. The

protracted debate within the Bundestag leading up to the December

1996 decision allowing the Bundeswehr to participate in the NATO

Stabilization Force in Bosnia is a clear manifestation of the

lingering difficulties the Federal Republic faces when addressing

the use of military force.5

The first essay by Franz-Josef Meiers assesses the domestic

political debate in Bonn over the issue of German participation

in "out-of-area" military operations. He provides an informative

survey of German policy prior to unification (its Sonderrolle in

Europe and the North Atlantic Alliance), followed by an

assessment of the events of the early-1990s which transformed the

German debate on security matters. Dr. Meiers next explains, in

detail, Bonn's difficulties in addressing efficiently the

question of participation in UN-sanctioned peace support

operations. Based on his case study, he concludes that Germany is

not yet ready to be a "partner in leadership" due to its lack of

internal political consensus on Germany's future role.

Karl-Heinz Kamp addresses the all-but-ignored issue of

German policy toward nuclear weapons in Europe. That an issue

which so dominated the German domestic political debate for so

long is now largely publicly ignored, is remarkable. The author

first assesses the highly complex history of German nuclear

policy dating back to the 1950s. Dr. Kamp then reviews current

official German views on European initiatives and policies for

nuclear cooperation and identifies possible future German

policies toward nuclear forces in Europe. He concludes that even

if the Federal Republic finds itself without a credible US or

European nuclear deterrent, Bonn would not be likely to develop

nuclear weapons unilaterally. Given the extreme sensitivity in

Germany to military power in general, and nuclear weapons in

particular, Bonn could be expected simply to redefine what

constitutes the necessary basis for a credible deterrent

guarantee.

In my own contribution to this compendium, I address

how the ruling coalition has conducted defense planning. The
3

essay argues that since 1992 the government has undertaken to

restructure the Bundeswehr for new missions, absent a needed

review of the armed forces' bases for legitimacy in German

society. Fundamental to my criticism of the current coalition

government's policies are the problems facing the future

viability of conscription, its role in ensuring the Bundeswehr

remains closely tied to German society, as well as its

implications for current defense planning. In short, the

government's incremental approach toward participation in peace

support operations has not been matched with an equally important

policy of addressing the armed forces' "spiritual" legitimizing

basis in German society. The ensuing result of this failure to

build new consensus is the growing unwillingness on the part of

young men to undertake military service.

Robert Dorff presents an in-depth analysis of the recent

German debate over participation in peace support operations. He

examines the stated policies of the ruling coalition, the

principal influences on policy, and the key political and

institutional actors in the Federal Republic on this issue. Dr.

Dorff concludes that German policy toward, and public support of,

participation in these new military missions have moved Germans

toward an acceptance of the need to undertake such operations.

However, he cautions against reading too much into this

observation. The Bosnian crisis, which has largely forced Bonn

and the German public to decide on participation in such

operations, is somewhat unique (i.e., Bonn's early recognition of

Slovenia and Croatia in 1991 being a contributing factor in

creating the conflict). Given continued German uneasiness in

addressing directly such military missions, Bonn's decision to

join multilateral peace support operations will only occur on a

case by case basis, with full participation by the Bundestag in

reaching consensus for such a decision.

The last essay is a translation from the original German of

Michael J. Inacker's "Macht und Moralität: Uber eine neue

deutsche Sicherheitspolitik" (Power and Morality: On a New German

Security Policy). His message is that Germany can no longer avoid

confronting the fact that, as a sovereign nation, it must begin

to address openly the question of its own national interests and

security objectives. Moreover, as a product of this needed

reflection, Bonn must address concomitantly the need for a

national defense policy. In a word, the Federal Republic's

"singularization" of the Cold War has become a self-imposed

constraint and that must be lifted. An important aspect of this

essay is its forthright admonishment of German officials for not

publicly articulating national interests, as well as

understanding the use of military power. While uncomfortable for

many, particularly readers in Germany, such a reasoned thesis

needs circulation in the non-German-speaking world so as not to

encourage its misunderstanding, which could imply a call for a
4

return to nationalistic atavism. In short German "national

interests" and "patriotism" are not, by definition, inimical to

greater Western values and interests.

From a review of the above précis of these essays, one can

make two general observations concerning Bonn's ongoing attempt

to adapt institutions and practices. First, confusion in German

policy making is clearly a manifestation of officials largely

navigating in a little-known policy milieu. Realpolitik, let

alone Machtpolitik (either as mere terms, let alone as concepts)

are neither freely used in "polite" political discord in Germany,

nor widely contemplated. As a result of a wide-spread political

culture governed by self-restraint, confronting difficult issues

in their proper context has made decision making frequently

complicated and confusing to outside observers. What we are

presently witnessing is a learning period in German external

policy making, with all of its attendant errors. It is an open

question how long this educational process will last or if the

German body politic is prepared for such straight forward

discussion.

Second, perturbations in policy formation are partly a

result of Bonn's approach to foreign and security policies which

remains exclusively defined and expressed by the German

government in the context of the North Atlantic Alliance and the

emerging European Security and Defense Identity.6 Indeed, there

is no sizeable political bloc in the Federal Republic that argues

otherwise. In consequence, there is no evidence that Bonn is

prepared to consider adopting a national approach to national

security.

In sum, German statecraft has the unenviable task of

legitimizing its new national status, not only before its allies

and neighbors, but also before a skeptical German public. Given

the history of statecraft in a unified Germany, this will surely

be a difficult and potentially time-consuming process. To the

Federal Republic's credit, one must recall that, unlike previous

historical experiences, contemporary German democratic traditions

and institutions are universally accepted in Germany, and they

have been tested. Thus, the key challenge to German officials is

to exercise effectively national power, and thereby contribute to

the growing domestic and international legitimacy of Germany's

new status.

Notes

Author's note: I would like to express my sincere gratitude

to Dr. Robert Dorff for his excellent comments made on a draft of

this chapter.

1. See, for example, the essay of Philip H. Gordon, who
5

argues that the process has already begun in the Federal

Republic. Philip H. Gordon, "The Normalization of German Foreign

Policy, Orbis, Vol. 38, No. 2, Spring 1994, p. 241.

2. See Ronald D. Asmus, Germany's Contribution to

Peacekeeping: Issues and Outlook, Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1995,

pp. vii-viii.

3. For an excellent study of this fundamental characteristic

of German foreign and security policy making, see Clay Clemens,

"A Special Kind of Superpower? Germany and the Demilitarization

of Post-Cold War International Security" in Gary Geipel, ed.,

Germany in a new Era, Indianapolis, IN: Hudson Institution, 1993,

pp. 199-240.

4. For background on this issue, with particular emphasis on

the role played in German calculations by internal political

considerations, see Hans-Jurgen Axt, "Hat Genscher Jugoslawien

entzweit? Mythen und Fakten zur Aussenpolitik des vereinten

Deutschlands," Europa-Archiv, Vol. 48, No. 12, June 25, 1993, pp.

351-360.

5. The Washington Post, December 16, 1996.

6. See der Bundesminister der Verteidigung, Verteidigungspolitische Richtlinien, Bonn, November 26, 1992, point 8, pp. 4-

5; Federal Ministry of Defense, White Paper 1994: White Paper on

the Security of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Situation

and Future of the Bundeswehr, Bonn, April 5, 1994, point 312, p.

41.
6

2

GERMANY'S "OUT-OF-AREA" DILEMMA

Franz-Josef Meiers

One of the most contentious issues in the debate over

Germany's new foreign and security policy is how a unified

Germany should define its national interests and its

international role. Germany's changing role within the

traditional Euro-Atlantic base raises the question whether the

Germans are willing to assume a greater international role and to

bear the burden of these new global responsibilities even though

the country lacks a tradition as an exporter of security and has

a strong aversion to military means.

Contrary to the rather optimistic assessment of an "emerging

new consensus in favor of a German military role" that makes

"German participation in future peace support operations as well

as combat operations beyond Germany's borders no longer a

question of whether but 'when, where and how',"1 I will argue

that Germany is still far from being a "normal" international

actor. The public, political parties, and the government are

still uncomfortable with the country's leading international

security role. There is a deep-seated aversion in Germany to

power politics in general and the use of military force in

particular. Politically and psychologically, Germany is not yet

suited to take on the role and the responsibilities placed on it

by its partners and allies. It will take a long time before

Germany reconciles itself to the eventual use of military force

in the post-Cold War world. The 1994 Constitutional Court's

ruling notwithstanding, Germany's geopolitical maturation will be

a domestically controversial process because the Federal Republic

emerged precisely with the aim of abstaining from global

engagement. As the reaction to the war in Bosnia demonstrates,

Germans are still very reluctant to exercise military power in

UN-authorized peacekeeping missions.

The End of Germany's "Sonderrolle"

Post-unification Germany has maintained the foreign and

security policy orientation and principles of the old Federal

Republic, dating back to the 1950s, i.e., firm integration in a

Euro-Atlantic framework. At the same time, unification has left

the country at the center of Europe with the daunting challenge

of defining its new role within these multilateral structures.

The old Federal Republic was more a beneficiary of the Cold War's

global security and stability than a contributor to it. Situated

on the fault line of East-West confrontation, Germany's defence

posture was geared heavily towards Alliance integration and

Soviet containment. Since NATO's principal raison d'etre was the
7

same as West Germany's security goals (protection from the Soviet

threat), Bonn's security policy became synonymous with Alliance

policy. As its security interests were limited to self-defense

within the NATO framework, it lacked a global view of security

policy and did not develop security interests beyond the defence

of its homeland. The Cold War allowed the Federal Republic to

survive in a kind of geopolitical cocoon, sheltered from having

to deal with broader security and geopolitical issues dealt with

by its major allies. Bonn's foreign policy, therefore, was guided

by the notion that the world expected nothing more from it than

to keep a low profile in crises and to remain peaceful.

The end of the Cold War and unification have forced Germany

to rethink basic assumptions that have guided the Federal

Republic's foreign policy for more than four decades. First,

united Germany is no longer the front-line consumer of security.

For united Germany, the end of the Cold War means the end of a

convenient dependence upon others. Because of its economic

strength and geographic position Germany is no longer the

consumer but potentially the major producer of security in

Europe.

Second, the traditional parochial security policy limited to

self-defense no longer complements Germany's commitment to

multilateral security structures. Multilateralism has ceased to

be a pretext for national abstention. Unified Germany has to

define its international role and responsibility in different

terms from that of the pre-1990 Federal Republic.

Third, while Germany's external dependencies have been

decisively reduced, the external demands on it have grown. German

foreign policy is approaching a period in the 1990s in which it

has to accept broader international responsibilities commensurate

with its economic and political weight.2 Thus, Germany has to

prepare itself for 'fair participation'3 in international

affairs. It can no longer play a 'free-rider' role, as President

Roman Herzog pointed out in a speech in Bonn on March 13, 1995,

"Germany belongs to the concert of the great democracies, whether

it likes it or not; and if one of these democracies stands aside,

it is inevitably not only doing harm to the others but in the end

to itself."4

The central message from President Clinton during his Berlin

visit in July 1994 was that Germany should play an active and

constructive role on the world stage. Echoing many of the themes

set out in a speech by his predecessor George Bush in Mainz in

late May 1989, he expects Germany to take on the burdens of this

new leadership role, "I do hope that we will have the benefit of

the full range of Germany's capacities to lead." He said in an

interview, "I do not see how Germany, the third biggest economic

nation in the world, can escape a leadership role . . . [it] has
8

no other choice but to assume a leadership role. Germany cannot

withdraw from its responsibility."5 The US Senate, in a

resolution adopted by 96-1 on 1 February 1994, insisted that

Germany should "participate fully in international efforts to

maintain or to restore international peace and security."6

Several events have seemed to confirm the expectation that

the Bonn Government is prepared to assume a wider German role in

international security affairs:

• The Defense Planning Guidelines of the Bundeswehr

(November 1992)7 and the Defence White Paper (April 1994) define

the main role of the Bundeswehr in crisis and conflict management

situations as going beyond the remit of the present NATO zone.8

• The ruling of the Federal Constitutional Court in

Karlsruhe (July 1994) removed "any constitutional objections" to

German participation in UN authorized peacekeeping and

peacemaking operations. It clarified the constitutional basis for

the participation of Bundeswehr troops above and beyond the

defence of Germany and the NATO area.9

• Chancellor Helmut Kohl, speaking at the final departure of

Allied troops from Berlin in September 1994 said,

We will never forget what our American, British and

French friends have done for us. You, in turn, can rely

on us. Germany will not stand on the sidelines where

peace and freedom in the world are at stake. We Germans

are aware of our responsibility and will fulfil it

alongside our partners.10

• The CDU/CSU/FDP "Coalition Agreement for the 13th

Legislative Period of the German Bundestag" stipulated, "In the

future Germany will, in principle, take part in international

community measures aimed at maintaining world peace and

international security within the scope of collective security

systems."11

The Culture of Restraint

The Constitutional Court ruling of July 1994 freed Germany

from constitutionally mandated military abstention, but it raised

a political dilemma at the same time. Although German troops are

cleared to join international peace missions, the legal ruling

does not necessarily translate into wider political and popular

support in Germany for sending soldiers abroad. The government

must now decide what the Karlsruhe decision means in practical

terms. For whom and with what military means should

responsibility be assumed? Which priorities and national

interests are worth defending in UN-authorized military missions?
9

The irony of the Karlsruhe decision is that it has been greeted

with far more caution within Germany--on both sides of the

political spectrum--than among Germany's allies.

The contentious debate over Germany's new international role

and responsibilities has evolved around two opposing ideas: on

the one hand, the insistence that Germany must accept a

leadership role and on the other, what German Foreign Minister,

Klaus Kinkel, has termed its "culture of restraint", the

reluctance to use military force at all in the pursuit of goals

beyond national self-defense.

The political parties and the public remain very cautious

about the circumstances in which German troops can and will be

used in the future in support of UN peace operations. Kinkel

summed up the deep-seated reluctance of Germans to use force,

the culture of restraint which we displayed in our

foreign and security policy after the Second World War,

must absolutely be kept. There will be no

militarization of German foreign policy: the culture of

restraint will be maintained. Foreign and security

policy normalization does not mean playing the role of

world policeman, it does not mean that German soldiers

will be sent everywhere where it is burning. There will

be no automatism for German participation. Its military

options will remain limited in factual and political

terms.12

As in the past, "Germany should pursue a primarily 'non-military'

foreign policy".13

No other issue demonstrates Germany's enduring military

reticence than the reluctance of the Kohl government to send

German troops to Bosnia. They also reveal deep splits within the

Kohl government, notably between the Foreign Office and the

Defence Ministry, and a lack of consensus among Germany's main

political parties about Germany's military role in the post-Cold

War era.

The Bosnia Dilemma

Only six months after the Karlsruhe ruling the Kohl

government was approached by Supreme Allied Commander Europe

(SACEUR) General George Joulwan to provide troops for the

eventual withdrawal of the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) troops

from Bosnia. The Bosnia issue revealed a cautious use of the newfound freedom by the Kohl government to deploy the Bundeswehr

abroad. The major opposition party, the Social Democratic Party

(SPD), used the Bosnia debate to rule out any Bundeswehr

participation in peace enforcement operations and to propose a
10

highly restrictive policy for a participation of the Bundeswehr

in international peacekeeping operations. Finally, the Bosnia

episode also brought to the surface a widespread apprehension

within the public against the use of military force.

On December 21, 1994, the German government announced that

it would, in principle, be willing to provide German forces if a

NATO evacuation of UN peacekeepers from Bosnia proved necessary.

The Kohl government qualified its pledge by noting that it would

only provide logistical assistance and combat air cover. No

German ground troops would participate in such an operation.14

The dramatic deterioration of the situation in Bosnia since

May of 1995 confronted the Bonn government with a dilemma which

it tried to avoid with its limited diplomatic means: it made

German military engagement in former Yugoslavia inevitable. This

dilemma raised a fundamental question about the ultimate

intention of the Kohl government: is it truly committed to

protecting the withdrawal of allied forces from Bosnia under any

circumstances, or did it accept the commitment only on the

premise that a continued UNPROFOR presence in Bosnia and Croatia

would render its troop offer no more than a promissory note? In

other words, is the real goal of German foreign policy to prevent

a situation emerging in Croatia and Bosnia that would force it to

honor a commitment it never thought would become reality?

The renewed hostilities throughout Bosnia turned the

calculation of the Bonn government upside-down. At a far earlier

moment than envisaged the Kohl government found itself compelled

to pledge military assistance for the regrouping and

reinforcement of the UN blue helmets in Bosnia in order to keep a

more robust UNPROFOR there.15 The government's $240 million plan

includes the transfer of a dozen transport planes and 14 military

jets to the NATO base in Piacenza in northern Italy. A force of

1,000 maintenance crewman, support personnel and pilots

accompanied the aircraft to Italy, while another 500 German

military medical personnel, together with French troops, have set

up a field hospital at the Croatian port of Split. No German

ground troops were sent to Bosnia in support of the UN Reaction

Force.16 In a historic vote, a parliamentary majority approved the

cabinet's decision on June 30, 1995; 386 parliamentarians voted

in favor of the government's proposal, 258 against it and 11

abstained.17

Even though the German electronic combat and reconnaissance

(ECR) Tornados were fully integrated into NATO air forces, the

actual use of German fighter jets was severely restricted by two

important parameters.

First, the mission of German ECR Tornado jets was limited to

secure the restructuring of UN forces in Bosnia and, when
11

necessary, to take out Serb surface-to-air missiles sites if

ordered by the UN and agreed by NATO. German Tornado jets could

not participate in any "muscular" air-strikes against Bosnian

Serb positions or in any other UN-authorized operation like

Operation DENY FLIGHT. The mission was strictly confined "to

protect and assist NATO warplanes flying close air support for

the UN Reaction Force" of French, British and Dutch troops in

Bosnia, as the Bundestag resolution of June 30, 1995 stipulated.

Air Force General Walter Jertz was the government's watchdog in

Piacenza to make sure that the parliament's restrictive condition

was painstakingly observed.18

Second, the strict rules for Germany's first postwar combat

involvement insisted that warplanes "protect and assist" the UN

Reaction Force only when attacked and not when engaged in

offensive operations against a war party, i.e. the Bosnian Serbs,

in retaliation to a provocation. Federal Defense Minister Volker

Ruhe, in a speech to the Bundestag on June 30, 1995, reaffirmed

that German Tornados would "only" be used "if there is an

aggression on the ground, namely an attack against the blue

helmet troops." German Tornados would then "protect" fighter jets

of other nations requested to defend the blue helmets on the

ground. He added, "protection and escalation exclude each

other."19

In addition, the German government was anxious to avoid the

prospects of German aircrews being drawn into more intense

hostilities. German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel warned against

military operations that would make matters only worse. "It is

not so easy to resolve this situation and so we must above all

keep calm," he said.20 When the German Tornado jets arrived in

northern Italy on July 21, 1995, he declared that German fighter

jets would not participate in NATO air strikes aimed at

protecting the UN safe zone of Gorazde. "German Tornados will be

involved in actions of the UN Reaction Force. This could be the

case in Sarajevo."21 The use of German Tornados in air strikes

against Serb positions threatening the UN safe zone of Bihac were

"apparently excluded" as well, an unnamed source in the Federal

Ministry of Defense declared.22 The successful Croatian offensive

in the Kraijna region ended the siege of the UN-designated safe

zone and thus rendered NATO air strikes a remote possibility. As

Kinkel concluded, "NATO has extended the red line to Bihac. It

must be seen if it becomes relevant because the Croats together

with the Bosnians . . . have partly ended the long siege of

Bihac."23

Thus, the narrowly defined circumstances under which German

fighter jets were allowed to participate in NATO-run air raids

raised questions whether they would ever take part in operations

other than "exercises" as Ruhe announced during a visit to the

NATO airbase in northern Italy on August 9, 1995.24 Given the
12

uncertainty surrounding a potential combat mission of German ECR

Tornados in Bosnia, NATO commanders ordered allied fighter jets

to accompany German fighter jets over Bosnia. Given these

restricted circumstances under which Germany ECR Trnados would be

engaged, NATO commanders ordered allied fighter jets to accompany

German fighter jets over Bosnia.25 They would have taken over the

task assigned to the Tornados in case German aircrews had to veer

off for political reasons.26 Coming as no surprise, NATO planners

did not call for German fighter jets to support an extended and

protracted air campaign against Serb military sites across Bosnia

on August 30, 1995. Had NATO commanders asked for ECR Tornados,

Air Force General Jertz would have had no other choice than to

decline such a NATO demand because the mission of NATO fighter

jets was not to protect the UN Reaction Force but to strike

independently against Serb military sites.

The irony of NATO's operation called DELIBERATE FORCE was

that it left the German ECR Tornados with no mission. NATO

fighter jets largely wiped out Serb air defense radars and

surface-to-air-missiles sites in Bosnia--the principle targets of

German ECR Tornados. As Admiral Leighton W. Smith said, "We have

been very effective in reducing the effectiveness of their

integrated air defense systems."27

While public attention was exclusively concentrated on

potential ECR Tornado combat missions, it missed the primary

importance NATO attached to the six reconnaissance Tornados. Two

reconnaissance Tornados, together with three supporting ECR

Tornados, were called by NATO commanders on September 1, 1995, to

fly the country's first combat mission since World War II taking

reconnaissance photos over Serbia, but not firing any shots.

Instead of supporting for the UN Reaction Force, the ECR

Tornados' mission in effect was limited to protecting German

reconnaissance Tornados flying surveillance flights over Bosnia

under combat conditions since August 7, 1995.28

Confronted with the question of whether or not German

ground troops should participate in the peace Implementation

Force (IFOR) under NATO command in Bosnia, the Kohl government

opted for a policy that put quantitative and qualitative

restrictions on any potential German ground involvement in former

Yugoslavia, which, as in the past, emphasized the risk-minimizing

role of German troops. Referring to Germany's historical burden,

Federal Defense Minister Volker Ruhe opposed the dispatch of

German ground combat forces because they would be exposed to

greater risks than troops from other countries. He did not,

however, exclude a supporting role for the Bundeswehr outside of

Bosnia. If a peace implementation force were to be sent to

Bosnia, "Germany will no doubt demonstrate solidarity, but in the

appropriate form." Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel opposed the

dispatch of German ground combat forces to Bosnia as well,
13

although he could conceive of a mission for German transport,

logistical, and engineer units in Bosnia. "We will not say no.

But we will contribute what is possible for us," he said.

On October 24, the Cabinet approved the deployment of about

4,000 logistical, medical and airborne troops in the Bosnian

peace implementation force which would be stationed outside

Bosnia, but could, if necessary, operate within Bosnia. The

troops would be sent for a period of twelve months. Federal

Defense Minister Ruhe characterized the German contribution as

follows, "It is crucial that no German soldiers will be stationed

between the conflicting parties in Bosnia; instead they will

provide the logistical support for NATO troops from the rear. By

that German soldiers will not bear an extra risk and will not

become the problem. Logistically, they will play a decisive role

for NATO."29

Following the recommendations of NATO defense ministers and

the North Atlantic Council, the Kohl government, on November 28,

1995, approved the deployment of 4,000 troops as part of the

60,000-strong multinational peacekeeping force; depending on the

situation on the ground, "additional forces could be provided."

They are largely made up of logistical, medical, engineer, and

transport units, stationed in northern Italy and Croatia. They

would enter Bosnia occasionally to transport the wounded to the

Merna-run hospital near Split and to provide the peacekeeping

troops in the British sector with supplies.

NATO can only make use of German troops on the basis of

bilateral agreements between Bonn and Brussels. The Alliance has

been granted competencies connected with "operational control"

and not with "operational command," which is directly exercised

by the Federal Defense Minister. The German involvement will be

limited to one year. It will not include ground combat missions.30

In response to a remark of General Klaus Naumann who

characterized the Bundeswehr mission in Bosnia as "a combat

mission", Ruhe clarified, "We don't go to war. At issue is the

enforcement of the Dayton peace accord. It is essentially a

logistical task we assume. We will fight when attacked."31

In opposition to the vote on June 30, 1995, there was a

broad consensus among the major political parties about the need

to contribute to NATO's efforts to enforce the Dayton peace

accord in Bosnia. Following a calm debate, the Bundestag, on

December 6, 1995, backed by a large majority the deployment of

4,000 German troops in former Yugoslavia. The government

resolution was carried by 543 of the 656 votes cast.32

The main opposition party in the Bundestag, the SPD, seemed

to have moved in the direction of the government's position on

the participation of German troops in a NATO-led peacekeeping
14

operation in the former Yugoslavia. After a broad majority of the

SPD parliamentarian group had voted against the government's

proposal of sending German troops to former Yugoslavia in support

of the newly set up UN Rapid Reaction Force, SPD deputies began

to reconsider their position.33

The new position was set out in a position paper of the SPD

parliamentarian group entitled "On the Participation of the

Federal Republic of Germany in the Peace Process in Former

Yugoslavia." The paper stated, "The Federal Republic will support

the military enforcement of the peace accord with medical,

engineer, and logistical troops as well as transport and

reconnaissance airplanes. The German units will not be given a

combat mission."34 The paper was an attempt to smooth over the

cracks within the party. By having deliberately excluded the

controversial ECR Tornado issue, the paper left the fundamental

problem unresolved: If and to what extent could military combat

operations become instruments of Germany's foreign and security

policy?35

The eventual comprise formula that allowed SPD

parliamentarians to back the government's position promises to be

more a "rhetorical smoke screen" than a clear answer to the

fundamental question of whether the Bundeswehr can eventually

participate in UN-authorized peace enforcement operations in and

outside of Europe. Instead, the SPD insisted that the role of the

Bundeswehr should be strictly limited to traditional consensual

peacekeeping missions under a clear UN mandate and the

territorial defense of the Federal Republic. It is still opposed

to a move toward German participation in peace enforcement

operations and other non-Article V missions.

Hence, a broad majority within the SPD still embraces the

notion of Germany as a civilian power that could eschew

traditional military power and turn its "culture of restraint"

into a political asset. The position taken by an overwhelming

majority within the SPD in the Bosnia debate is the culminating

point of a process which had started with the dispute over the

deployment of US medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe in the

mid-1980s. It has resulted in a systematic de-legitimation of

central elements of German security policy.36

A more activist role on the world stage also clashes with a

widespread sentiment among the German public that is opposed to

seeing the country ever develop a military role or a power

projection capability again. Major segments of the public harbor

a deep aversion against everything that smacks of power politics

and show a clear preference for non-military instruments of a

civilian power, i.e. for compromise and multilateralism.37 Public

support for an international leadership role is still defined in

terms of "Switzerlandization." Switzerland is the preferred role
15

model for Germany, demonstrating its twin desires to promote the

values of a civilian power and strict military abstinence.38

A recent RAND survey clearly documented both the traditional

narrow view of NATO's purpose and the deep-seated "culture of

restraint" in the German mind. There is still a widespread notion

within the public that the Alliance is designed to protect

Germany against an external threat. While a majority supported

NATO involvement in new crises on Europe's periphery (74 per

cent), more than half of those polled (55 per cent) agreed that

the Bundeswehr's role should remain limited to territorial

defense and that Germany's allies must assume responsibility for

such missions themselves. The public prefers a division of labor

whereby Germany assumes greater responsibility but refrains from

any military involvement other than self-defense, which is left

to the allies, notably the United States. One survey participant

stated, "War is something we leave to the Americans."39

Another nation-wide poll, conducted by "Infratest Burke

Berlin" for the RAND Corporation and the Friedrich-Naumann

Foundation after the October 1994 elections, revealed strong

support (up to 75 per cent) for using military force for

humanitarian and traditional peacekeeping. Support for action

declined, however, when specific scenarios, including combat

missions, were put to Germans. The public and the leadership

support "engagement in principle, but seem to shy away when

presented with involvement in specific scenarios."40 A survey

conducted by "Infratest-Studie" for the Suddeutsche Zeitung in

1995 revealed a clear majority of Germans (63 percent) were still

opposed to the use of military power for any purposes whatsoever.

The results imply that a decision by any government to send

German troops abroad "will meet strong resistance with the

public."41

In sum, the Karlsruhe ruling notwithstanding, the

government, the main political parties and the public remain very

reluctant and reticent when confronted with external demands to

contribute German troops to international peace missions as the

reaction to the war in Bosnia aptly demonstrates. Like the

Clinton administration, the Kohl government tried to satisfy two

audiences with diametrically opposed goals--the NATO allies and

the German public. In the end, the Kohl government restricted

German military engagement in former Yugoslavia in such a way as

to minimize its potential fall-out at home.

In short, neither the Kohl government (which is too

concerned about preserving its diminished power base at home),

nor the SPD (with its strong aversion to power politics and the

use of military), are willing to support the "full participation"

of German forces "in international efforts to maintain or restore

international peace and security,"42 and to reconcile the
16

country's new international responsibilities with a public still

clinging to the notion of a civilian power.

On the Way to Geopolitical Maturation?

Germany's foreign and security policy still has to overcome

a number of structural hurdles at home and abroad if it is to

assume the new international leadership role commensurate with

its political and economic weight as well the expectations of its

allies. The challenge for Germany is to reconcile external

expectations with internal preparedness to accept its changing

international role.

The closer Germany moves toward military involvement, the

more it will be confronted with problems familiar to other

Western governments, i.e., the gnawing questions about exactly

where and when to use its armed forces in out-of-area missions.

Countries that have fewer constraints on their global role, like

the United States, have also been reluctant to use military force

to tackle conflicts confronting the international post-Cold War

agenda. A pattern is emerging in the post-Cold War world where

there is an unwillingness among Western countries to get bogged

down in conflicts where no compelling vital security interests

are at stake.43 Germany shares with its partners, notably the

United States, the problem of having to redefine its foreign

policy priorities at a time when the public is more concerned

about domestic problems.

Three conclusions can be drawn for Germany's future foreign

and security policy:

First, Germany will only assume a larger share of

responsibility for solving international problems and settling

conflicts within the context of Euro-Atlantic integration.

Because of its past history and its geography, Germany can only

act in concert with its partners in NATO and the EU, never alone.

Thus, the normalization of German foreign and security policy,

even half a century after the end of the Second World War, does

not mean that Germany will become similar to France or Great

Britain in the political-military field. "We must find our own

style," Federal Defense Minister Volker Ruhe said when visiting

the German hospital in Split in late August 1995. "We cannot copy

the French or the British."44

Second, Germany's evolving role in international peace

missions follows the position set out by international

organizations, such as the UN, or its partners in the Alliance.

Germany's leadership role is reduced to reactive behavior. It

will be slow to take the initiative and it will only respond to

external demands. If allied governments are hesitant to engage,

Bonn will follow suit. As a corollary, German forces can only
17

participate in UN authorized peace missions in conjunction with

allied forces, never on its own or with non-NATO countries.

 Third, only when the German government feels a higher

purpose is at stake, such as Germany's reliability and

credibility or the cohesiveness of the Alliance, does it feel

compelled to commit German troops for international peacekeeping

missions, but on a quantitatively and qualitatively limited

scale, and only then in a risk-minimizing role, as in the case of

a regrouping of UNPROFOR troops in Bosnia or to support their

possible withdrawal.

Conclusion

United Germany is not a prime candidate for a "partner in

leadership." Neither the Kohl government (which is too concerned

about preserving its diminished power base at home to engage in a

broad discussion about Germany's new military tasks abroad), nor

the SPD opposition (with its strong aversion to power politics

and the use of military force), are prepared to exercise

leadership at home and reconcile the growing external demands

with the deep-seated culture of restraint within broad parts of

the public. The reaction to the inquiries for Bundeswehr

participation by the SACEUR and UN Secretary-General demonstrate

how reluctant and reticent the government and the major

opposition party are when confronted with external demands to

contribute German troops to international peace missions.

Adopting a passive strategic role as during the Cold War

will not be a cost-free policy. It will have serious

ramifications for Germany's foreign and security policy and its

ability to influence its external environment.

• It will diminish Germany's influence within NATO and

relegate it to observer status; "decisions are taken by political

players, not by political observers," as Ruhe observed.45

• It may evoke Germany's "Sonderrolle," which might be

perceived as a return to a historically precarious "Sonderweg,"

reawakening fears amongst its neighbors that Germany is striving

for national independence of action again.46

• It will cast both the political and strategic rationale

for NATO's new role in the post-Cold War world and the deepening

of the EU's integrative processes into question, notably the

development of a common foreign and security policy. A

constructive role played by Germany is essential to the

realization of both ambitious processes.47

In short, Germany's evolving international role will be

exercised in different terms from the parochial "trading state"
18

of the Cold War. The country of 80 million people in the center

of Europe can no longer shy away from the military

responsibilities imposed on it as a normal power.48 This

"normalization" confronts Germany with a double task: to accept

the risks and burdens resulting from these broader tasks, and to

reconcile this activist international role with a public still

clinging to the notion of a civilian power.

The Bonn government can no longer ignore the necessity to

assume a greater share of new international responsibilities

commensurate with its resources and geopolitical position.

Germany's international credibility, reliability and

predictability will suffer seriously if the country remains in a

cocoon and leaves it to its allies to bear the burden and to

accept the sacrifices of making the post-Cold War world safe for

democracy, human rights and peace, the core principles of

Germany's value-oriented foreign policy.

Notes

1. Ronald Asmus, Germany's Contribution to Peacekeeping -

Issues and Outlook, Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1995, pp. viii, xii,

2. Prof. Michael Sturmer, Director of Stiftung Wissenschaft und

Politik, a think tank in Ebenhausen near Munich, concludes, "We

have moved a great deal and I think that this battle (of changing

public attitudes) is almost won." Quoted in Joseph Fitchett,

"Germany Adjusts to New Role for Armed Forces," International

Herald Tribune (Paris), April 3, 1995. See also Philip H. Gordon,

"The Normalization of German Foreign Policy," Orbis, Vol. 38, No.

2, Spring 1994, esp. p. 241; Josef Joffe, "With Its Western

Alliance at Stake, Germany Becomes Responsible," International

Herald Tribune (Paris), December 22, 1994; and, Elizabeth Pond,

"Wer spricht noch vom Schneckentempo?" Die Zeit (Hamburg),

September 15, 1995.

2. See Timothy Garton Ash, "Germany's Choice," Foreign

Affairs, Vol. 73, No. 4, July/August 1994, pp. 72-73.

3. Volker Ruhe, "Shaping Euro-Atlantic Policies: A Grand

Strategy for a New Era," Survival, Vol. 35, No. 2, Summer 1993,

p. 130.

4. See Roman Herzog, "Die Globalisierung der deutschen

Aussenpolitik ist unvermeidlich," Bulletin, No. 20, Bonn: Presseund Informationamt der Bundesregierung, March 15, 1995, p. 162.

5. Suddeutsche Zeitung (Munchen), July 4, 1994.

6. See US Congress, Congressional Record Proceedings and

Debates of the 103d Congress, 2d Session, Cohen Amendment No.

1318, Department of State Authorization Act, Washington, DC: US
19

Government Printing Office, January 31, 1994, pp. S399-S402,

S424-S426.

7. Der Bundesminister der Verteidigung,

Verteidigungspolitische Richtlinien, Bonn, November 26, 1992.

8. See Weissbuch 1994, Bonn, BMVg, 1994, esp. pp. 88-96.

9. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 13, 1994; and, Klaus

Kinkel, "Peacemaking Missions: Germany can now play its part,"

NATO Review, Vol. 42, No. 5, October 1994, p. 3.

10. For the Kohl address see, Europa Archiv, Vol. 49, No.

19, October 10, 1994, D. [Documentation], pp. 562-564.

11. Coalition Agreement for the 13th Legislative Period of

the German Bundestag, Chapter VIII: "European and Foreign Policy,

Security and Defense, Part C. Federal Armed Forces," Bonn,

November 1994.

12. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, April 18, 1994, and July

13, 1994; and Kinkel, "Peacekeeping Missions," p. 4.

13. Wolfgang Ischinger and Rudolf Adam, "Alte Bekenntnisse

verlagen neue Begruendungen," Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,

March 17, 1995. Mr. Ischinger is the new Political Director

within the German Foreign Office and former head of the Planning

Staff; Mr. Adam works for the Planning Staff.

14. For a detailed account see Franz-Josef Meiers, "Germany:

The Reluctant Power," Survival, Vol. 37, No. 3, Autumn 1995, esp.

pp. 85-87.

15. Under pressure of Germany's major allies, France and

Great Britain, the government changed its mind and offered

Bundeswehr troops to protect a regrouping of UN blue helmets in

Bosnia. Days before the government had reaffirmed its original

position to send German troops only to former Yugoslavia to

protect the retreat of UN blue helmets from Bosnia. See

Suddeutsche Zeitung (Munchen), May 30, 1995, and June 1, 1995;

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 2, 1995, June 3, 1995, and

June 9, 1995.

16. Suddeutsche Zeitung (Munchen), June 22, 1995;

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 22, 1995; Neue Zurcher

Zeitung, June 22, 1995; and, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June

27, 1995.

17. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 1, 1995;

International Herald Tribune (Paris), July 1-2, 1995,

"Bundeswehrsoldaten koennen nach Ex-Jugoslavien," Woche im
20

Bundestag, Vol. 25, No. 13, July 5, 1995, p. 53; and, Frankfurter

Allgemeine Zeitung, July 18, 1995.

18. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 27, 1995; Neue

Zurcher Zeitung, June 27, 1995; Suddeutsche Zeitung (Munchen),

July 20, 1995; August 4, 1995; and, August 31, 1995; and,

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 31, 1995.

19. See Deutscher Bundestag, Stenographischer Bericht, 48th

Session, Bonn, June 30, 1995, p. 4000 (B).

20. International Herald Tribune (Paris), July 19, 1995.

21. Suddeutsche Zeitung (Munchen), July 24, 1995.

22. Suddeutsche Zeitung (Munchen), August 2, 1995.

23. See Kölner Stadtanzeiger, August 9, 1995; and,

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 1, 1995.

24. See International Herald Tribune (Paris), August 10,

1995; and, Suddeutsche Zeitung (Munchen), June 17-18, 1995.

25. "NATO Planug fur politische Hindernisse beim Einsatz

deutscher Tornados," Neue Zurcher Zeitung, August 12-13, 1995;

and, "Deutsche wurden nicht angefordert," Suddeutsche Zeitung

(Munchen), August 31, 1995.

26. Neue Zurcher Zeitung, August 12-13, 1995; and,

Suddeutsche Zeitung (Munchen), August 31, 1995.

27. See International Herald Tribune (Paris), September 1,

1995; Suddeutsche Zeitung (Munchen), August 31, 1995; and,

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 31, 1995.

28. See International Herald Tribune (Paris), September 2-3,

1995; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 2, 1995;

Suddeutsche Zeitung (Munchen), September 2-3, 1995; Neue Zurcher

Zeitung, September 2-3, 1995; Le Monde (Paris), September 3-4,

1995; "Peitsche und Zuckerbrot," Der Spiegel (Hamburg), September

4, 1995, esp. pp. 22-23; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 4, 1995; Suddeutsche Zeitung (Munchen), September 4,

1995 and September 5, 1995; and, Neue Zurcher Zeitung, September

5, 1995.

29. See Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, October 25, 1995;

Neue Zurcher Zeitung, October 25, 1995; Le Monde (Paris), October

25, 1995; and, Fernsch- und Hörfunkspiegel Inland I, Press- und

Informationsamt der Bundesregierung, No. 205, Bonn, October 25,

1995, pp. 1-2.
21

30. See Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 29, 1995,

and December 13, 1995; Suddeutsche Zeitung (Munchen), November

29, 1995; and Neue Zurcher Zeitung, November 29, 1995.

31. In a "ZDF" interview General Naumann said, "This is

clearly a military mission. This is a mission based on Chapter

VII of the UN Charter and thereby that what we call a combat

mission." Ruhe qualified the general's assessment as "misleading"

because the NATO-led peacekeeping operation in Bosnia, as opposed

to "Operation DESERT STORM," has been endorsed by all three

conflicting parties. General Bagger, who succeeded General

Naumann in early February 1996, declared that the Balkan mission

would "a priori not be a combat mission." Following Ruhe's

statement, he underlined that German troops would be part of an

international peace force and not a party to the conflict. See

Fernseh-Hörfunkspiegel I, Presse- und Informationsamt der

Bundesregierung, No. 234, Bonn, December 5, 1995, p. 13; and No.

235, December 7, 1995, p. 2; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,

December 6, 1995; and, Neue Zurcher Zeitung, December 22, 1995.

32. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, December 7, 1995,

Suddeutsche Zeitung (Munchen), December 7, 1995; Neue Zurcher

Zeitung, December 5, 1995; and Woche im Bundestag (Bonn), No.

23/1995, p. 49.

33. During the debate in the Bundestag, Gunter Verheugen,

deputy head of the SPD parliamentarian group, accused the Kohl

government of bringing Germany into a "pre-Vietnam situation," in

which the country "could slip ever deeper into the grey zone

between peacekeeping and warfighting." See International Herald

Tribune (Paris), July 1-2, 1995; and Frankfurter Allgemeine

Zeitung, July 26, 1995.

34. "SPD Stimmt Regierungspolitik zu," Frankfurter

Allgemeine Zeitung, October 26, 1995.

35. "Das militärische fortmarginalisiert," Suddeutsche

Zeitung (Munchen), October 26, 1995.

36. See Hartmut Soell, "Die inneren Blockaden bei der SPD,"

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 18, 1995.

37. The term "civilian power" describes a set of foreign

policy roles which includes a general willingness to accept

international interdependence, a strong preference for

multilateral security arrangements, the settlement of conflicts

by negotiation, compromise and mutual adjustment, and a general

orientation towards economic means and goals in external

relations. See Hanns W. Maull, "Germany and Japan: The New

Civilian Powers," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 69, No. 5, Winter

1990/91, pp. 91-106.
22

38. See Peter Meroth, "Den Staat, den wir uns wuenschen,"

Suddeutsche Zeitung Magazine (Munchen), December 16, 1990, p.

8ff.

39. See Ronald Asmus, Germany in Transition: National SelfConfidence and International Reticence, Santa Monica, CA: RAND,

1992; idem, German Strategy and Public Opinion After the Wall

1990-1993, Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1994; and, Hans-Viktor

Hoffmann, Demoskopisches Meinungsbild in Deutschland zur

Sicherheits-und Verteidigungspolitik 1993, Academy of the

Bundeswehr for Information and Communication: Strausberg,

Germany, 1994, esp. pp. 148-156.

40. Ronald Asmus, Germany's Geopolitical Maturation: Public

Opinion and Security Policy in 1994, Santa Monica, CA: RAND,

January 1995, p. 48. For public support of Bundeswehr

participation in a series of hypothetical conflict scenarios

involving specified countries, see pp. 41-46. See as well, idem,

"Kein Kult der Zuruckhaltung mehr," Frankfurter Allgemeine

Zeitung, April 11, 1996; and, idem, "In Germany the Leadership's

Vision Goes Beyond the Border," International Herald Tribune

(Paris), April 14, 1996.

41. See Kurt Kister, "Kriege sollen die anderen Fuhren,"

Suddeutsche Zeitung (Munchen), January 19, 1996.

42. See Cohen Amendment No. 1318 to the State Department

Authorization Act, Congressional Record, January 31, 1994.

43. Stanley Sloan, "From US Deterrence to Self-Deterrence,"

The Christian Science Monitor (Boston), May 3, 1994; and, idem,

The United States and the Use of Force in the Post-Cold War

World: Toward Self-Deterrence?," Washington, DC: Library of

Congress, Congressional Research Service, July 20, 1994.

44. Quoted in Stefan Kornelius, "Die Entdeckung des

Feldherrn," Suddeutsche Zeitung (Munchen), August 30, 1995.

45. Volker Ruhe, "Shaping Euro-Atlantic Policies: A Grand

Strategy for a New Era," Survival, Vol. 35, No. 2, Summer 1993,

p. 130.

46. "Welche Rolle fur Deutschland," Neue Zurcher Zeitung, June 25-26, 1992.

47. Defense Minister Ruhe described Germany's plight as

follows, "There will never be a common foreign and defense

policy, nor a European Defense nor an effective crisis management

policy in the Alliance so long as Germany must regularly note its

reservations regarding the use of force." Volker Ruhe, "Deutsche
23

Sicherheitspolitik vor neuen Aufgaben," Speech before the annual

Kommandeurstagung, Mainz, October 1993, in Bulletin, Press- und

Informationsamt der Bundesregierung, Bonn, October 8, 1993.

48. See Karl Kaiser, "Das vereinigte Deutschland in der

Weltpolitik," in Karl Kaiser and Hanns W. Maull, eds.,

Deutschlands neue Aussenpolitik, Band 1: Grundlagen, Munchen: R.

Oldenbourg Verlag, 1994, esp. pp. 8-14. See also Wilfried von

Bredow and Thomas Jäger, Neue deutsche Aussenpolitik. Nationale

Interessen in internationalen Beziehungen, Opladen, Germany:

Leske + Buderich, 1993, esp. pp. 85-91; and, "Vor einer neuen

deutschen Aussenpolitik," Internationale Politik, Vol. 50, No. 4,

April 1995, esp. pp. 12-21, 26-50.
24

3

GERMANY AND THE FUTURE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN EUROPE

Karl-Heinz Kamp

Notwithstanding the fact that nuclear weapons have lost much

of their relevance in the post Cold War era, they are still the

object of heavy disputes on both sides of the Atlantic. One

central issue is the question whether nuclear weapons should have

a future role at all. The strategic community in the United

States is particularly eloquent in arguing the pros and cons of

nuclear deterrence as a means of maintaining stability in a world

with an increasing number of nuclear players.1 A second dimension

of the current nuclear debate is the problem of how to arrange

nuclear deterrence in the future. This is of particular

importance for the European nuclear and non-nuclear states. The

ongoing process of creating a true European Union, including a

European Security and Defense Identity, will lead sooner or later

to the question of how to integrate the "nuclear element" in a

future European security structure.

Europe's nuclear powers, France and Great Britain, have

already debated on higher political levels the idea of a

coordinated European nuclear defense posture quite frequently.

Since 1989, French officials have brought up the concept of a

European nuclear capability time and again. They have focused

their argument primarily on the necessity to have an alternative

if the United States should reduce its (nuclear) commitments for

the European allies, and also to some extent to prevent Germany

from acquiring nuclear ca pacities of its own.2 Great Britain has

approached the concept of European nuclear cooperation, not as an

alternative to the existing American nuclear umbrella, but as a

supplementary contribution to the overall capacities of the

Western Alliance.3

In July 1993, President François Mitterrand and Prime

Minister John Major announced a decision to make permanent an

Anglo-French Joint Commission on Nuclear Policy and Doctrine, a

body that had been established on a provisional basis the

previous autumn. But the European "nuclear question" is not

limited to Europe's nuclear powers alone. Fundamental changes in

the European security landscape make a broader debate inevitable.

Such a wider discourse has to include the non-nuclear weapons

states as well since the concept of extended deterrence, i.e.,

the nuclear umbrella provided by nuclear powers for their nonnuclear allies, will require some fundamental redefinitions. This

holds particularly true for Germany because no effort to build a

Western European defense identity can disregard Bonn.

In Germany itself, however, nuclear weapons and their role
25

in the framework of a common European defense structure have been

a non-issue, at least since unification in 1990. There has been

hardly any speculation--let alone a substantial debate--on the

future of nuclear forces in European security, neither in the

public, nor in political or academical circles. The few official

statements from the governing parties only point out that

Germany, as a non-nuclear state, will continue to rely heavily on

the nuclear protection by US extended deterrence capacities.4 In

addition, the parliamentary opposition of the Social Democratic

Party (SPD) and Greens is still heading for a nuclear-free world

and, therefore, opposes any concept of nuclear cooperation in

Europe in principle. Not even the 1995 Nonproliferation Treaty

(NPT) extension conference and the question of whether Germany

should opt for an indefinite extension of the NPT, which would

further cement Germany's non-nuclear status, has found

significant interest in the public. In fact, there has been a

broad consensus amongst the major political parties in favor of

an indefinite extension of the nonproliferation regime.5

Such a harmonious decision is surprising for a country,

which had in the mid-sixties expressed more reservations towards

the NPT than any other of the approximately 100 non-nuclear

signatory countries of that treaty. What is even more surprising

is the fact that, at present, hardly any Germans care much about

nuclear weapons: this in a country that had faced bitter nuclear

controversies and public uproar throughout the 1980s. In light of

this present "nuclear apathy," it is hard to discern any evidence

that Germany's allies and neighbors, might sooner or later try to

bolster its political status by striving for a national nuclear

weapons posture.6

These concerns, sometimes expressed in semi-official

political statements, are not only based on the fact that

Germany, as a highly industrialized country, has all the

technical capabilities and skills necessary to manufacture

nuclear weapons, but also on political and historical

considerations.7 Notwithstanding Germany's constant pledges to

stick to its non-nuclear status, Germany's past nuclear policy

always tried to keep the "nuclear option" within a broader

European framework. This had been one major reason for the German

hesitance in joining the nonproliferation regime. No other nonnuclear weapons state had exercised so much influence on the

formulation of the NPT during its negotiation phase. But, this

alleged nuclear ambition did not correspond with the "nuclear

allergy" which became virulent in German society not too long

after the beginning of violent protests against civil nuclear

energy in the 1970s.

German unification could by no means overcome this

ambivalence. Indeed, it even augmented this by creating a

dichotomy of nuclear allegations from abroad and strict nuclear
26

renunciation at home. On the one hand, Germany's newly gained

sovereignty and its growing awareness of increased leverage in

international politics nourished the suspicions of those who were

afraid of a nuclear-armed Germany as the dominating power in

Western Europe.8 But, on the other hand, the integration of 17

million Germans from the former German Democratic Republic,

indoctrinated over decades against (Western) nuclear forces by

communist propaganda, surely increases the overall nuclear

skepticism within the German society.

This essay will consider Germany's possible future "nuclear

policy," particularly with regard to the role of nuclear weapons

in a more integrated Europe. In order to throw light on this

complex and contradictory issue, this article will start with an

analysis of Germany's past nuclear policy. A second section will

deal with the present German views on European nuclear

cooperation. Finally, some hypotheses will be developed on the

future German position toward nuclear forces in Europe.

Germany's Nuclear Policy

Right from its inception as a state, the security of the

Federal Republic of Germany was crucially dependent on the North

Atlantic Alliance and thus primarily on the political, military,

and economic power of the United States of America. The guiding

principle of Western security policy has been the idea of nuclear

deterrence, i.e., the idea of convincing a potential opponent

that the costs of any aggression in terms of nuclear destruction

are likely to exceed any benefits that might follow. But this

concept of nuclear deterrence is plagued by a couple of

inconsistencies and paradoxes, which made it vulnerable to harsh

criticism by its opponents. Most importantly, nuclear deterrence

not only provides the chance of preventing political conflict

from turning into military violence, but it also implies the

possibility of destruction and devastation on a global scale.

Both possible outcomes are opposing sides of the same coin.

 But for Germany, the dilemmas have been even more specific.

On the one hand, the nuclear umbrella of US-extended deterrence

was of paramount importance for West Germany's security, but at

the same time Germany would become a prime nuclear target in any

major East-West campaign. Because of its geostrategic position

any Soviet nuclear strike against the West would have hit Germany

first of all. It was an undeniable fact that even a conventional

war in Europe would have cataclysmic consequences for a highly

industrialized and densely populated country like Germany. This

led to a long held German policy on a strategy of the early and

massive use of nuclear weapons, in spite of all the catastrophic

ramifications of such an option.

Moreover, Germany insisted on a massive American nuclear
27

presence in Europe, including the deployment of a substantial

number of nuclear weapons on German soil, because this was seen

as increasing the credibility of the US nuclear commitment.9 But

at the same time, some observers suspected that US nuclear

weapons might be used to execute "limited nuclear options"

against the Warsaw Pact, with the possible result of a limited

Soviet nuclear retaliation confined to Europe.10 Hence, it

remained unanswerable, whether American nuclear weapons on German

soil were a means of transatlantic coupling, or would have in

fact decoupled American and European security in the sense that

Germany had become the "nuclear playground" for a superpower

conflict.

These contradicting and paradoxical implications of nuclear

deterrence caused somewhat ambivalent reactions on the German

side and led to a two-layered nuclear policy. Given the very

special situation as a divided country, located at the frontline

between East and West in a bipolar world, Germany's nuclear

policy constantly manifested itself in two different strings:

nuclear renunciation on the one hand and the desire for nuclear

participation on the other. The categorical plea to stick to a

non-nuclear status was a logical consequence of Germany's postwar position as a destroyed and occupied country. The constant

request for at least some influence on the nuclear policy of its

allies, however, stemmed from the realization of being the first

victim of a major conflict between NATO and Warsaw Pact.

In the late 1940s it became obvious to the West that the

military challenge of a strong and hostile Soviet Union required

the embedding of a rearmed Germany in a common Western defense

structure. But it was clear, right from the beginning, that any

German military contribution could only be a conventional one.

Not only because there was by far not enough confidence in the

new nation that emerged from the ruins of Nazi-Germany, but also

because the United States at that time tried to retain its

nuclear monopoly as long as possible, and steered a strict course

on nonproliferation. From the very moment the Soviet Union broke

the US nuclear exclusiveness, American efforts of hedging the

spread of nuclear weapons became directed against the European

allies and China.

 In the course of the negotiations on Germany's membership

in NATO, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer made a significant speech at

the London Nine Powers Conference in October 1954, stating that

Germany would not produce atomic, biological or chemical weapons

on its territory.11 This was much less an expression of intentions

than a mere description of facts, since Germany had no realistic

prospects of producing these devices in the following years

anyway. But it was a necessary precondition for Germany's

admission to NATO in May 1955.
28

On closer look, the German plea was a limited one, which

only inhibited the production of atomic weapons in West Germany

and not the possession of these devices in general. That

sophisticated distinction became relevant, when in late 1957,

France suggested Franco-German-Italian nuclear cooperation

including military nuclear research. In the course of these

negotiations, the three partners agreed that a cooperative

production of nuclear weapons on French or Italian soil would not

be barred by existing armament restrictions on Germany. Even when

that project failed in the end, mostly due to French domination

in the triad and American opposition, it was a clear-cut signal

that a German nuclear option was at least theoretically

possible.12

Allied fears of the implications of Germany coming close to

the nuclear "button" were also at stake in the controversy on

NATO's Multilateral Force (MLF), officially suggested by the

United States to NATO in February 1963. For Germany, the American

proposal to create a integrated nuclear structure by assigning

Polaris A-3 nuclear missiles to a multinational NATO fleet opened

two compelling options. First and foremost, the MLF could fasten

the ties between Europe and the United States by bolstering

NATO's cohesion and it might also enhance the credibility of the

US commitments for their Western allies. Second, multinational

nuclear forces could increase German political influence in NATO

and on US nuclear planning procedures.

It is important to note, however, that the goal of gaining

leverage in nuclear matters was seen more as a side effect of the

predominant German interest in solid transatlantic relations

being a crucial precondition for Germany's overall security.13

Some allies, though, notably Great Britain, expressed quite

bluntly their reservations to a German finger close to the

nuclear trigger. This skepticism to Germany "entering the nuclear

club from the back door" seemed to be all the more strange, since

the MLF was originally designed by the United States exactly to

prevent Germany from demanding its own nuclear posture. In any

case, the fact that MLF failed in the end was not the least due

to subliminal objections to a German voice in nuclear matters

among its alliance partners.

The question of the "German nuclear option" also came up

during the German domestic debate on the Nonproliferation Treaty

in the second half of the sixties. Notwithstanding Germany's

support of the idea of nonproliferation in principle, there was

substantial resistance to a American/Soviet/British accord on

limiting the number of nuclear weapons states to the existing

ones. Four major reservations came up against the NPT from

different segments of the German political spectrum:

1) There was general skepticism amongst the Europeans toward
29

any major superpower agreement. Every accord fuelled old and

subliminal anxieties that the United States and the Soviet Union

might come to some tacit arrangement to limit any major East-West

conflict to the European battlefield by deliberately excluding

their own territory.

2) The fact that the NPT aimed at codifying permanently the

inferior status of the nuclear "have nots" led to some

overreactions from some Germans, who misinterpreted the NPT as a

"second Versailles" that would discriminate against Germany--the

third largest industrial power in the world.

3) With regard to its non military implications, the NPT was

hysterically characterized as another "Morgenthau-Plan,"

controlling Germany's nuclear fuel supply and presumably

hampering the German nuclear power industry.14

4) There was some anxiety that a non-proliferation regime

might preclude further European integration which envisaged a

"United States of Europe" requiring the option to set up a

European nuclear posture.

These German concerns, some of them justified, some simply

overinterpreted, were constantly communicated to the US

administration. In the course of the transatlantic debate, some

of these concerns made their way into new drafts of the treaty.

When Germany finally signed the NPT on November 28, 1969, the

German government added a set of clarifications and prerequisites

to the NPT which were not disputed by the other signatory

countries.15 Among other things, Germany stated that it would

expect further protection by NATO, and presumed that the NPT

would not hamper further European integration. This was a clear

hint to the nuclear aspects of European integration, i.e., the

possibility that a United Europe might become a nuclear player.16

With these German amendments it became evident that the

German renunciation of nuclear weapons, albeit undisputed, was

seen as conditional.17 In addition, a German nuclear option, at

least in a European framework, had been retained.18 With regard to

this conditionality it has been frequently argued that German

insistence on the possibility of a European nuclear option was

nothing else but a fig leaf for the hidden desire for a national

nuclear weapons capacity.19

But such a conclusion seems to be inconsistent with the fact

that the so-called "European clause" within the NPT was supported

throughout the political spectrum involved in the ratification

debate in the German Bundestag. It will be difficult, however, to

label former-Federal Chancellor Willy Brand (SPD) and Gerhard

Schröder of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), who was a

former German foreign minister and then chairman of the
30

Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Relations, both of whom

cooperatively drafted the official declaration of the German

government to the NPT and to the European nuclear option, as

proponents of an independent German nuclear force.

Even under the assumption that at least some German

politicians at that time thought in terms of keeping the national

nuclear option open, this view has changed significantly over the

years, particularly because of the anti-nuclear movements

throughout the 1980s. As a result, when Germany, in the course of

the "Two-plus-Four Negotiations" on German unification in 1990,

repeated its pledge to refrain from the production and possession

of weapons of mass destruction, it referred to the conditions

formulated in connection with Germany's adherence to the NPT in

1990 and thereby confirmed the "de jure conditionality" of

Germany's non-nuclear status. There is no doubt, however, that

the 1990 declaration on Germany's nuclear abstinence is much more

restrictive when compared to the statement by Chancellor Konrad

Adenauer more than three decades earlier. While Adenauer asserted

in October 1954 that Germany would not produce ABC-weapons on its

territory (without explicitly excluding the at least theoretical

option to produce nuclear devices elsewhere), the "Two-plus-Four

Formula" states clearly that Germany will neither produce nor

possess nor control nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons.

This leaves hardly any politically realistic legal loophole for

an independent German nuclear force, at least in currently

foreseeable circumstances.

The second string of German nuclear policy, the continuing

German desire for nuclear participation, was a logical

consequence of Germany's perceived position as a potential

nuclear battlefield. The first American nuclear weapons were

deployed in Germany in 1953 without the immediate knowledge of

the German government. But the real "nuclear shock" came for the

German public and for the government just after Germany's

admission to NATO. In 1955 NATO executed the exercise CARTE

BLANCHE in Europe, assuming the detonation of 355 nuclear weapons

on German and French soil. The devastating results were

extensively reported in the German press: 1.7 million people

immediately killed and 3.5 million seriously injured, if the

nuclear use really had been executed.20 For the first time the

German public and decisionmakers were painfully forced to realize

the German nuclear dilemma. Unlike previous German assumptions

that in case of war nearly all of the Western nuclear warheads

were aimed on targets in Eastern Europe or within the Soviet

Union, people realized the horrible dimension of any military

conflict fought with short-range nuclear weapons in Europe.

It is worth noting, however, that the traumatic carte

blanche experience did not lead the Adenauer government to state

a fundamental disapproval of American nuclear weapons on German
31

soil. The reasons for the ongoing support for the

"nuclearization" of Germany (in geographical terms) at least in

the government were manifold. On the one hand, American military

strategy had put more and more emphasis on nuclear weapons, thus

determining the strategies of its European allies. On the other

hand, nuclear weapons promised to provide "more bang for the

buck" for all NATO countries. This was important for a

conventionally armed country like Germany, already facing

tremendous problems to meet NATO's force goals.

The announcement of the "Radford Plan" by the US

Administration in 1956, to reduce US Army troops in Europe and

the United States by 800,000 men due to budgetary reasons

convinced the Europeans, particularly the Germans, of the idea to

replace (costly) manpower by nuclear firepower.21 But this forced

the German public to confront a crude reality: to be endangered

most directly by those weapons which were preferred for political

and economical reasons. For the German public the easiest way out

of such a paradoxical situation was psychologically to repress

the bitter truths of nuclear deterrence.

This nuclear indifference is documented in the fact that

from the end of the 1950s no public protest or criticism against

NATO's nuclear posture came up in Germany for nearly two decades.

This is even more astonishing as Germany constantly had to bear

the brunt of NATO's nuclear strategy. Even in the early 1980s,

the partly violent agitations of the German "Peace Movement"

against the deployment of intermediate nuclear forces were

directed primarily against a comparably small amount of Pershing

II and Cruise Missiles, while thousands of tactical nuclear

weapons continued to be stationed on German soil without causing

much fury. Obviously, most of the critics had not yet understood

the real dimension of nuclear deployments in Germany (or refused

to do so).

But one important and lasting effect of CARTE BLANCHE was

the German insight that it needed to gain influence on US

European nuclear strategy to take any nuclear war, if it should

ever occur, to the aggressor's territory. In the following years

Germany constantly tried to realize two goals with regard to

American nuclear weapons on German soil:

1) To maximum information on the numbers and structure of US

nuclear forces in Germany.

2) To participate broadly in all questions of nuclear

planning and decisionmaking relevant to Germany.

In retrospect, Germany has been quite successful in pursuing

these principles. By setting up the Nuclear Planning Group in

1967, NATO created a forum for transatlantic consultation on
32

nuclear issues.22 What in the beginning might have been regarded

as a sedative for hysterical Europeans, turned out to be a

success story, at least from the German viewpoint. The NPG became

the cornerstone for European nuclear participation and it gained

considerable influence in the evolution of NATO's nuclear

strategy in Europe. This included the development of specific

"Guidelines for Nuclear Consultation" in 1969 and the definition

of detailed procedures for the first use of nuclear weapons and

some clarifications on how to execute follow-on nuclear

operations in the 1970s.23 In each of these steps, the Europeans

were increasingly able to insert their ideas and principles in

the process of strategy evolution. The remarkably obvious

European and German "touch" in the 1986 "General Political

Guidelines" for the use of nuclear weapons in Europe clearly

revealed the substantial influence of the nuclear "have not"

Germany in NATO's nuclear planning.24

Notwithstanding the pro-nuclear stand of large parts of

Germany's political elites in the past, German society is

presently characterized by deeply rooted antinuclear emotions.

What is more, the group of supporters of nuclear deterrence

within the political elites has become smaller. When in 1983

hundreds of thousands were protesting against NATO's "Dual Track"

decision on Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF), a majority of

German policymakers, namely the governing conservative-liberal

coalition, supported the deployment of US nuclear missiles in

Germany and helped to maintain the cohesion of the Western

Alliance. Only a couple of years later, in the debate on the

modernization of NATO's short-range nuclear forces, parts of that

coalition joined the group of nuclear skeptics in Germany and

expressed their concerns in the somewhat silly catchphrase "the

shorter the range, the deader the Germans."

This anti-nuclear mood is not only visible with regard to

military applications of nuclear energy but with respect to nonmilitary nuclear power as well. The 1986 Chernobyl accident has

stirred up the German public more than any other Western country,

and it is currently nearly impossible to get public support for

new civil nuclear reactor programs. One major party in Germany,

the SPD, is publicly arguing in favor of discontinuing the use of

civil nuclear energy.

In sum, the current German position towards nuclear weapons

is quite ambivalent. Unlike for instance in France, where atomic

weapons are admired as a key symbol for national grandeur,

Germany, at best, regards nuclear forces as a necessary evil.

This holds even more true, since the future role of NATO's

nuclear forces in Europe needs to be redefined in the years to

come anyway. In addition, post-war Germany has traditionally held

deep reservations about military power as a political instrument.

To change this attitude will take considerable time, as one can
33

see in the German out-of-area debate, which has been dragging on

for years.

Germany's Views on a European Nuclear Cooperation

To a certain extent, the creation of a European nuclear

deterrence posture lies in the logic of the process of the

European political integration. If the politico-strategic entity

of a true European Union is ever to be achieved, the nuclear

dimension, i.e., the question of how to include the nuclear

forces of France and Great Britain in that respective entity,

must be addressed sooner or later. Interestingly, in spite of the

very dynamics of European integration, which are now already

extending the "Europe of the Twelve" to a "Europe of the

Fifteen,"25 the nuclear question still remains on the backburner.

However, taking on that issue seems to be all the more urgent,

since the nuclear umbrella provided by the United States might

not necessarily be taken for granted by the European members of

NATO. It is particularly the problem of the durability and

solidity of NATO's nuclear deterrence framework which is advanced

by many proponents of a European nuclear cooperation. These

advocates (particularly in France) consider the increasing

renationalization of US nuclear strategy as an unavoidable

consequence of the end of superpower conflict in Europe. In the

wake of these tendencies of an American "nuclear

disentanglement," institutions for exerting a European influence

in NATO's nuclear matters, like the NPG, will increasingly lose

their importance. In perspective, the United States might de

facto (albeit not formally) retract its nuclear commitments to

Europe--a scenario for which the Europeans need to be prepared.

Leaving alone the extremely ambitious and remote scenario of

a fully fleshed out "United States of Europe" with a centralized

structure of political decisionmaking, a nuclear deterrence

arrangement for the European Union is imaginable in at least two

principal ways. The one is based on the concept of extended

nuclear deterrence in a more traditional sense and would have to

include three main features: a European Union system for

political and military consultation on decisions concerning the

use of French and British nuclear weapons; a common European

nuclear strategy and nuclear doctrine; and the possible

deployment of French and British nuclear forces on the territory

of other non-nuclear weapons states of the Union.

The other European deterrence blueprint would be based on

the idea of existential nuclear deterrence, which holds that it

is the mere existence of nuclear weapons itself and not their

specific deployment which provides deterrence. Here, the three

factors (European command and control, nuclear strategy, and

deployment outside Europe's nuclear powers) would be less

relevant than in the traditional model described above, but not
34

totally irrelevant. Some nuclear coordination and cooperation

would suffice to cause a deterrence effect on potential

aggressors. However, both the traditional and the existential

design have in common the fact that in both cases substantial

political commitments by the nuclear weapons states to the

security of European Union, and thereby to non-nuclear powers,

would be crucial in order to be perceived as sufficiently

credible.

It cannot be further discussed which of the two models would

be the more appropriate one for the specific requirements of the

envisaged European Union.26 But for the purpose of this analysis

it is more relevant to ask, why even the quite moderate

existential version of European nuclear cooperation meets with no

response in Germany?27 The already-mentioned increasing tendency

of anti-nuclear moods within German society, combined with the

fact that, unlike in some other nuclear countries, Germany cannot

instrumentalize nuclear weapons for national identity or

political self-consciousness, is only one component in the

complex mesh of possible explanations. At least three other

factors, albeit interrelated, can be extracted.

First, Germany (and most of the other non-nuclear West

European states) has manifested little interest in a joint West

European nuclear deterrent, because of its confidence in US

nuclear capabilities and commitments, which still seems to be

higher than its confidence in British and/or French nuclear

assets and assurances. In that sense, American nuclear guarantees

were always regarded not only as a nuclear umbrella protecting

Europe from atomic destruction or nuclear blackmail, but beyond

that as a cornerstone of US overall commitments for Europe. These

commitments have been visibly documented by the deployment of

American nuclear and conventional forces on European soil.

From that perspective, any European alternative to US

nuclear guarantees would be not only plagued with problems of

credibility, but would also lack the advantage of linking a

superpower to the European security landscape.28 This holds all

the more true since the United States is the only remaining

superpower after the Cold War and since the Europeans are

obviously unable effectively to coordinate a course of action in

the field of security policy.29 From the US point of view, nuclear

commitments for Europe need not necessarily be regarded only as

an "entangling burden."30 They have had also a self-serving effect

by preserving significant US influence in Alliance matters and by

bolstering American interest in preventing nuclear proliferation.

Credible nuclear guarantees are designed to persuade non-nuclear

allies that aspiring to a nuclear status is unnecessary.31

Second, a contributing factor to Germany's "nuclear apathy"

is the fact that large parts of Germany's political elite seem to
35

consider any wider debate on the future of nuclear weapons as

counterproductive to the already shaky acceptance of nuclear

deterrence in general. The governing conservative-liberal

coalition still regards NATO's nuclear posture, extended

deterrence, and the regime of inter-alliance nuclear consultation

as crucial for Western security, even if the Soviet threat has

disappeared. But any new debate on such a disputed issue might

lead to a further erosion of the already fragile German nuclear

consensus. Consequently, the present discretion of German

policymakers in nuclear issues could be described as a "don't

rock the boat" approach that tries to preserve nuclear deterrence

in a era of political unpredictability.

This "low profile" approach is all the more understandable,

since the variety of economic and social problems, more or less

related to German unification, tend to exhaust most of Germany's

political energy and public attention. Pressing economic and

social problems are regarded as much more important than "exotic"

reflections on nuclear weapons in an era in which a direct

military confrontation between major powers has ceased to exist.

It is presently not clear against what types of threats and

dangers Western nuclear deterrence should be directed. On the one

hand, Russia remains as the only power which might be able

significantly to change the present political configuration in

Europe by military means. In that sense, Western nuclear forces

are deemed to counterbalance Russian military power. On the other

hand, Russia is currently far from posing any direct threat

against Western security interests. Instead, at least the present

Russian leadership is trying to follow the path toward reform and

democratization. As regards to nuclear weapons, however, things

might change unexpectedly.32

The third factor is related to the process of European

integration itself. When the Berlin Wall came down and Germany's

neighbors in Eastern and Western Europe realized the perspective

of a unification of the two Germanies, suddenly historical

apprehensions of German dominance and German nationalism

developed again. To dispel these suspicions, Chancellor Helmut

Kohl explicitly pursued a strategy of anchoring German

unification in an increased process of European integration. This

was one of the major motives of the common Franco-German

initiative to complement the envisaged European Economic and

Monetary Union by a second track of creating a European Political

Union, both of which finally led to the Treaty of Maastricht. But

the German desire to prove itself as a "Model European" (and the

French intention to see Germany as firmly embedded as possible in

a European Union) has finally led to a tendency to postpone

critical questions concerning European integration, instead of

debating them.33 Thus, one explanation why the problem of the

future role of French and British nuclear weapons in Europe had

found hardly any resonance in Germany (as well as in other
36

European countries) is that it could not be answered quickly and

that it might have interfered with the ambitious time-tables of

European integration.

Now that support for the European Union has declined

significantly, even in Germany, it seems to be even harder to

find any attention directed toward the European nuclear question.

Differing views on the depth and speed of European integration,

the growing impact of "national interests" in foreign policy

issues, and an eye-catching European impotence in dealing with

security policy matters (e.g., the Gulf War and Bosnia) has

caused a severe sputtering of the European motor. It becomes more

and more apparent that the European Union is crucially lacking a

political identity, and that it has been limited in the past

primarily to an economic substance. Hence, at least in public,

the question of how to integrate nuclear weapons in a common

European foreign and security policy has lost much of its

urgency.

All problems of a European nuclear force, like for instance,

the hypothetical difficulties of devising politically

satisfactory multilateral nuclear control mechanisms among

sovereign governments, do not seem likely to become practical

problems as long as the whole project of a European nuclear

deterrent remains confined to exploratory dialogues between Great

Britain and France.34 Even these bilateral talks seem still to

remain at the surface of the problems of European nuclear

cooperation since the participants, at least for the time being,

appear to be hesitant to go beyond purely exchanging national

views and positions. For the purpose of broader nuclear

cooperation in Europe, it might be imaginable to enclose nonnuclear countries in such a dialogue on European nuclear issues.

With regard to Germany, however, such an option would face two

major obstacles. On the one hand, a German voice in nuclear

matters might fuel the habitual fears among its allies of Germany

coming close to the nuclear trigger. This might, on the other

hand, lead to something like a "preemptive compliance" on the

German side in a sense that Germany will leave nuclear discussion

to its nuclear allies.

Germany and Nuclear Weapons: The Way Ahead

Given that for years to come the US commitment to Europe

appears reasonably credible and reliable, discussions about West

European nuclear deterrent cooperation may remain abstract and

can be deferred to an uncertain future, at least from a German

viewpoint.35 But what if, for whatever reason, the United States

should significantly diminish its engagement in Europe, i.e., by

reducing its conventional military presence down to zero and/or

by the complete withdrawal of its air-launched nuclear forces

presently deployed on European soil on NATO's Dual Capable
37

Aircraft. Would this lead to a "leadership vacuum" in Europe, to

a certain pressure on Germany to fill this gap by assuming a

leadership role in European security, and to "an independent

German nuclear force . . . at the end of this road," as predicted

in a prominent US analysis?36 Would not a withdrawal of all US

forward-based nuclear forces from European soil de facto put an

end to European (German) nuclear participation within NATO? And

would such an essential reduction of German leverage force

Germany to go for a national nuclear capability?

Any evaluation of these questions must necessarily remain

highly speculative since there seem to be too many unknowns in

the equation.37 One thing can be said, however. With respect to

the last consequence of a nuclear capability, present political

trends and historical experiences render such a possibility

extremely unlikely. In light of the present anti-nuclear

tendencies in Germany, combined with the cautious attitude toward

military power in general, the possibility of a majority of

Germans striving for a nuclear weapons capability comes close to

nil.38 It is worth noting that there is not a single voice in the

German political spectrum, not even on its extreme ends on the

right and on the left, arguing for such a decisive step. Instead,

in light of past public debates on extended deterrence in

Germany, another possibility seems to be much more plausible. If

Germany should perceive an impending US disengagement from its

nuclear commitments and, therefore, gets the impression of a

significant decrease of the credibility of the American nuclear

guarantee, it might simply redefine the criteria for that

respective credibility, as it did in the past.

Extended deterrence per se is plagued with a credibility

problem. But credibility, i.e. the question of whether a nonnuclear country believes in the commitments of its nuclear ally,

depends, by definition, on the perception of those under the

nuclear umbrella (and, of course, on the perceptions of the party

being deterred). The non-nuclear allies finally define (or

redefine) whether they regard nuclear insurance as reliable, or

whether they require further formal or informal measures like

other force postures, different nuclear weapons deployment modes,

or additional command and control procedures. For instance, the

deployment of INF in the early 1980s served the purpose

militarily to implement NATO's Selective Employment Plans, but

politically to reassure the European allies of NATO's ability to

hold Soviet territory under risk with European based nuclear

weapons. This was seen as a basic requirement particularly by the

Germans to minimize their credibility problems with regard to US

extended nuclear deterrence capabilities. But when the

superpowers agreed mutually to withdraw their Pershings, Cruise

Missiles, and SS-20s, Germany redefined its conditions for

nuclear credibility, by arguing that the remaining Pershing IA

missiles (with a range below 500 kilometers) would suffice for
38

extended deterrence purposes. When these weapons were also

included in a comprehensive INF Treaty and needed to be

dismantled as well, Germany redefined its criteria for

credibility again by asserting itself that NATO's air-launched

nuclear weapons would be a reasonable symbol for the US nuclear

commitment. If these systems would be also withdrawn, Germany is

likely to go further in its habit of redefining extended

deterrence by stating that the US nuclear umbrella might be

reliable even without American forces deployed on European

territory.

Germany might bank on the fact that the ongoing process of

nuclear reductions in East and West will significantly reduce the

US nuclear vulnerability and will therefore increase the

dependability of the American assurances. Germany might, perhaps,

advocate a concept of "nuclear reconstitution," i.e., the ad hoc

transfer of US nuclear forces to Europe in an emergency case,

even if the deployment of nuclear weapons in Europe in the wake

of a major crisis would be a highly escalatory measure and,

therefore, extremely difficult to implement in reality.39 Such a

more "defensive" German behavior seems to be much more plausible

than any attempt to "go nuclear."

Conclusions

If the preceding analysis of Germany's nuclear policy proves

to be correct, then the perspective of active German

participation in a debate on West-European nuclear cooperation

seems to look rather dim. The author is far from arguing that

such German indifference is desirable, since a fundamental

European nuclear debate cannot be avoided in the longer run

anyway. The future of the nonproliferation regime, the question

of extended nuclear deterrence, and the problems of nuclear

status and nuclear legitimacy need to be addressed in a

comprehensive manner. But, in their present disposition,

political elites and the public in Germany appear to be

disinclined to such a dialogue. It is worth noting that the

perception of nuclear instabilities in the former Soviet Union,

with respect to the disposal of the nuclear legacy of the Cold

War (nuclear smuggling, nuclear terrorism etc.), has raised

public interest in Germany concerning the safe and secure

dismantlement of nuclear forces, but it has not fueled a German

interest in European nuclear cooperation.

Obviously, those who endorse a new nuclear strategy debate

in Europe have to face the fact that Germany, after years of

harsh domestic battles on nuclear issues, now pays much more

attention to a wide spectrum of other questions in the field of

foreign and security policy and to a variety of domestic

problems. However, the positive side effect of the present German

passiveness in the debate on the future of nuclear weapons is
39

that the US nuclear weapons deployed on German soil are no longer

an issue of public uproar or even violent protest. This gives

those in Germany who still believe in the necessity of a nuclear

deterrence capability as a means of insurance in an era of

transition the chance to proceed in their strategy of "don't rock

the boat," and to keep the American nuclear weapons as long as

the political unpredictability, particularly in Russia, remains.

Notes

1. See for instance, Selig S. Harrison, "Make the World Less

Nuclear, With Zero as the Goal," International Herald Tribune

(Paris), February 18, 1995. For the opposing view see Kathleen

Bailey, "Why We Have to Keep the Bomb," The Bulletin of the

Atomic Scientists, Vol. 51, No. 1, January/February 1995, pp. 30-

37.

2. See David S. Yost, "Nuclear Weapons Issues in France," in

John C. Hopkins and Weixing Hu, eds., Strategic Views from the

Second Tier: The Nuclear Weapons Policies of France, Britain, and

China, San Diego: IGCC Publications, 1994, p. 40.

3. See Malcolm Rifkind, "The British Defence Strategy: What

Role for Nuclear Weapons?," Speech delivered at the Department of

War Studies, Kings College, London, November 16, 1993.

4. See for instance, the new party platform of the governing

Christian Democratic Union.

5. In February 1995, a diplomatic initiative by the German

government to convince the still hesitant members of the United

Nations to agree to the indefinite extension of the NPT was

strongly supported by the Social Democratic Opposition. For one

of the few critics of that position, see Uwe Nerlich, Toward a

New Nuclear Weapons Retime, Ebenhausen, Germany: Stiftung

Wissenschaft und Politik, 1993.

6. Indications for these concerns are, for instance, the US

decision not to export even small amounts of weapons-grade

nuclear material for a German research reactor, or the skepticism

on the French and British side when Germany joined the Western

efforts to provide technical assistance for dismantling nuclear

weapons in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

7. There were reports in early 1992 of a leaked draft of a

US Defense Planning Guidance document that implied that Germany

might choose to seek nuclear weapons. See David S. Yost, Western

Europe and Nuclear Weapons, Livermore, CA: Lawrence Livermore

Laboratory, CSTS, 1993, p. 17.

8. At the same time Germany was urged by its allies to leave
40

its "observer status" in world politics and to show more

international responsibility by permitting its armed forces to

take part in combat operations beyond NATO's traditional

boundaries. See Karl-Heinz Kamp, "The German Bundeswehr in Outof-Area Operations: to Engage or Not to Engage," The World Today,

Vol. 49, August-September 1993, p. 165.

9. It should be recalled that it was a German request to the

United States to deploy Pershing II and Cruise Missiles in

Europe, indirectly formulated by Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in his

famous speech at the International Institute of Strategic Studies

in London in 1977. When it came to a US-Soviet agreement on the

withdrawal of these weapons in 1987, it was Germany that was the

most concerned of these nuclear reductions.

10. See Richard Hart Sinnreich, "NATO's Doctrinal Dilemma,"

Orbis, Vol. 19, No. 2, Summer 1975, pp. 46-476.

11. Reprinted in Dokumentation zur Abrustung und Sicherheit

(Documentation on Disarmament and Security), Vol. 1, Bonn:

Siegler, 1966, p. 79.

12. It is worth noting that Great Britain was excluded from

this project. For more details, see Peter Fischer, "Das Projekt

einer trilateralen Nuklearkooperation" (The Project of a

Trilateral Nuclear Cooperation), Historisches Jahrbuch, Munchen:

Alber, 1992, pp. 143-156. See also the memoirs of the former

German Federal Minister of Defense Franz Josef Strauß,

Erinnerungen, Berlin: Siedler, 1989, p. 313.

13. See Robert E. Osgood, The Case for the MLF: A Critical

Evaluation, Washington DC: The Washington Center for Foreign

Policy Research, 1964, p. 37.

14. US Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau proposed a

plan in 1945 for dividing Germany into several small deindustrialized agrarian states. Such a "pastoralization" would,

he argued, prevent Germany from becoming once again a threat for

the United States.

15. Parallel to the signature, the German government

published two documents on the NPT--an official note and a

declaration--in which particular German interpretations of the

NPT were codified. Reprinted in Dokumentation zur Abrustung und

Sicherheit, Vol. 7, pp. 427-428.

16. It is worth noting that a draft version of the German

NPT-declaration mentioned above contained an explicit reference

to the nuclear components of a Western European defense. For

political reasons, this reference was dropped in July 1968 by the

German Inter-Ministerial Working Staff. See Mathias Kuntzel, Bonn
41

& the Bomb, London: Pluto Press 1995, p. 123.

17. See Helga Haftendorn, Abrustungs- und

Entspannungspolitik, Dusseldorf: Bertelsmann, 1974, p. 180.

18. The US administration had assured Germany that an allEuropean federal state would not be bound by the NPT. This was

implicitly stated in the declaration by the Secretary of State,

Dean Rusk, in a Senate hearing on the NPT on July 10, 1968. See

Europa-Archiv, Vol. 25, No. 1, 1970, p. 5.

19. For such an argumentation, see Kuntzel, p. 166.

20. According to a close observer, carte blanche stirred the

German press and the Bundestag more than any previous maneuver

involving nuclear weapons, or any statement on the atomic defense

of Europe. See Hans Speier, German Rearmament and Atomic War, New

York: Row, Peterson & Company, 1957, p. 182.

21. After harsh protest by the American military and by the

European allies, the "Radford Plan" was finally cancelled.

22. See the fundamental study by Paul Buteux, The Politics

of Nuclear Consultation in NATO 1965-1980, Boulder, CO: Westview

Press, 1983.

23. For an authoritative source, see Michael Legge, Theater

Nuclear Weapons and the NATO Strategy of Flexible Response, Santa

Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 1983.

24. See Karl-Heinz Kamp, Die nuklearen Kurzstreckenwaffen

der NATO 1945-1991: Strategie und Politik (NATO's Short Range

Nuclear Forces 1945-1991: Strategy and Politics), Sankt Augustin,

Germany: Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, 1993.

25. According to the results of the referendum of November

1994, Norway will not join the European Union as originally

scheduled.

26. As an advocate of the more existential model, see

Frederic Bozo, "A West European Deterrence Posture: Prospects and

Issues," in Thomas J. Marshall and Jérome Paolini, eds., What

Future for Nuclear Forces in International Security?, Paris:

Institut francais des Relations internationales, 1992, p. 81. For

the traditional view, see Roberto Zadra, "European Integration

and Nuclear Deterrence After the Cold War," Chaillot Papers No.

5, Paris: Institute for Security Studies, Western European Union,

1992, p. 29.

 27. One of the few exceptions: Florian Gerster and Michael

Hennes, "Minimalabschreckung durch die Kernwaffen Englands und
42

Frankreichs" (Minimum Deterrence with France's and Great

Britain's Nuclear Forces), Europaeische Wehrkunde, Vol. 34,

August 1990, p. 443.

28. It was France, now one of the major advocates of a

European nuclear deterrent, that rejected the idea of extended

deterrence right from the beginning. From the French perspective,

nuclear weapons were only suitable to protect the nation which

had the full command and control over the weapons. For decades

the French credo had been the catchphrase "La nucléaire ne se

partage pas." However, there are signs that the French position

is changing.

29. A recent example is the performance of the European

Union in the war in the Balkans which came down to a minimalist

approach as the "lowest common denominator," which has been

limited by and large to humanitarian assistance. See Michael

Brenner, "The EC in Yugoslavia: A Debut Performance," Security

Studies, Vol. 1, No. 4, 1992, p. 586.

30. On this issue, see the fundamental analysis by Robert E.

Osgood, NATO--the Entangling Alliance, Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1962.

31. In that sense, US nuclear commitments, combined with the

nuclear nonproliferation regime, have intended to freeze the

given distribution of nuclear weapons, and firmly and formally to

render NATO into an alliance of nuclear unequals.

32. "Let me remind you that Russia has little prospect of

returning to the kind of conventional force structure that they

had at the height of the Cold War due to the collapse of their

economy and the change in their political situation. It is a less

expensive and less demanding matter for them to return to a much

more aggressive nuclear posture. If something goes wrong in

Russia, it is likely that it is in the nuclear forces area that

we will face the first challenge." John Deutch, former-US Deputy

Secretary of Defense, press conference news release by the Office

of the Deputy Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs,

Washington, DC, September 22, 1994, p. 7.

33. This holds particularly true for Germany, where there

has been hardly any controversy on Germany's European course

between the government and Social Democratic opposition.

34. Yost, Western Europe and Nuclear Weapons, p. 17.

35. It is telling that in the new White Paper of the German

Ministry of Defense, European Nuclear Cooperation is not even

mentioned.
43

36. Johns Hopkins Foreign Policy Institute, The FrancoGerman Corps and the Future of European Security: Implications

for US Policy, Washington DC: Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced

International Studies, 1992, p. 2.

37. One of the "unknowns" is the question whether Germany at

all in the future perceives at least a "residual threat" in

Europe that needs to be contained by nuclear forces. In an

(admittedly most unlikely) scenario of a comprehensive

democratization of the European continent with successful

institutions and structures of collective security, the

importance of the nuclear question would decrease significantly.

If a contrasting long term scenario should materialize, ending up

in a significant increase in nuclear weapons states all around

the globe, the German position toward nuclear weapons and nuclear

deterrence might be completely different. However, this would

require a fundamental change in German perceptions on nuclear

weapons.

38. According to a recent public poll in Germany conducted

by the American RAND Corporation, only 14 percent of the Germans

polled wanted their country to have its own nuclear capability.

See Wall Street Journal, February 16, 1993.

39. As an advocate of that concept see Karl Kaiser, "From

Nuclear Deterrence to Graduated Conflict Control," Survival, Vol.

32, No. 6, November 1990, pp. 483-496.
44

4

DEFENSE PLANNING

AND THE BUNDESWEHR'S NEW SEARCH FOR LEGITIMACY

Thomas-Durell Young

Recent developments would apparently manifest significant

successes for the efforts of the Christian Democratic Union

(CDU)/Christian Socialist Union (CSU)/Free Democratic Party (FDP)

coalition government to reach a greater degree of

"normalization"1 in the defense structures and policy of the

Federal Republic of Germany. Perhaps most significantly, on June

30, 1995, the Bundestag endorsed the government's decision to

send elements of the Bundeswehr to participate in United Nations'

(UN) peace support operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina.2 That this

act followed almost eight months of, at times, partisan debate

which resulted in the end in sizeable support for the government

from defectors from the opposition Social Democratic Party (SPD)

and the Greens, can be assessed as a major development in the

evolution of German defense and foreign policy.

Moreover, the publication in July 1994 of a key defense

planning document, immediately following the decision by the

Constitutional Court which supported the government's contention

that Bundeswehr participation in UN-sponsored peace support

operations was legal,3 outlined the government's plans to

restructure the Bundeswehr for the post-Cold War security

environment.4 These developments evince, according to one wellregarded American observer of German security policy, that a new

"political and strategic rationale for the Bundeswehr has been

embraced" and that a new German attitude has developed toward

fulfilling Bonn's security responsibilities as a member of the

Western Alliance.5 Given that (according to one press report) the

Luftwaffe in August 1995 was involved in combat air operations

over Bosnia-Herzegovina, this thesis would appear to be the

case.6

However, a review of other less well-known and understood

aspects of the ongoing German defense debate could lead to other

conclusions. While fully acknowledging that Bonn has made major

strides in its ability to exercise its reestablished national

sovereignty, significant challenges to transforming the

Bundeswehr remain to be addressed. Specifically, these issues

include continuing problems in effective defense planning and an,

as yet, incomplete political debate and agreement over the future

of conscription.

Closely related to these two problems is a potentially

greater impediment to effective long term German defense

planning: the lack of debate over the need to review the basis of
45

the Bundeswehr, i.e., its institutional legitimacy in German

society. While perhaps seemingly inconsequential to some, in

reality, such a debate is of overwhelming importance for the

Bundeswehr, since its creation and until unification, it was

founded with the sole mission of securing the defense of Germany.

As such, to cite Wolfgang Schlör, ". . . the Bundeswehr has

always been less a manifestation of statehood than a means of

defending against the Soviet threat. With this threat gone, the

very existence of the German military is in question."7

What is disturbing about recent defense plans presented by

Federal Minister of Defense Volker Ruhe, is that the coalition

government has launched what will surely be the most fundamental

restructuring of the Bundeswehr in its short history, to enable

it to participate in peace support operations which it has

heretofore not undertaken. This reorganization is taking place

without the necessary political debate to garner multiparty

support for this ambitious transfiguration of the Bundeswehr.

Rather, the government has followed a slow, incremental policy of

participating in new military missions, while transforming

elements of the armed forces. While perhaps politically prudent,

in the short term, this policy has enabled the government to

avoid addressing two fundamental and sensitive questions closely

tied with this reorganization: the Bundeswehr's institutional

legitimacy and the future of conscription.

This essay will argue that the largest and most modern

allied military force on the European continent is being

restructured, absent political consensus in the Bundestag. In

consequence, given that the Bundeswehr and the military

profession have not enjoyed wide public acceptance in the Federal

Republic,8 German post-Cold War defense planning is being based

upon dubious premises. The purpose of this essay is to assess and

critique post-Cold War German defense planning and examine the

significant domestic political limitations to the Federal

Republic exercising national military power outside its borders.

This holds true both for Bundeswehr participation in peace

support and power projection operations.9

Defense Planning: Prospects and Problems

An initial assessment of current defense planning in the

Federal Republic reveals what appears to be forward thinking and

rational plans for restructuring the Bundeswehr. All but

forgotten are the painful memories of the ill-fated

Bundeswehrplanung 94 (Federal Armed Forces Master Planning

Document).10 Published in December 1992, this master planning

document was envisaged to provide the basis for the post-Cold War

restructuring of the armed forces to a peacetime strength of

370,000 as denoted in the "Two-plus-Four Treaty." Chancellor

Helmut Kohl, however, disavowed this structural plan in February
46

1993, because of publicly acknowledged financial shortfalls (and

a privately-admitted, unanticipated increase in conscientious

objectors) which invalidated many crucial planning assumptions.11

As a result, German defense planning entered into a state of

purgatory from which it truly did not reappear until July 1994.12

Inconsistent government financial and personnel end-strength

guidance complicated long term defense planning after February

1993 (the latter point will be discussed below). Financial

expenditures declined from DM 53.6 billion in 1991 to a projected

DM 48.4 in 1996, which has been further reduced by an additional

DM 1.4 billion for 1997.13 The need for the Bundesministerium der

Verteidigung--BMVg (Federal Ministry of Defense) to expend

sizeable sums of money for capital-intensive projects associated

with unification (i.e., disposal of enormous East German armament

stocks and the need to renovate dilapidated eastern military

facilities) further exacerbated financial planning. Given that

the size of the Bundeswehr fell from approximately 480,000 in

1991 to below 370,000 in 1994, one could argue the logic for

financial reductions. However, a more revealing indicator of this

financial impact upon Bundeswehr planning is the percentage of

capital acquisition in the defense budget, which has dropped from

a Cold War level of 30 percent to a current figure of 21

percent.14

Whereas consistent long term financial guidance has been

lacking, interestingly, conceptual guidance for restructuring the

Bundeswehr has been relatively consistent. Shortly after

unification, the BMVg announced a number of service

reorganization plans, e.g., Heeresstruktur 5 (Army Structural

Plan 5). These plans envisaged shifting resources and personnel

from the traditional emphasis of the Bundeswehr, i.e.,

territorial defense, to the creation of reaction forces. While

the force sizes outlined in these plans essentially became

irrelevant following the demise of Bundeswehrplanung 94, their

conceptual emphases remains very much in effect in their

successor service development plans. In other words, there was

little question that the Bundeswehr would be restructured with

the aim of preparing part of it for new missions outside of the

Central Region, as recognized by the Alliance's New Strategic

Concept.15

Specific policy guidance for this shift in the Bundeswehr's

orientation has been stated in key defense planning documents.

Generally overlooked, but possibly the most influential post-Cold

War defense planning document has been the Verteidigungspolitische Richtlinien--VPR (Defense Policy Guidelines),

published in November 1992.16 These were the first defense policy

guidelines issued by a German government since 1979, and

importantly, they are unclassified. The document is important

because it openly addresses the security policies of a unified
47

Germany and defines German national interests in the post-Cold

War world.17 From a planning perspective, the VPR, therefore,

should constitute the primary document for all subsequent force

structure planning.18 Thus, from the VPR, the Militärpolitische

Zielsetzung (Military Policy Objective), the Bundeswehr

Konzeption (Federal Armed Forces Concept), and finally

Bundeswehrplanung should be developed.19

While broad in scope but short in detail, the key planning

thrust of the VPR is to lay the basis for the future force

structure of the Bundeswehr, particularly the need to raise

reaction forces.20 This force structure guidance was continued in

the much more publicized document, White Paper 1994.21 Reflecting

the evolution in the political debate over the future missions of

the Bundeswehr since the publication of the VPR, the White Paper

explicitly stated the Bundeswehr would participate in peace

support operations under the auspices of the United Nations.22

Information regarding force size are stated only in a broad sense

and little mention is made of the future outlook for main defense

forces.23

Viewing these documents as the conceptual skeleton, the

Konzeptionelle Leitlinie zur Weiterentwicklung der Bundeswehr--

KLL (Conceptual Guideline for the Future Development of the

Federal Armed Forces) constitutes the flesh in terms of detailed

force planning. The KLL provides the government's intentions

concerning the projected strength of the Bundeswehr, the role

that conscription will play, and the organization of combat

forces. On the first point, the KLL stated that force planning

would be predicated upon a total force of 340,000.24 To man this

force conscription would be continued. But, the term of service

would be reduced from 12 to 10 months, except for volunteers

choosing to serve in reaction forces, who must agree to serve for

13 months.25 Significantly, the KLL announced that the bulk of the

Bundeswehr would retain its traditional main defense mission, but

specific organizational structure would be finalized later. Fifty

thousand personnel (professionals and volunteer conscripts) would

be slated for service in the reaction forces, consisting of:

Army: 5 1/2 brigades

Air Force: 6 squadrons of attack, air defense, aerial

reconnaissance and dual-capable aircraft; 2 mixed air groundbased air defense units; and, 2 to 3 air transport groups

 Federal Navy: 2 high-sea operational groups.26

The government further clarified its intent on March 15,

1995, with the release of Ressortkonzept zur Anpassung der

Streitkräftestrukturen, der Territorialen Wehrverwaltung und der

Stationierung (Departmental Concept for the Adaptation of the
48

Armed Forces' Structures, Territorial Defense Administration, and

Stationing) which outlined how main defense forces would be

organized.27 This document provided additional force structure

reductions (e.g., under the army's structural plan--Army for New

Tasks--it loses a total of 35 battalions)28 after which the army

will consist of 22 brigades (organized in 7 divisions). However

the army will have the ability to expand to 26 brigades in

crises.29 The Luftwaffe and Bundesmarine were saved from any major

reductions or reorganizations.30

The above précis of post-Cold War German defense planning

outlines the basic structural changes of the Bundeswehr. What is

less widely known and understood is the bureaucratic backdrop

against which these documents were developed. A minor criticism

could be made that these documents did not follow the traditional

form of long-standing planning processes.31 Given the end of the

Cold War and the massive changes the Bundeswehr had to undergo to

adjust itself to the new security environment (and to conform to

NATO force structure changes), a strong argument can be made that

the modalities employed to effect this reorganization and

subsequent results are justifiable. For example, in view of

prevailing financial limitations, it is clear that there are

insufficient funds to field a Bundeswehr of 370,000, as some

officials in the FDP insisted upon maintaining (for unclear

political reasons) in 1994.32 To do so would have produced a

defense force with severe operational limitations and would have

inhibited modernization efforts.33

However, these new planning modalities and results do point

to a less complimentary assessment of the coalition's, or more

specifically Federal Defense Minister Ruhe's, handling of this

affair.34 In effect, the Bundeswehr experienced four major

restructuring and stationing concepts within almost as many

years. These circumstances indicate a lack of far-sighted

planning guidance on the part of the ruling coalition. So severe

were these problems that in 1993 the civilian and military

personnel committee of the Bundeswehr and BMVg sent an open

letter to the Bundestag criticizing chaotic military planning and

failures in senior political leadership.35

The BMVg's senior political leadership also developed these

plans in a vacuum. When details of the KLL (with its

controversial reduction in military service and overall force

structure) were leaked to the press in April 1994,36 a major

political storm erupted within the CDU/CSU/FDP coalition.37 The

sensitive proposal to reduce personnel to 340,000 and

conscription to 10 months had not been discussed in the

coalition, let alone briefed to the Bundestag defense committee.

The issue of the reduction in the term of military service was

not well-received by many CDU/CSU Defense Committee members,

because of their fear that such a reduction would undermine
49

conscription and lead to the creation of a professional army.38

Given the political uproar surrounding the KLL and the

ensuing bureaucratic tempest which struck the BMVg, two important

observations are in order. First, apparently these plans were

developed without the full expertise and assistance from the

responsible division (VI) for force development in the

Central/Joint Staff (Fuhrungsstab der Streitkräfte--Fu S VI).39

Second, and perhaps most significant for this paper, the KLL in

particular was developed in isolation from the Defense Committee

of the Bundestag. The plans, which were eventually and grudgingly

accepted by CDU/CSU/FDP defense experts,40 failed to take into

consideration prevailing political sensitivities over the

continuation of conscription. Given the power that the Bundestag

and its Defense Committee exercise in the defense decision-making

process, that the committee was unaware of the proposals

contained in the KLL is surprising, to say the least.

To summarize, the coalition government has effected a number

of far reaching planning initiatives to change the structure of

the Bundeswehr to meet new post-Cold War missions. However,

inconsistent financial guidance, inter alia, has resulted in

fractured planning guidance. Equally disruptive and less well

understood, has been the inability of the coalition government to

come to closure on the end-strength of the Bundeswehr. To be

sure, this question is dependent upon finances. Nevertheless, the

numerical size of the Bundeswehr is also very much a function of

conscription. And, it is to this political pandora's box that

this essay must next turn.

Staatsburger im Uniform

That there has been an intense debate in the Federal

Republic over the Bundeswehr's potential participation in peace

support operations there can be no disagreement. As Robert Dorff

describes elsewhere in this compendium, the issue of German

participation in these new missions has resulted in a far

reaching debate over a unified Germany's place in the world and

has produced some interesting domestic alignments in the

political constellation of the Bundestag. Yet, while the defense

debates have been heated over the issues of finances and the

ultimate peacetime size of the Bundeswehr, what has been missing

is a discussion on a deeper and more fundamental matter, the

future of conscription and who serves and for how long.

Writing in 1991, Geoffrey Van Orden presciently observed

that "The debate over conscription goes to the heart of the

contemporary German dilemma over the function of the armed

forces."41 In addition to serving as a cost-effective means of

raising manpower, conscription has come to play a pivotal

political role in the Federal Republic. Importantly, it has also
50

served as a crucial legitimizing agent for the Bundeswehr. During

the planning for the creation of a defense force, officials of

the Federal Republic could find no suitable examples in German

history of military institutions serving a democracy which

encouraged emulation.42 The only other army that served a German

democracy, the Reichswehr, did not present a suitable model

because of the fundamentally anti-democratic attitude of its

leadership. Thus, the creation of the first conscript army under

a German democratic government served two key roles: to mitigate

against the Bundeswehr's isolation from German society and,

perhaps most importantly, to ensure that the Bundeswehr would

reflect West German societal values.43

Given Germans' skepticism of previous German military

institutions, gaining acceptance as a legitimate institution in

the Federal Republic has been no easy task. It was decided that

the key to maintaining a close relationship between the

Bundeswehr and German society was for the former to embody the

precept, "Staatsburger im Uniform" (citizen in uniform). Modern

German military reformers (e.g., Generals Ulrich de Maiziere,

Johannes Steinhoff, and Wolf von Baudissin) envisaged that

conscription would play an integral part of what was to become

the institutional spirit of the Bundeswehr: Innere Fuhrung

("leadership and civic education"). By combining the liberal

traditions of German military history and 19th Century Prussian

reformers, Bonn hoped that the Bundeswehr would embody the

institutional spirit of the state, uphold the immutable human

rights of those serving it, and recognize soldiers'

responsibilities to a higher purpose--all in the pursuit of

national defense. In essence, Innere Fuhrung seeks to overcome

the undemocratic traditions and ways of thinking of previous

German militaries.44 Conscription in the Federal Republic,

therefore, has a Janus-like characteristic: the "spiritual"

(geistig), i.e., providing the institution with domestic

legitimacy and public acceptance, and the physical, i.e.,

inexpensive manpower.

Conscription has presented a delicate problem for the German

political debate for a variety of reasons. Fundamentally, it has

never been terribly popular. A public-opinion poll in 1993, for

instance, showed that 66 percent of respondents were in favor of

replacing conscription with a professional army.45 In spite of its

unpopularity with the German public, the principal political

parties in Germany have long shared the view that it is

important, albeit for different reasons. Conservatives supported

conscription because Bonn could meet its collective defense

commitments to its Western allies, whereas Socialists were

assuaged that a large number of conscripts would ensure a strong

and consistent democratic influence over the professional

military. Conscription, or rather national service, has also come

to provide the government with a large pool of inexpensive labor
51

for Germany's large (and expensive) social and health-care

system--yet another compelling political reason for its

continuation.46

Of course, conscription's general unpopularity resulted in

an understanding amongst political parties not to revisit the

issue in public too frequently, out of fear of undermining its

fragile support. For instance, it is not surprising that none of

the principal political parties was anxious to bring up the issue

of the continuation of conscription as a major issue in the fall

1994 federal election campaign. At the same time, one can

cynically question the defense planning imperative of the

coalition government reducing military service from 12 to 10

months, given that Ruhe announced this policy in the KLL only

three months prior to the Federal elections.

From a defense planning perspective, conscription enabled

the creation of a modern military establishment and an extensive

wartime reserve structure, within acceptable financial

limitations. Although during the Cold War the Bundeswehr was

largely perceived as being a "conscript army," in reality

draftees made up only 45 percent of its strength. This required

approximately a 200,000-man annual intake to maintain a force

level of 495,000. Given, for example, a registered cohort of

470,000 in 1990, this did not present an insurmountable

challenge. Unification and a peacetime force level of 370,000 to

be met by 1994, as "mentioned" in the "Two-plus-Four" Treaty,

ended defense officials' immediate problems with sharply

declining demographic trends.48 Indeed, the problem which faced

German defense officials following unification was how to

maintain a viable and equitable system of conscription while

reducing the size of the Bundeswehr (with former East German Army

personnel) from 538,000 to 370,000 by 1994.48

German officials, however, currently face a convergence of

declining demographic trends and a growing disinclination by

young men willing to serve in the Bundeswehr. These two

developments present Bonn with a major problem of maintaining the

Wehrgerechtigkeit (equity in the application of the draft) with

all of its potentially explosive societal implications. The

governing coalition has acknowledged that demographic trends

continue to point downward, bottoming out in 1994 (350,000 19-

year-olds) and not rising to 400,000 until the year 2000.49 In

order to maintain a projected force structure of 340,000, the

government requires an annual intake of 160,000.50 Yet, not all

who are qualified for military service necessarily serve:

currently only 38 percent of those eligible actually undertake

military service.51 Ominously, military service is increasingly

unattractive to young men, according to the Parliamentary Defense

Commissioner (or Ombudsman). In his 1994 report, the Defense

Commissioner found a growing inequity between those who perform
52

military service and those who opt for alternative national

service.52

Not surprisingly, this negative perception of military

service among the public has encouraged an increasing number of

individuals to claim conscientious objector status and perform

alternative national service. Current defense personnel plans of

160,000 conscripts assumes a conscientious objector rate of 28

percent.53 Yet, by early 1995, this rate of conscientious

objectors already has risen to over 30 percent--a tripling over

ten years.54 This trend has led CDU defense expert Klaus Dieter

Reichardt to predict that his own party's defense plan of a

Bundeswehr of 340,000 will soon fall short by 20,000.55 Given

these projections, one can almost predict that the KLL will

repeat the failure of Bundeswehrplanung 94, which was eventually

rejected, in part, due to an unanticipated increase in the number

of conscientious objectors.56 Thus the question needs to be posed:

can current defense plans be fully implemented with a force of

320,000, or will defense planning return to its previous

purgatory.

A Two-Class Army?

One can observe that conscription is losing popularity among

the German public, yet to replace it with a professional army is

not a politically viable option. The creation of a professional

army would severely attack the institutional legitimacy of the

Bundeswehr. Simply put, the Bundeswehr was not created upon the

"spiritual" basis of being a professional military, with all of

its negative connotations to many Germans. From a domestic

political perspective, reorganizing the Bundeswehr is necessary;

otherwise how can its budget, let alone its mere continued

existence, be justified in the post-Cold War Europe?

At the same time, the government is clearly aware of the

need to match its consistent statements stressing its unwavering

adherence to meet its responsibilities to the Atlantic Alliance,

with concrete defense reforms that enable the Bundeswehr to

respond to multilateral peace support and power projection

missions.57 It is little wonder that Federal Defense Minister Ruhe

has consistently stressed the need for the Bundeswehr to develop

reaction forces to be capable of participating in these new postCold War missions in order to maintain Bonn's bona fides with its

allies.

For these compelling domestic political and allied

considerations, defense planning since Bundeswehrplanung 94 has

provided for the creation of reaction forces. At present, the

coalition government envisages the reaction forces to compose

53,600 personnel.58 Although this figure is for the entire

Bundeswehr, this delineation between reaction and main defense
53

forces will be most strongly felt in the army, where five and

one-half out of 22 brigades are designated for these missions. In

consequence, these units will be made up of professionals and

conscripts who volunteer for this duty which requires 15 months

of service.59

Whereas the defense policy objectives of this planning would

appear to make sound sense, the political implications for the

Bundeswehr, and for the fragile national defense consensus which

presently exists, is less encouraging. As currently planned, the

reaction forces (approximately 15 percent of personnel and 25

percent of army brigades) will receive the bulk of new materiél,

funding for training, and the most proficient and motivated NCO

and officers. On the other hand, the bulk of the army will be in

the main defense forces. It will be made up largely of short-term

conscripts and have less funding for training and exercises and,

consequently, lower training standards.60 According to the BMVg,

this deficiency in funding for main defense forces reached the

point in 1994 that they were unable to hold two requisite 7- to

10-day exercises. Insufficient training was noted by the

Parliamentary Defense Commissioner who stated that a lack of

funding was having a severe impact upon motivation and leadership

in the Bundeswehr.61

The Bundeswehr, therefore, is inevitably becoming a twoclass military. The net result of this training shortfall,

according to Florian Gerster, a former SPD defense expert, is

that individual soldiers in main defense units will have little

opportunity to train realistically at the company, let alone

battalion, level.62 As the respected defense corespondent Karl

Feldmeyer noted, conscripts in the Field Army ". . . will be

trained with weapons that are often older than they themselves--

not exactly an experience that inspires confidence" (particularly

in a conscript army). Feldmeyer goes on to speculate that this

will only increase the number of young men unwilling to perform

military service since it is unlikely under these circumstances

that even main defense missions can be accomplished.63 When

combined with the fact that fewer individuals are willing to

perform military service, it is apparent that the Bundeswehr is

increasingly becoming isolated from its tenuous roots in German

society. Indeed, there are indications that German society is

pushing it out.

Reformation of the Bundeswehr's Legitimacy

The obvious question is how has the coalition government

allowed this potentially damaging planning to take place? One

explanation is that defense officials have attempted to meet two

key, but almost mutually-exclusive objectives. First, the

government has agreed to NATO's New Strategic Concept and

concomitant force structure reorganization plans. Therefore,
54

there is a stated national requirement to raise and equip

reaction forces capable of operating outside of the Central

Region, a capability the Bundeswehr has never before been

required to field and, until unification, had never even

considered. Second, CDU/CSU defense experts have argued adamantly

for the continuation of conscription, as well as against Federal

Defense Minister Ruhe's move to reduce the time of service from

12 to 10 months.64 Reducing the length of obligatory military

service, these conservative parliamentarians have argued, only

encourages the declining popularity of serving in the military.65

In short, a major deficiency in defense policy has been the

failure to find an acceptable balance between the need to create

reaction forces, while maintaining sufficient resources and

numbers in the Field Army so as not to undermine further public

support for conscription. From an assessment of events to date,

Ruhe's planning has placed too much emphasis on creating reaction

forces, which has resulted in some unforeseen implications.

One of the prime motivations behind creating reaction forces

in both the Alliance and the Federal Republic was to enable all

nations, but particularly Central Region armed forces, to effect

intra-regional reinforcement of the flanks.66 Following the Oslo

Ministerials in June 1992, the Alliance declared itself prepared

to undertake peace support operations within the political and

legal context of the United Nations.67 As Europe has become

progressively focused on events in the former-Yugoslavia and

Alliance operations there, the allied intra-regional rationale

for reaction forces has been lost in the public debate to that of

peace support missions.

In the case of the Federal Republic of Germany, two

unforeseen problems have developed as a result of the current

focus on peace support operations. First, as observed by Michael

J. Inacker, the legacy of former Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich

Genscher remains strong in the Federal Republic. Over the years

Genscher contributed to ensuring that Bonn's foreign policy is an

"international social policy." Reinforcing this policy

characteristic is what Inacker refers to as the postwar tradition

of "military nonresponsibility," where Bonn reacts not to

national interests, but rather to pressure from its European

partners. The result of this foreign policy "image" is that it

has become fashionable in the Federal Republic to refer to

"humanitarian operations" as a legitimation for the Bundeswehr.68

Yet, there has been no debate over this controversial proposal.

In any case, how one could justify the primary existence of a

military largely on the basis of humanitarian missions,

particularly one that is based on the concept of Staatsburger im

Uniform and conscription, is difficult to grasp.

Second, Federal Minister Ruhe discovered, to his surprise,
55

that the development of a large reaction force created an

unanticipated conflict within the ruling coalition. When UN

Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali visited Bonn in January

1995 seeking a German contribution to the proposed stand-by UN

peace operations formations, Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel

effusively supported the initiative. Ruhe, on the other hand,

opposed the proposal on a variety of grounds, not the least of

which that he felt such a open-ended commitment on the part of

Germany could take the Bundeswehr out of its primary geographic

area of concern, the Euro-Atlantic.69 However, how does one

justify the expense of creating such a large 50,000-man reaction

force if elements of it cannot be earmarked for such peace

support operations? Perhaps Federal Minister Ruhe has come to

understand the potential political liabilities of his

reorganization efforts, which explains his surprise decision in

May 1995 not to pursue building a multirole support ship, which

would be ideal for peace support operations distant from the

Central Region.70 His more recent call for the modernization of

main defense forces may also be an example of his growing

awareness of these problems.71

At the same time, the Federal Republic cannot ignore allied

force structure guidelines and the altered security environment

in order to maintain unchanged the Bundeswehr's original

"spiritual" foundations. The coalition government needs to

initiate a debate in the Bundestag over the future legitimizing

basis of the Bundeswehr in view of its new out-of-area missions

(i.e., not strictly defensive) with a potential for combat.

Whether the current incremental policy of the coalition of

participating in peace support operations, step by small step,

will have the same result is problematic. While this may well

habituate the German public to these types of operations, it does

not address the issue of the Bundeswehr's legitimizing bases.

Hence, it simply is not good enough to argue, as had Chief of

Staff of the Federal Armed Forces General Klaus Naumann, that

Innere Fuhrung "is increasing Bundeswehr soldiers' motivation to

act for the protection of freedom and democracy even beyond

Germany's borders."72 While such an interpretation may ring true

to some,73 the fact that young men increasingly refuse to

undertake military service is indicative of the weakening of the

Bundeswehr's support in German society.

In essence, despite the difficulty of the undertaking, the

simple question "why the Bundeswehr?" has yet to be addressed in

the Federal Republic. Without addressing this fundamental

question, it will be difficult to find a new consensus amongst

the main political parties over the difficult questions of the

future of conscription and alternative national service. Indeed,

only after these questions have been addressed, should the

composition of force structure truly be assessed. Depending upon

the result of this debate, there will then be sufficient guidance
56

for the Bundeswehr to revisit the bases of its societal

legitimacy, thereby enabling it to make the liberal traditions of

Germany's military history applicable in a post-Cold War armed

force.74

Conclusion

As currently framed, the Federal Republic of Germany's

defense reorganization is incomplete. In consequence, it is still

premature to conclude that Bonn has found a new political

consensus concerning the future employment of the Bundeswehr

outside of traditional NATO Article V (defense of NATO territory)

missions. Notwithstanding a variety of government statements on

restructuring the Bundeswehr and German participation in NATO

peace support operations in the former-Yugoslavia, should

projected increases in those unwilling to serve in the Bundeswehr

come to pass, proposed organizational structures could require

substantial revision.

It is indeed this phenomenon of young men opting not to

serve in the Bundeswehr that points to a larger problem, i.e.,

the future viability of conscription. Should the percentage of

conscientious objectors continue to increase, not only will the

current force structure plan outlined by Federal Defense Minister

Ruhe fail, but this new "ohne mich" (without me) movement

reminiscent of the 1950s, will call into question the very basis

of the Bundeswehr and its anchor in German society. But, more

important is the need for reviewing the basis of the Bundeswehr's

legitimacy as an institution, in order to begin its

transformation for post-Cold War military missions and to enable

it to serve the needs of the post-Cold War German state.

Given these serious planning shortcomings and institutional

challenge facing the Bundeswehr, the accuracy of predicting

future German participation in peace support operations, let

alone power projection missions outside of NATO Article V

missions, must be assessed as being problematic. Until such time

as there is a full debate in the Federal Republic over issues

such as conscription and the provision of a new spiritual basis

for the Bundeswehr, accurate predictions of the likelihood of

future German participation in military operations will be

difficult.

Given these severe limitations on the very basis of

potential German national power, one can make two general

observations. First, Bonn has not yet ended completely its

tradition of nonresponsibility in military affairs. The

coalition's incremental approach to defense normalization, which

may be successful in the long run, has allowed Bonn to ignore

growing problems in contemporary defense planning. The fact that

there has been little debate over these fundamental determinants
57

of German defense policy evinces a lingering inability to

confront the need to speak openly and honestly to the German

public of Bonn's new status in Europe. One can only hope that it

does not take a national catharsis, i.e., a German "Vietnam,"

before these shortcomings are addressed and corrected.75

Second, the lack of a debate over defense policy

fundamentals in the Federal Republic should be seen by the

Federal Republic's allies as a crucial indicator of the distance

that Bonn still needs to travel before it has arrived at a new

and stable basis for a post-Cold War Bundeswehr. Thus, there

remains a residual degree of unreliability that will influence

Bonn's ability to participate in either peace support or power

projection missions.

In short, a focus solely on defense planning ignores the

fact that there remains a fragile political consensus within the

Federal Republic over defense policy, and significant elements of

German society are questioning the long-standing legitimacy of

the Bundeswehr. Albeit perhaps impolitic to state as much, it

would appear that sociologist Ulrich Beck's observation that the

Bundeswehr is a "pacifist army in a pacifist society" still

remains to be transcended.

Notes

Author's note: I would like to express my sincere gratitude

to the following individuals for their constructive and

insightful comments made on earlier drafts of this essay: Dr.

William T. Johnsen, Dr. Robert Dorff, LTC Jack Houchouer, USA

(Ret), and David Harding. Donald Abenheim provided considerable

encouragement and assistance. Numerous officials in the BMVg and

serving Bundeswehr officers provided essential assistance while

conducting field work in Bonn.

1. Prior to unification on October 3, 1990, the Federal

Republic of Germany did not possess full sovereignty, nor did it

opt to exercise its full range of national powers. With

unification and the return of its full sovereign powers by the

Four Powers, one refers to the process of Bonn reasserting its

sovereignty, no matter how cautiously, as "normalization."

2. See The Economist (London), July 1, 1995, pp. 39, 42.

3. See The New York Times, July 13, 1994.

4. Bundesministerium der Verteidigung, Informationsstab,

Konzeptionelle Leitlinie zur Weiterentwicklung der Bundeswehr

(henceforth KLL), Bonn, July 20, 1994.

5. ". . . German participation in future peace support
58

operations, as well as combat operations beyond Germany's

borders, is no longer a question of whether but when, where, and

how." See Ronald D. Asmus, Germany's Contribution to

Peacekeeping: Issues and Outlook, Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1995,

pp. vii-viii.

6. See Welt am Sonntag (Hamburg), September 3, 1995.

7. Wolfgang F. Schlör, "German Security Policy: An

Examination of the Trends in German Security Policy in a New

European and Global Context," Adelphi Paper No. 277, London:

International Institute for Strategic Studies, June 1993, p. 18.

8. For example, "A 1992 public-opinion poll revealed that

57% of Germans believe military careers to have a low or rather

low reputation. 50% stated that military officers were not

important or were even superfluous to society." Ibid.

9. For an excellent assessment of German reservations toward

participating in peace support and power projection operations

see, Clay Clemens, "Opportunity or Obligation? Redefining

Germany's Military Role Outside of NATO," Armed Forces and

Society, Vol. 19, No. 2, Winter 1993, pp. 231-251.

10. See Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, December 16, 1992.

11. See The Washington Post, February 6, 1993.

12. Defense officials acknowledged in 1993 that "reliable

and future-oriented planning for the Bundeswehr [is] impossible."

See Die Welt (Hamburg), December 17, 1993, in Foreign Broadcast

Information Service, Daily Report, Western Europe (henceforth

FBIS-WEU)-93-242, December 20, 1993, pp. 26-27.

13. See Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, April 6, 1994; and,

DPA (Hamburg), September 21, 1995 in, FBIS-WEU-95-184-A,

September 22, 1995, pp. 4-5; and, the intereview with Minister

Ruhe in Focus (Munchen), June 10, 1996.

 14. See Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 22, 1995.

15. "The Alliance's New Strategic Concept," Press Communiqué

S-1(91)85, Bruxelles, NATO Press Service, November 7, 1991. For a

précis of the planning objectives of these plans, see my essay,

The "Normalization" of the Federal Republic of Germany's Defense

Structures, Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute,

September 1, 1992, pp. 13-17.

16. Der Bundesminister der Verteidigung,

Verteidigungspolitische Richtlinien (henceforth VPR), Bonn,

November 26, 1992.
59

17. The VPR were not translated into English and analysis of

the document has been limited. For background, see my essay,

"Nationalization or Integration? The Future Direction of German

Defense Policy," Defense Analysis, Vol. 11, No. 2, 1995, pp. 109-

120.

18. In the past, the VPR established a binding basis for

subsequent Bundeswehr planning and force development.

19. Young, "Nationalization or Integration?," p. 112.

20. VPR, point 51, p. 32

21. Federal Ministry of Defense, White Paper 1994: White

Paper on the Security of the Federal Republic of Germany and the

Situation and Future of the Bundeswehr (henceforth White Paper

1994), Bonn, April 5, 1994.

22. Ibid., p. 84.

23. Ibid., pp. 109-110.

24. KLL, p. 9.

25. Ibid., p. 8.

26. Ibid., pp. 6-7.

27. Der Bundesminister der Verteidigung, Ressortkonzept zur

Anpassung der Streitkräftestrukturen, der Territorialen

Wehrverwaltung und der Stationierung, Bonn, March 15, 1995. For

base closures see pp. 15-17. Of political importance, this

document identified which military bases would be closed down in

this reorganization. This information was either not determined,

or not publicly released in the KLL in July 1994, because of the

politically negative implications it would have for the October

federal elections.

28. For information on the restructuring of the army see, Fu

H IV I [Army Staff, Department 4: Organization] "Das deutsche

Heer," Bonn, BMVg, June 12, 1995, particularly points I-V. I am

indebted to Jack Houchouer for providing me with a copy of this

document.

29. Ibid., pp. 6-10.

30. For example, the Bundesmarine in its "Marine 2005"

structural planning concept will lose the organizational level of

squadrons.
60

31. See Fu S VI [Joint/Central Staff, Department VI:

Department of Force Development/NATO Planning Branch], "Armed

Forces Planning and Programming Procedures," Bonn, BMVg, n.d.

 32. See Welt am Sonntag (Hamburg), October 30, 1994.

33. As argued by Generalinspekteur der Bundeswehr, General

Klaus Naumann, Suddeutsche Zeitung (Munchen), April 23-24, 1994.

34. For an overview of the damage this controversy caused

Ruhe, see Focus (Munchen), July 24, 1994.

35. See The Financial Times (London), February 17, 1993.

36. See Welt am Sonntag (Hamburg), April 10, 1995.

37. See Bild (Hamburg), April 18, 1994, in FBIS-WEU-94-075,

April 19, 1994, pp. 7-8.

38. For an assessment of the cold shoulder the KLL received

from the CDU/CDU Defense Group in the Bundestag, see Frankfurter

Allgemeine Zeitung, April 21, 1994.

39. See Suddeutsche Zeitung (Munchen), July 1, 1994; and,

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 1, 1995.

40. It is important to note that Ruhe claims that his

defense restructuring proposals had been outlined in the defense

white paper which had been accepted by the coalition government.

Nonetheless, the April meeting between Ruhe and the CDU/CSU in

Siegen to reach consensus on these matters did not, in the words

of Paul Breuer, CDU/CSU defense policy spokesman, go well. See

Suddeutsche Zeitung (Munchen), April 26, 1994.

41. Geoffrey Van Orden, "The Bundeswehr in Transition,"

Survival, Vol. 33, No. 4, July/August 1991, p. 364.

42. For an excellent discussion on the subject of military

institutions in German society and German history, see Gordon A.

Craig, The Germans, New York: Penguin Books, 1982, pp. 237-260.

43. Van Orden, p. 363. For the best overall treatment of the

role of spirit, tradition and conscription in the creation and

development of the Bundeswehr, see Donald Abenheim, Reforging the

Iron Cross: The Search for Tradition in the West German Armed

Forces, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988.

44. See Abenheim, pp. 121-122, 231-255; idem, "The Citizen

in Uniform: Reform and its Critics in the Bundeswehr," in Stephen

Szabo, ed., The West German Armed Forces and Western Defense,

London: Macmillan, 1980; and, Eric Waldman, The Goose Step is
61

Verboten: The German Army Today, New York: The Free Press of

Glencoe, 1964, pp. 62-66, 101-130.

45. See Suddeutsche Zeitung (Munchen), July 11-12, 1993.

46. For an excellent discussion on this point, see Schlör,

p. 19-20.

47. The limit of 370,000 in the Bundeswehr was announced by

officials of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German

Democratic Republic at the Negotiations on Conventional Armed

Forces in Vienna on August 30, 1990 and acknowledged in Article 3

(2) in the "Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to

Germany," Moscow, September 12, 1990.

48. See Van Orden, pp. 363-364.

49. White Paper 1994, p. 93.

50. See KLL, p. 9.

51. See Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 18, 1994.

52. See Welt am Sonntag (Hamburg), May 1, 1994.

53. Klaus Naumann, "Bundeswehr vor neuen Herausforderungen,"

Soldat und Technik, Vol. 38, No. 1, January 1995, p. 14.

54. See Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 18, 1994.

55. See Welt am Sonntag (Hamburg), June 7, 1995.

56. Information provided by German defense officials.

57. "Germany will not enjoy a secure future in peace and

freedom unless we continue to make our contribution, as a member

of the Euro-Atlantic community of shared values with a common

fate, to preventing war and averting dangers and to building a

just and stable international order in which human and minority

rights are effectively protected." See "Foreword by the Federal

Chancellor [Helmut Kohl]," White Paper 1994, p. vi.

58. See DDP/ADN (Berlin), June 14, 1995, FBIS-WEU-95-115,

June 15, 1995, p. 9.

59. KLL, pp. 6-8.

60. See Michael J. Inacker's interview with General Klaus

Naumann in Welt am Sonntag (Hamburg), December 11, 1994.

61. See Die Welt (Berlin), August 27, 1994, in FBIS-WEU-94-
62

167, August 29, 1994, p. 19.

62. See Frankfurter Rundschau, April 6, 1994 in FBIS-WEU-94-

068, April 8, 1994, p. 25.

63. See Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 18, 1994.

64. These officials have been at odds with Ruhe over a

number of key defense issues, but probably not as much as this

one. For a biting assessment of Ruhe's poor working relationship

with his CDU/CSU Parliamentary colleagues, see Focus (Munchen),

July 25, 1994, pp. 18-20.

65. See Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, April 21, 1994.

66. See "The Alliance's New Strategic Concept."

67. See Ministerial Meeting of the North Atlantic Council,

Oslo, June 4, 1992, Press Communiqué M-NAC-1(92)51, Bruxelles,

NATO Press Service, June 4, 1992.

68. See Michael J. Inacker's op-ed piece in The Wall Street

Journal Europe (Bruxelles), July 3, 1995.

69. See Der Spiegel (Hamburg), January 23, 1995, pp. 25-27.

70. See Suddeutsche Zeitung (Munchen), May 3, 1995, in FBISWEU-95-087, May 5, 1995, p. 16.

71. See Volker Ruhe, "Auf dem Weg in eine gesicherte

Zukunft," Das Parlament, No. 36-37, September 1-8, 1995.

72. See Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 8, 1995, in

FBIS-WEU-95-111, June 9, 1995, pp. 18-19.

73. Although the government has acknowledged that the

changing security environment has had a major change in a

serviceman's "self-image," it appears unwilling to initiate a

formal review of Innere Fuhrung with the aim of revising it to

support future missions of the Bundeswehr. See White Paper 1994,

pp. 132 and 133-134.

74. To be sure, such a debate will not be easy. When an

otherwise moderate official such as former SPD federal manager

Gunter Verheugen argues that the SPD should gain public profile

by portraying itself as a party of "peace" (in contrast to the

ruling coalition), one can be assured that finding consensus on

this matter will be difficult. See Suddeutsche Zeitung (Munchen),

July 26, 1995.

75. See The Wall Street Journal Europe (Bruxelles), July 3,
63

1995.
64

5

GERMAN POLICY TOWARD PEACE SUPPORT OPERATIONS

Robert H. Dorff

Few countries were as profoundly affected by the changes in

the post-Cold War international system as the Federal Republic of

Germany. While the overall international trend has been toward

fragmentation and disintegration, with countries like the Soviet

Union and Yugoslavia dissolving, Germany grew larger with

unification. Moreover, the end of the Cold War brought a formal

end to the occupation of Germany by the World War II victors, in

effect restoring full sovereignty to the rehabilitated German

state. This restored sovereignty combined with the sweeping

changes in Central and Eastern Europe to press the Federal

Republic of Germany very quickly, perhaps too quickly, into the

limelight of international foreign and security affairs.

Germany's geopolitical position, as well as its obvious economic

strength, guaranteed a central role for it in the unfolding

events. The only questions concerned the precise form and nature

of that emerging role.

A central purpose of this collection of essays is to examine

that role, specifically in the context of the emergence of

Germany as a "normal" actor in the post-Cold War international

system.1 Because the re-emergence of a fully sovereign Germany

coincided with the explosion of peace support operations under

the auspices of the United Nations (UN), attention quickly

focused on the role Germany would play in such operations. This

particular chapter addresses the emergence of Germany as a normal

international actor from the perspective of its evolving policies

regarding peace support operations.

The focus on peace support operations is important because

it affects issues related to United States and allied military

operations. Military leaders from these countries need to know

more about what to expect from Germany in future contingencies.

It is also important to the strategic community because it is at

the heart of a perplexing set of issues currently on the

international agenda, namely the kinds of conflicts generating a

need for such operations and the appropriate responses and

requisite capabilities to address them.

In the context of a general examination of German peace

support operations, this essay argues that it is a mistake to

draw sweeping conclusions from the June 1995 Bundestag decision

to contribute to the UN Reaction Force in Bosnia-Hercegovina.

What is occurring in Germany today is a serious and profoundly

difficult debate about its new identity and what the world

expects from it. External forces and events are pushing Germany
65

at a time when its leaders and people would prefer to go much

more slowly. The real world will not allow them that luxury, and

hence we see a policy process that is filled with tensions and

even contradictions. Those outside Germany must understand

something of the mix of external and internal forces at work in

order to understand what to expect from Germany today and in the

near future.

Background

As post-Cold War conflicts began to appear, Germany

initially had an easy answer to the questions about the role it

would play. Its constitution (Grundgesetz or "Basic Law")

prohibited it from actively participating in military operations

outside of Germany and NATO. So while it might contribute a

substantial sum of money in support of the coalition allied

against Saddam Hussein,2 it would not have to debate whether it

should send troops. Yet even then, most observers felt that the

constitutional issue would be rather quickly resolved, at which

time the debate about the new German role in international

security affairs would begin in earnest. And indeed, on July 12,

1994, the German Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe handed down

its ruling that would, in future, allow for the use of the

Bundeswehr in "out-of-area" operations. And, rather than putting

an end to the debate, the Court's ruling was actually the

starting point; now the issues would have to be discussed,

debated, and decided in the domestic political arena without the

protection of a constitutional prohibition on which to fall back.

The issue had been fully joined. What views would the German

government articulate on the use of military force in

international affairs generally and in support of peace

operations specifically?3

The events in Yugoslavia played a significant role in the

debate. Feeling the economic, social, and political effects of

the transformations in Eastern Europe perhaps more acutely than

any other West European country, Germany under Chancellor Helmut

Kohl had moved quickly to articulate its views about the

necessity of expanding Western institutions, such as the European

Union (EU), eastward. Eager to express its support for liberal

international principles such as self-determination, and perhaps

somewhat frustrated by the slowness of its European allies to

respond to the very real threat of massive refugee movements,

Germany was the first to grant formal recognition to Croatia and

Slovenia in December 1991.

A wave of criticism and analysis followed. Was this the sign

of the new, independent Germany? Would it press its foreign

policy desires unilaterally? While in retrospect much of this

debate appears exaggerated and a bit alarmist, the repercussions

for Germany have been apparent. As the crisis in the former
66

Yugoslavia worsened, and the calls for Western intervention

intensified, Germany found it increasingly difficult to hide

behind its constitutional prohibition. If the new Germany was

going to take foreign policy initiatives on its own (so went the

logic at the time), then it would have to become a full partner

in all international affairs, including paying the full costs

(not just financial) of political-military follow-ons to those

initiatives. Whether the Germans wanted to or not, the shroud of

the constitutional prohibition would have to be lifted. It was

not simply a matter of domestic politics; the issue had been

fully internationalized.

Official Policy Statements

Although written prior to the Federal Constitutional Court

ruling of July 1994, the White Paper 1994 contains the most

current and comprehensive official statement of German policy

concerning peace support operations.4 Yet, there is no section

devoted solely to that topic. In fact, there is no chapter or

sub-chapter heading referring to such operations or even to

crisis management. Rather, one finds references to such

operations interwoven throughout the discussions of the

contemporary international situation, the concept of German

security and defense policy, and the role of Germany as a country

firmly committed to, and embedded in, a set of multilateral

security institutions. The search for official German policy on

peace support operations begins with this document.

In their Forewords to the White Paper, Chancellor Helmut

Kohl and Federal Minister of Defense Volker Ruhe both acknowledge

the importance of peace support operations to German security

policy by pointing to the contributions already made by German

forces.5 Both make overt references to the manner in which those

contributions have been received by the international community.

Notably absent is any clear reference to German security

interests served by these operations. Further evidence of the

extent to which the issue of German involvement in such

operations had been internationalized appears throughout the

White Paper, most obviously in the frequency with which it

acknowledges the new and broader role that Germany must play in

international security affairs.6 The language is clear, if not

direct: Germany is "called upon" and "expected to" contribute to

and share in the responsibility.

Yet the regional analyses, as well as important qualifying

language throughout the document, make it clear that German

interests are primarily, if not exclusively, located in Europe.7

Although responding to external pressures to assume greater

international responsibility, German security policy seems to be

laying the groundwork for limiting that responsibility to Europe

and circumscribing the possible range and scope of operations
67

into which the Bundeswehr might be drawn. It is as though Germany

is defining a role for itself as a willing, but not too able,

partner.

This broader tension is evident throughout the document. On

the one hand, rhetoric abounds about the need for more effective

and comprehensive international conflict prevention and crisis

management mechanisms, including the possible use of military

force.8 On the other hand, qualifications about the German role

in such international mechanisms appear with equal regularity. At

times they appear to contradict the argument that Germany will

now play the role it is "called upon" or "expected to" play,

either by limiting that role geographically or in kind.9

Finally, there is an inherent tension in the approach toward

crisis and conflict management and prevention as advocated and

the procedures Germany would employ in arriving at a decision to

participate in peace support operations. The White Paper implies

that Germany would use essentially the same criteria for deciding

as are required for similar Western European Union (WEU)

decisions. This includes provisions that a WEU resolution be

unanimous, and that each member state remain "free to decide on

the basis of its constitution whether or not to participate."10 It

is hard to imagine how such procedures can be used in support of

a crisis management system; timely, decisive action is the

hallmark of successful crisis management, a commodity rendered

virtually unattainable in such a system of individual political

decision-making. Each member will review any proposed action on a

case-by-case basis, and that review will include a full domestic

debate and decision. For Germany, already seeking to set limits

on its contributions, the process almost guarantees that the

Bundeswehr will not be "ordered into action under WEU command"

any time soon.11 By implication, German participation in peace

support operations will occur only after intense public

deliberation.

In sum, the White Paper, as a formal statement of German

policy in regard to peace support operations, contains unresolved

tensions and perhaps contradictions. There is ample

acknowledgement of the changing nature of international conflict

in the post-Cold War world. The proliferation of ethnic and

religious conflict, and its emergence in the form of civil wars

and the collapse of governability, represent increasing threats

to international security and the security of Europe and Germany.

Similarly, the discussions frequently address the need for more

effective systems of conflict and crisis management to deal with

such threats, including the willingness and capability to use

force if necessary. And finally, there is substantial awareness

of the growing expectation that Germany must play a greater role

in, and share the responsibility for, the operations that support

such systems. However, the caution in circumscribing just what
68

that role might be for the Federal Republic of Germany in

general, and the Bundeswehr specifically, seems at times to run

counter to the acknowledgement that Germany must assume its full

share of the responsibilities. Because this document was written

prior to the Federal Constitutional Court decision of 1994, it is

necessary to examine what has happened since that decision was

announced to see if some of the potential tensions have been

resolved or clarified.

The Tornado Controversy

The decision by the Federal Constitutional Court was

announced on July 12, 1994. For supporters of an expanded German

role in international security affairs, the decision represented

a completion of the transition to full sovereignty which was

begun with the unification process and the "Two-plus-Four"

agreement. To others more critical of such a role, the decision

opened the way to a "remilitarization" of German foreign policy.12

Two subsequent developments deserve attention, the first a

general development in the debate about German military

involvement "out-of-area" and the second a specific policy issue

that arose late in 1994.

The general development was already in evidence prior to the

Court's decision, but became more apparent in the months

thereafter. This was the increased use of the "history" argument

against German involvement "out-of-area," especially in the

former Yugoslavia. The argument, expressed simply, is that the

reappearance of the German military would be counterproductive

and potentially disastrous for peace efforts in parts of Europe

occupied by the Wehrmacht during World War II. Initially

referring specifically to the Serbs in the Bosnian crisis,13 this

argument grew and expanded over time. By June 1995, there was a

recognition that this had become for many the substitute for the

constitutional prohibition argument. As one member of the

Bundestag put it, in words used nearly verbatim by a retired

senior Army officer and former member of the Defense Ministry

staff one day later, such an argument would mean that "there

would be virtually no place in all of Europe that the Bundeswehr

could be deployed."14 Although this argument has apparently lost

some of its resonance recently, SPD politician Rudolf Scharping

observed during the June 30, 1995 parliamentary debate on

allowing German combat planes to be sent to Bosnia that ECRTornados with the Iron Cross would only heat up the conflict

rather than diffuse it.15 The reference to the "history" argument

was clear.

The specific policy issue resulted from a request made by

the SACEUR, General George Joulwan, for Luftwaffe Tornados.16 On

November 30, 1994 General Joulwan approached the German

government about providing six electronic combat and
69

reconnaissance Tornados to be used by NATO. The Serbs had a

growing surface-to-air missile capability around Bihac, and the

Tornados offered a favorable counter-threat capability. But Bonn

was not yet prepared to deal with such a request. Following the

Karlsruhe decision, there was no attempt to initiate a broadranging discussion of the appropriate roles and missions for the

Bundeswehr in peace support operations. In fact, political

leaders generally wanted to avoid such a discussion. The

political climate at the time made some of that reluctance

understandable; national elections coming up in October cast long

shadows, making members of all the major parties unwilling to

risk an emotional and divisive debate. And for a country new to

such debates, the example of the US anguish over the Haiti

decision could not have offered much encouragement. Why launch

such a debate if no concrete situation made it necessary?

What ensued was a very interesting, even entertaining,

exercise in creative diplomacy. In effect, the German government

chose not to respond to General Joulwan's request. Classifying

Joulwan's action as an "informal inquiry" rather than a formal

request from NATO, Bonn simply gave no answer. This removed any

immediate necessity to initiate a debate, either within the

government or in parliament. And to bolster the non-decision

further, members of parliament and the government pointed out

that NATO was unlikely to order any military mission involving

the German Tornados; therefore, as the CDU/CSU parliamentary

group leader Wolfgang Schäuble stated, a "decision in reserve"

was unnecessary.17

What is clear from these developments is that the question

of German participation in peace support operations had become

fully politicized. Under the oft-cited constraints of the

constitutional question, Germany could avoid the perplexing

debates about whether to participate in such operations and, if

so, under what conditions. Once the legal issues were clarified,

it was only natural that political considerations would take

over. The question then is whether the political debate will be a

full and open one or more like that which followed General

Joulwan's request in November 1994. In that debate a host of

political considerations led to some amazing antics on the part

of the German government to avoid giving any clear answer at all.

The "history" argument was simply one of many justifications

offered up as a logical, non-political explanation for what is

and always will be a very political (and difficult) decision for

any country.

Current Policy Perspectives

This section examines the perspectives of several key

players in the German policy-making process, including the

military, the political parties, the government, and public
70

opinion. The purpose is to provide a brief sketch of the views

that obtain within each grouping; this is not an attempt to

present a thorough delineation of all views, nor to decide which

view currently prevails.18 This section begins with the defense

planning community, turns next to an overview of public opinion,

and finally examines the contemporary political landscape.

The Ministry of Defense. It is not surprising that some of

the clearest statements and policies on German peace support

operations are found among the military and the civilian planners

within the Bundesministerium der Verteidigung (BMVg). The German

defense planning system requires thinking on such issues to

develop without a highly publicized political debate. Of course,

once those policies are outlined and presented to the cabinet,

prior to a recommendation going to the full parliament, they

become the object of intense public scrutiny, and political

leaders are identified as being responsible for them. But prior

to that point policy discussions often occur in relative quiet.

This helps explain why some of the clearest statements about

emerging security policy, including potential problems, exist

within the BMVg.19

One document in particular provides an interesting overview

of current BMVg thinking on German peace support operations.

Written in July 1994 and circulated publicly, it is entitled

Konzeptionelle Leitlinie zur Weiterentwicklung der Bundeswehr

(Conceptual Guidelines for the Future Development of the Federal

Armed Forces).20 The KLL attempt to build a bridge between the

wide- ranging analysis of the 1994 White Paper and actual force

planning. It distinguishes between two missions for the

Bundeswehr: traditional territorial defense and crisis reaction.

The document points out that while the traditional defense

mission remains an important focus of German defense planning and

force structure, it is ironically the greatest threat but the

least likely contingency in the post-Cold War security

environment to which the Bundeswehr might have to respond. On the

other hand, crisis reaction is the most likely operation, but the

one for which the Bundeswehr is the least well prepared.21 It then

discusses the kinds of changes anticipated in reconfiguring the

Bundeswehr to meet the requirements of a fundamentally changed

strategic situation. Particularly significant is the assessment

that the current strategic environment allows for a noticeable

reduction in the forces-in-being devoted to territorial defense,

and hence their re-allocation to the crisis reaction mission.22

Although not released until after the Karlsruhe Court ruling, the

thinking behind this document obviously was underway well before

the constitutional issue was clarified.

The most recent BMVg thinking was evident in interviews and

discussions in June 1995, and undoubtedly appeared in some form

in the Bosnian policy recommendation and subsequent debate later
71

that same month.23 Referencing "interests and objectives of German

foreign and security policy," as well as German "responsibilities

as an alliance partner," several individuals referred to what can

be stated as basic principles underlying emerging German policy.

First, everyone interviewed made clear references to a case-bycase decision process, always involving public debate and

parliamentary approval. Obviously, domestic political processes

will dominate; there will be no automatic formula for German

participation. Second, some of the views are carryovers from

previously articulated guidelines, such as the general limitation

of German support to conflict management in the European region,

and the requirement for multinational participation and

international mandates in support of such operations. Third,

there must be a clear, credible political strategy that leads or

contributes to the resolution of the conflict, and the military

operation must have a definable end state and exit strategy.

Fourth, there must be compelling reasons for the use of force

under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, and the threat to German

security, European stability, or international peace must be

evident. Finally, there is a strong rejection of the "history"

argument against German participation, at least as a sui generis

limitation. On the surface at least, current BMVg thinking

appears to reflect significant progress in the development of

Germany as a "normal" international actor, reacting to

significant changes in the international security environment and

attempting to define some criteria to be used in reaching

decisions about where, when, and how to participate.

However, some caution is in order about this interpretation,

and it relates directly to the role and influence of the BMVg in

the overall political processes. In short, it is difficult to say

in advance how much of the BMVg staff view will prevail in the

end. As Catherine Kelleher observed more than ten years ago, the

German defense organization is quite idiosyncratic and most often

dominated by the personality and style of the Defense Minister.24

Certainly Ruhe has demonstrated a willingness to go outside the

established bureaucratic procedures when he deems it necessary or

desirable, which means that he may or may not accept his own

Ministry's positions and arguments. Moreover, he must ultimately

convince the Federal Security Council of the Cabinet and the

parliamentary Defense Committee, which may require substantial

modification of the original BMVg views.25 And historically, the

BMVg (as distinct from the Defense Minister) has not been

especially powerful or influential in determining overall

policy.26 So, despite the generally high quality of the work being

done there, one should be cautious in assessing the significance

of BMVg thinking for the future of Germany as a "normal"

international actor. The key will be how much influence such

thinking has on Ruhe and the Government.

Public Opinion. Analyses and commentaries frequently point
72

to the reticence of the German public to accept any departure

from the traditional "culture of restraint" in post-WWII West

German foreign and security policy. This has generally included

maintaining a low profile for Germany in the power politics of

international affairs, particularly in crisis management, and

especially in the use of force. One of the central issues in the

question concerning Germany's evolution into a "normal"

international actor, then, is whether public opinion will allow

or accept such a change. For the purposes of this chapter, it is

necessary to examine public opinion briefly as it pertains to the

role of Germany in international peace support operations.

The skepticism of the German public about an activist

international role for their country is well documented, as is a

pervasive aversion for power politics. In the recent debate

concerning German participation in the UN Reaction Force,

numerous references were made to what the public would or would

not support, with members of the coalition and the opposition

frequently citing the limits of public support as justification

for their positions.27 While the public remains generally

skeptical of such operations, recent evidence suggests that

subtle, but important, shifts in public attitudes and opinions

are underway.

Support for continued German ties to NATO is very strong; a

recent Institut fur Demoskopie Allensbach survey found that 69

percent considered NATO membership important compared to 70

percent at the beginning of the 1980s (arguably at the height of

the Cold War).28 In fact, the escalating instability and crisis

situations in the former Soviet Union have increased public

desires for NATO to remain both intact and strong, going from 57

percent in 1991 to 71 percent today. And Meiers notes that 74

percent of the public support "NATO involvement in new crises on

Europe's periphery."29 However, 55 percent of those same

respondents "agreed that the Bundeswehr's role should remain

limited to territorial defence and that Germany's allies must

assume responsibility for such missions [crisis management]

themselves."30

The same Demoskopie survey found that the participation of

German soldiers in international peacekeeping troops of the

United Nations was supported by a majority only in the former

West Germany; in the former East Germany only 29 percent favor

such participation whereas 52 percent are opposed.31 Meiers also

cites the results of a poll conducted by Infratest Burke Berlin

after the 1994 national elections in which as many as 75 percent

of the German public supported the use of military force for

humanitarian purposes and traditional peacekeeping missions.

However, he observes that this support declines "when specific

scenarios including combat missions were put to Germans."32 In

principle the German public supports peace support operations,
73

including the use of military force if necessary; in practice,

however, they seem less inclined to support specific operations

and especially Bundeswehr involvement in them.33

Yet it appears that German public opinion has begun to

acknowledge, at least in part because of all the media coverage

of crises, civil wars, and human tragedy around the globe, that

the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact do

not mean that the world is necessarily a safer place. This shows

up most clearly in the reversal of public attitudes about

military service. Whereas a majority of the German public had by

1993 concluded that obligatory national service was more

important to society than military service (i.e., conscription),

by 1995 this view had shrunk to 32 percent in the former West

German Länder (from 50 percent) and to 33 percent in the former

East German Länder (from 60 percent).34 The trend is toward a view

of the world and German society that on the surface seem

compatible with a more activist international role for Germany,

including, if necessary, the use of military force. However,

there is still a prevailing view that such military action can be

left largely to Germany's allies, especially the United States.

Nonetheless, current opinions suggest there are increasing

opportunities for German leadership to convince the public that

"out-of-area" peace support operations are necessary and that

they support German and European interests. But, the necessity

for Bundeswehr participation in such operations, whether to

protect those interests or to respond to external calls for

greater German responsibility and burdensharing, seems to have

registered only weakly in the minds of the public. This

represents the challenge for German political leadership: to

convince the public, which is increasingly inclined to see the

dangers and threats of post-Cold War conflicts (especially those

close to home), that the Bundeswehr is "called upon" and

"expected to" participate in operations to meet those threats and

counter those dangers. Is German political leadership up to that

challenge?

The Political Landscape. One word summarizes the overall

political landscape in Germany in the realm of peace support

operations: divided. As one senior retired Bundeswehr officer put

it, the "main problem is that there is no unified German

position" on what policy should be. These divisions exist not

only between the coalition and the opposition, but within the

coalition itself, within the government and the ministries, and

even within the individual parties. Given the historical emphasis

on consensus decisions, and the special requirement for

overwhelming consensus when it comes to issues involving the

possible use of military force, it is hardly surprising that

Germany has found it so difficult to devise a policy with clear

guidelines.
74

The Government. Although the Kohl-led CDU/CSU/FDP government

has taken the lead in forging some consensus on peace support

operations generally and the Bosnian policy specifically, the

road to this consensus was anything but smooth. Rifts have

appeared within the coalition and even within the Chancellor's

own party. Policy has appeared to vacillate and change

dramatically almost over night. Kohl has been variously

characterized as, on the one hand, craftily leading Germany down

a path toward militarizing German foreign policy and, on the

other, as allowing German policy to drift aimlessly as he plays

games with the allies, desperately seeking ways in which to avoid

making any commitments or giving any clear answers. Neither

statement is accurate, for the truth lies somewhere in between

these two extremes. Simply put, Kohl's political margin for error

is so narrow following the 1994 parliamentary elections that he

cannot afford a major policy disaster. Particularly in an area

fraught with so many emotional time bombs as this, being caught

too far out front or too far behind elite and mass opinion could

seal the coalition's, as well as Kohl's own, political fate. At

the same time, the external pressures from allies, bound together

with questions about the future of NATO and the EU, also place

stresses and strains on the government. Extreme caution is the

guiding principle behind the Kohl approach.35

The political problems within the coalition are illustrated

by the challenges facing the FDP, a coalition partner. It is not

only divided on the issue of peace support operations, it is

badly split over a variety of key issues. In fact, the FDP is in

the throes of a struggle for its very political survival. Having

watched its support in the national elections dwindle dangerously

close to the minimum threshold of five-percent for remaining in

parliament, it faced a series of embarrassing losses in state

elections in early 1995. Its performance in elections in NorthRhine Westphalia and in Bremen were so poor that they prompted

Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel to resign as party leader. Kinkel

continues to serve as Foreign Minister and Vice-Chancellor, but

at a time when he will need to be a forceful spokesperson for any

future deployment of the Bundeswehr in peace support operations,

the precarious situation of the FDP works strongly against him

and his ability to provide that much-needed support.36

The FDP's problems are also problems for Kohl, who must be

concerned about the coalition's future. The risks involved in

peace support operations generally are magnified by these

political risks, creating an environment in which such operations

will be carefully scrutinized for their potential political

impact at home and on the coalition. Given the divisions within

the government and the parties, it will not be easy to forge a

clear, common policy approach to peace support operations in the

near future.
75

Within the cabinet, differing views on peace support

operations have also emerged. For example, at least until early

1995 there was a very apparent difference between the views of

Foreign Minister Kinkel and Defense Minister Ruhe. Kinkel has

generally espoused a view of German peace support operations that

is broader and more global than Ruhe's. When Boutros BoutrosGhali visited Bonn in January 1995, he asked the German

government to contribute Bundeswehr troops to a stand-by UN peace

operations unit. Kinkel reacted positively to the request, and in

a number of public statements indicated that Germany was ready,

willing, and able to make such a contribution. In late-1994 he

had stated as much, writing that "the Bundeswehr can in future

fully participate in UN, NATO and WEU missions" and that "[t]his

is not limited only to peacekeeping missions but also clearly

includes peace-making operations."37

Ruhe was typically more guarded, and he opposed the

assignment of Bundeswehr soldiers to the UN. His opposition

rested on the grounds that the Bundeswehr was not yet ready for

such missions, and that German interests and responsibilities lay

in Europe and jointly with its Euro-Atlantic allies. A general

commitment of German troops to the UN would mean that they might

be sent anywhere in the world, far exceeding what Ruhe felt was a

legitimate mandate for their use. In the end the Ruhe position

won out and Germany did not provide the UN Secretary-General with

a list of ear-marked troops.38 In retrospect one can see that

these events in mid-January led to the closing of ranks around

the criteria for Bundeswehr participation in peace support

operations.39

Of course, in June 1995, Kinkel and Ruhe appeared much more

unified in their presentation and defense of the government

proposal to support the UN Reaction Force.40 Both made strong

statements to the Bundestag in support of the proposed policy.

Yet the points of emphasis of each speech suggest that the

differences have not disappeared. Kinkel stressed the need for

Germany to show solidarity with the UN Security Council, NATO and

the EU; the German interests that are involved; the need to

expand the concept of security in German thinking; and the

expectation that Germany would "actively share in protecting the

international order . . . ."41 Ruhe emphasized the limiting

features of the policy: the mission was to help people and

nothing more; the collapse of the UN mission must be prevented;

and the ECR Tornados would be used only in the event of an attack

against the Blue Helmets--and then only to protect the aircraft

of other countries.42 While Kinkel continued to suggest much

broader reasons for German participation in such operations, Ruhe

seemed to be concerned with delineating the limitations on this

mission so that no broader implications could be drawn. This is a

fundamental difference of views that is unlikely to disappear
76

soon, not only between these two cabinet ministers but within

Germany generally.43 Moreover, the current political realities

confronting the FDP are likely to exacerbate such differences on

security and foreign policy, given Kinkel's tenuous position

within the party as well as the party's tenuous position among

the electorate.

Within the CDU parliamentary group, similar differences have

appeared. Although nearly all agree with the official government

position on peace support operations, there is disagreement on

the implications of that policy, as was evident in the aftermath

of the vote on the UN Reaction Force. Karl Lamers, CDU/CSU

Bundestag Group spokesman on foreign policy, indicated in a radio

interview that if Germany were now asked by NATO to provide

ground troops in support of a UN withdrawal from the former

Yugoslavia, it "would be obliged to do so . . . ." In his view,

there were wider-ranging implications of the UN Reaction Force

decision that set precedents for future actions. Yet at the same

time, Paul Breuer, CDU/CSU Bundestag spokesman for defense

policy, took a sharply different view, warning against "demanding

too much from German public opinion and the Bundeswehr with

further military missions." For Breuer the immediate mission was

enough and "everything else would be unwise."44

Social Democratic Party (SPD). Although the SPD enjoys a

stronger electoral position than the FDP, it is badly divided on

three different levels. The first level is overall party

leadership, where there is a serious, acrimonious, and public

challenge to party leadership.

But the challenge goes beyond infighting between Oskar

Lafontaine, Gerhard Schröder and Rudolf Scharping. Polls show

that since the middle of May 1995 support for the SPD among

voters is eroding; from the 36 percent level of last year's

parliamentary elections, it is now rapidly approaching 30

percent. A recent survey conducted by Emnid at the end of June

1995 indicated that among voters Scharping is viewed as less

competent, less effective, less creative, and more hesitant than

Schröder. Only 25 percent want to see Scharping continue as Party

Chairman, and 40 percent view Schröder as a better choice. Even

among his own party members Scharping barely enjoys an advantage

over Schröder (38 to 36 percent).45 The SPD membership, therefore,

is divided not only on the issue of peace support operations but

on party leadership as well.

The SPD parliamentary delegation, the third level in this

analysis, is also divided. The divisions were apparent in the

parliamentary debate on the German contribution to the UN

Reaction Force, as they have been in all of the discussions about

German peace support operations. For more than two years a small

but significant minority within the SPD has sided more with the
77

coalition government than its own party on the issue. Karsten

Voigt, former-SPD party spokesman on foreign affairs, is one of

the more visible and vocal members of this group. Considered by

some to be one of the few "realists" in contemporary German

politics, Voigt openly expresses his views on the need for

Germany to take on a more internationalist role and for the

Bundeswehr to be a part of that role in peace support operations.

Although a minority, Voigt saw his party leadership role as

pushing that minority position within the SPD until it eventually

evolves into a majority position.46

In the days leading up to the parliamentary vote of 30 June

1995, all of these splits within the SPD were in evidence. On

June 27, "69 SPD deputies made it clear that, contrary to their

party and Bundestag group's position, they would also vote for

the deployment of Tornado aircraft to support the European Rapid

Reaction Force." In effect, this meant that "well over one third

of the 150 or so SPD deputies present complied with the

government position."47 Although some SPD members are opposed to

any German combat troop involvement in Bosnia or other peace

support operations, the party position is that each case must be

reviewed and decided on its own merits. In this case, Scharping

stated the party view that Germany should contribute only medical

and logistical support for the UN Reaction Force.48 The party

position continues to reflect the "history" argument against the

deployment of the Bundeswehr.49 And finally, the SPD position

opposes the use of conscripts in peace support operations unless

they have specifically volunteered. This whole issue concerning

the use of conscripts is under review and has not been formally

decided, although the government's proposal on Bosnia did not

exclude their use. In the final Bundestag vote, 45 members of the

opposition voted with the government, and 35 SPD delegates

publicly acknowledged their defection.50

The Alliance 90/Greens. Although there is general opposition

among the Alliance 90/Greens group to the use of the Bundeswehr

for anything other than strictly humanitarian operations, the

situation in Bosnia has proven difficult for them, too. The

reason is that the ongoing war and associated atrocities have

become a human rights issue for many of their members. And the

picture of the West, including Germany, standing on the sidelines

and not using force to stop the aggression against innocent

civilians runs counter to even a pacifistic sense of what is

right.51 In the run-up to the Bundestag debate, the group decided

to reject the deployment of combat units and instead to call for

"'massive German support' by nongovernmental organizations for

humanitarian aid shipments."52 The leader of the Alliance

90/Greens group, Joschka Fischer, was apparently relieved that

this decision avoided a major dispute by satisfying those who

wanted to support humanitarian aid by the Bundeswehr. But three

members of the group voted against this "common policy" position,
78

and in the final Bundestag vote three members openly acknowledged

that they voted with the government.53

The growing tension and division finally surfaced officially

in early August 1995 when Fischer circulated a policy paper in

which he called "for a redefinition of the Greens' foreign policy

principles." He spoke "openly in favor of an expansion of UN

involvement in Bosnia," including "surface and aerial protection

for the remaining UN safe zones."54 He personally believes that it

is time for the party to move away from rigid opposition to the

use of force. At a minimum the Fischer paper will ensure a

bruising debate within the party on this fundamental question,

and the divisions are likely to grow before they begin to

disappear. At the same time, it is clear that the party's desire

to be a genuine force at the national level, including as a

possible coalition partner for the SPD, requires a more generally

applicable and acceptable approach to foreign policy than a

simple renunciation-of-force policy will allow.55

Assessment of the Political Landscape. All of the major

parties are therefore split to varying degrees on issues

pertaining to peace support operations generally and Bundeswehr

support of the Blue Helmets in Bosnia specifically. Further, the

entire electoral environment is highly uncertain for the CDU, the

FDP, the CSU, the Greens, and the SPD. When combined with the (at

best skeptical) attitude of the German public and the stillprevailing "culture of restraint," this electoral uncertainty

creates a situation in which any bold, new policy initiative in

the area of peace support operations is highly risky with unclear

benefits. The result is that all of the parties and their major

personalities will probably continue to be extremely cautious in

developing policy, choosing general statements and case-by-case

delimiters over broad, clear policy directives or guidelines.

Careful coalition building will prevail. Building consensus and

compromise reduces the opportunities for opponents to exploit any

public perception of a policy that is out of step with German

opinion. In that environment, it seems highly unlikely that the

leadership required to forge a broad public consensus on peace

support operations will be forthcoming any time soon. This does

not mean no progress will occur; rather, it suggests that German

policy will develop slowly and incrementally, and the case-bycase approach will be preferred by almost all of the political

players.

Conclusions

This overview of German policies for peace support

operations indicates that external influences have moved Germany

subtly but noticeably toward a clearer and more forthright

recognition of the need for military power in the post-Cold War

international system generally, and for a German contribution to
79

that capability. Among those external influences, the ongoing

tragedy in the former Yugoslavia is certainly paramount. The

German public and political elites have seen constant images of

the atrocities, and they have witnessed the recurrent and

complete failure of all attempts to control the violence through

non-military means. These failures in Europe's own backyard have

helped push the debate in the direction of recognizing the need

for an effective international military capability. Among the

military and political professionals, one hears frequent and

blunt references to the failures of the UN, and especially the

"dual key" approach of NATO military power serving UN operations.

Such criticism was virtually unheard of as recently as two years

ago.

The external pressure from allies and international opinion

has also continued. The frequent references to what Germany is

"expected" and "called upon" to contribute provide ample

evidence. The US decision to remain significantly on the

sidelines in the Bosnian crisis, at least until the NATO air

strikes began in earnest in late August 1995, certainly

contributed to the pressures on Europe generally and on Germany

specifically. It is painfully evident to many Germans today that

the days of American military action making German action

unnecessary are gone, unless there is a happy coincidence of

interests.56 As frustrations with the lack of effective action to

counter the violence in Bosnia have grown, they join with the

humanitarian argument for the justifiable use of military force.

This in turn is reinforced by German desires not to be isolated

from its allies and to demonstrate solidarity with them.

Moreover, the perhaps idealistic view that the UN can be an

effective guarantor of international security, thereby continuing

the trend toward de-nationalizing security policy, gives Germany

few alternatives but to try to strengthen the flagging image of

that organization. There seems little doubt that all of these

factors were at work in the decision by the Bundestag on June 30,

1995, approving Bundeswehr participation in the UN Reaction

Force.

Does all of this mean that Germany is now a "normal"

international actor, or at least well on its way toward becoming

one? This conclusion remains at best premature. The decision to

participate in the UN Reaction Force, although significant, still

includes many conditions and qualifications that are hardly

"normal." Only time and the specific unfolding of events will

reveal the extent to which Germany is both willing and able to

make a genuine and significant contribution to peace support

operations in the post-Cold War world.57

Yet it would also be unfair and inaccurate not to

acknowledge the movement of Germany in the direction of

"normalcy." For one thing, Germany is attempting to develop
80

policies and procedures for participating in multinational peace

operations at a time when the world's only superpower, the United

States, appears to be disengaging itself from such operations. It

hardly seems appropriate to judge Germany as not having done

enough when the United States is itself paralyzed by domestic

politics and a lack of consensus on foreign and security policy.

Moreover, there has been a detectable shift in the substance and

the rhetoric of the debate in Germany. Although the Kohl

government has been careful to continue the consensus-building,

coalition approach to policy making that has long characterized

German foreign and security policy, one hears more references to

"German interests" and the concepts of power politics than at any

time in the recent past.58 And even the Greens have apparently

launched an internal debate about the possible irrelevance of

their party's rigid principle of non-violence for post-Cold War

international affairs, certainly another indicator of movement

toward "normalcy."

But German policy in the realm of peace support operations

will continue to be characterized by considerable tension and

even contradiction. How it evolves will be determined to a large

extent by the perceived success or failure of German

participation in the UN Reaction Force specifically and Western

policy toward Bosnia generally.59 Others in the West must not

expect too much, too soon from a country whose domestic

inclinations and political forces make it very difficult to break

with strongly held convictions about its role in international

affairs. Yet it would be equally, and perhaps more misguided to

expect too little. The domestic situation in Germany is such that

external expectations and pressures are absolutely essential to

the further evolution of that country as a "normal" international

actor. The process Germany intends to use for deciding on

participation will make it very difficult for it to respond in a

timely and decisive manner, and its allies need to recognize this

fact and work to influence the process. But as one member of the

SPD confidently put it, Germany will eventually assume a full

role in support of international peace operations. "It will go

slower than many, especially the US, want to see. But German

policy will and already is moving in that direction."60

In the end, however, the events reviewed here suggest that

the German decision on Bosnia is not a general indicator of

evolving German policy on peace support operations. The sequence

of events and decisions that comprise the "Bosnia policy" of

Germany is remarkable and unique. German decisions on Bosnia have

been heavily driven by external factors and pressures, made all

the more possible by a sense both outside and inside the country

that the German decision to recognize Slovenia and Croatia in

1991 was at least partly responsible for the current mess.61 And

as current attempts to lay out some guidelines for that policy

indicate, German participation in peace support operations will
81

be decided on a case-by-case basis and with the full

participation of the parliament. Those features alone should make

us skeptical of any attempt to discern a general German policy,

and especially to predict just what kinds of actions Germany will

take in the future. For some time to come, Germany will continue

to be caught, as Clemens observed in an earlier period, "between

its commitment . . . to demilitarization and its growing

recognition that military strength can contribute to a more

stable, humane post-Cold War order."62

Finally, this analysis makes it apparent that an

understanding of current and future German policy in peace

support operations requires an understanding of external and

internal factors and processes. No systemic-level explanation

focusing solely on German national interests and structural

characteristics of the international system will provide even a

reasonably accurate, let alone full understanding of German

actions. Much the same can be said of the general research

question about the emergence of Germany as a normal international

actor. The external events and forces acting on Germany are

indeed significant, but so, too, are the domestic forces. For

those who wish to understand the future role of the Federal

Republic of Germany in international peace support operations and

its development as a normal actor, the answers lie in that nexus

between international events and domestic political exigencies.

Notes

Author's Note: The author wishes to acknowledge the

financial support of the US Air Force, Institute for National

Security Studies (LTC Jeffrey A. Larsen, Director), under whose

auspices a research grant was provided, and the generosity of the

many individuals who so graciously gave of their time to be

interviewed. The assistance of the following individuals in

helping to arrange interviews and provide important contacts is

especially acknowledged: Dr. Thomas-Durell Young, Dr. Franz-Josef

Meiers, Mrs. Jeannet S. Frössinger, numerous officials in the

BMVg, and serving and retired Bundeswehr officers. Of course, the

author alone remains responsible for all errors of ommission and

commission in this essay.

1. Gordon describes the "normalization" of German foreign

policy as "the gradual attenuation of the particular restrictions

that have influenced and constrained Germany's international

actions since, and because of, World War II." See Philip H.

Gordon, "The Normalization of German Foreign Policy," Orbis, Vol.

38, No. 2, Spring 1994, p. 225.

2. For a wide-ranging and thorough analysis of the different

dimensions of the German contributions to the Gulf War alliance,

see Michael J. Inacker, Unter Ausschluss der Öffentlichkeit: Die
82

Deutschen in der Golfallianz, Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1991. Inacker

places the total German contribution at DM 17 billion (p. 106).

3. The potential limiting effects of this prohibition on

German support of its allies had long been recognized and debated

conceptually in the context of NATO and "out-of-area" operations.

However, until the end of the Cold War simultaneously reinstated

full German sovereignty and refocused international attention on

conflicts requiring peace support operations, this debate was

largely "academic." The Persian Gulf crisis of 1990-91 first

raised the issue in the context of a full and fair share of

international military responsibility for a Germany now seen by

many as a major power.

4. White Paper 1994: On the Security of the Federal Republic

of Germany and the Situation and Future of the Bundeswehr, Bonn:

Federal Ministry of Defence, 1994.

5. Chancellor Kohl observes: "In international peace

missions, the exemplary conduct, personal dedication and skill of

our soldiers, sailors and airmen have enhanced Germany's standing

in the world." Ibid., p. vii. Ruhe notes that the Bundeswehr ". .

. is participating with great success in international peace

missions" . . . and "has greatly enhanced its reputation by its

activities in Cambodia, Iraq, the former Yugoslavia and Somalia."

Ibid., p. ix.

6. For example, ". . . Germany must assume new international

responsibility. By virtue of its political and economic strength,

it has a key role to play in the development of European

structures and is called upon to make a contribution to the

resolution of future problems throughout the world." Ibid., p.

24. And in reference to strengthening collective security through

the United Nations and its worldwide peacekeeping task: "Germany

is rightly expected to bear its share of responsibility and to

participate. The Federal Government is prepared to assume this

responsibility." Ibid., p. 43.

7. So the statement, "Today, Germany has greater

international responsibility, especially as far as security in

and for Europe is concerned." Ibid., p. 40.

8. Consider the following statements: <R> ". . . conflict

prevention and crisis management in a widened geographical

setting, with a mandate legitimizing such activities under

international law, must be at the forefront of preventive

security measures." Ibid., p. 37.<R> "In a political framework

that aims at solving crises and conflicts by tackling their roots

and causes, it may also be necessary to employ military means to

prevent, confine or terminate violence or war." Ibid., p. 37.<R>

"Even after the end of the East-West conflict, lasting peace
83

cannot be guaranteed without the possibility of employing armed

forces if necessary." Ibid., p. 43.<R> For a country that has

consistently denied or played down the role of force in

international relations, these references are no small matter.

See, for example, the discussion in Clay Clemens, "A Special Kind

of Superpower? Germany and the Demilitarization of Post-Cold War

International Security," in Gary L. Geipel, ed., Germany in a New

Era, Indianapolis, IN: Hudson Institute, 1993, pp. 199-240. See

also the arguments by Franz-Josef Meiers, "Germany: The Reluctant

Power," Survival, Vol. 37, No. 3, Autumn 1995, pp. 82-103.

9. Geographically, "Germany has greater international

responsibility, especially as far as security in Europe is

concerned." Ibid., p. 40. In kind, "Even after the question of

conformity with the constitution has been settled, Germany's

contribution towards the preservation of peace will continue to

be primarily of a political and economic character, and not of a

military one." Ibid., p. 65.

10. See the discussion of the WEU in White Paper 1994, p.

59. Further stipulations require harmonization with provisions in

the UN Charter and with the military obligations of the Atlantic

Alliance.

11. It is interesting, and perhaps telling, in this light to

examine this statement on p. 59: "The Federal Government is

committed to the idea that the WEU be just as capable of managing

crises as NATO." Given the opinion held by some policy makers and

analysts about the inadequacy or incapacity of NATO in this area,

particularly as it relates to the pre-Dayton phases of the

Bosnian crisis, this statement may ring true but in a very ironic

way!

12. This was the criticism most frequently cited by members

of the opposition, especially in late-1994 and early-1995, and

was pointed out to the author in several interviews in June 1995.

Evidence that the criticism had some impact is found in one of

German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel's earliest public statements

about German foreign policy after the Karlsruhe decision. Arguing

that defense of the international order sometimes requires the

use of force, Kinkel quickly added, "This does not, however, mean

a militarization of German foreign policy; the culture of

restraint will be maintained." See Klaus Kinkel, "Peacekeeping

missions: Germany can now play its part," NATO Review, Vol. 42,

No. 5, October 1994, p. 4.

13. In fact, Foreign Minister Kinkel expressed this view in

the aftermath of General Joulwan's request for German Tornados

(see the following discussion), and it was subsequently referred

to as the "Kohl Doctrine." See "Keine Bodentruppen ins bosnische

Kampfgebiet," Suddeutsche Zeitung (Munchen), December 5, 1995.
84

14. From an interview with the author on June 19, 1995.

15. See Der Spiegel (Hamburg), July 3, 1995, p. 26.

16. See the discussion of the Joulwan request in Meiers,

"Germany: The Reluctant Power," especially pp. 85-87.

17. Schäuble is quoted in Meiers, p. 86, note 16, citing Udo

Bergdoll, "Aus Bonn ein vernebeltes Nein," Suddeutsche Zeitung

(Munchen), December 8, 1994, and "Bonner Versteckspiel im

Tornado-Dilemma," Neue Zurcher Zeitung, December 9, 1994.

18. Much of this section is based on interviews conducted by

the author between June 15-June 24, 1995, in Germany.

19. It is also a reason why one must be extremely cautious

in imparting too much significance to BMVg views. Precisely

because the policies have not yet been subjected to the preparliamentary and parliamentary phases of debate, policies at

this stage may hardly resemble what eventually emerges. As

Clemens observes, "analysts who approvingly or disapprovingly

cite the readiness of Bonn's military establishment to prepare

Germany for the role of a 'normal' power in world affairs may

underrate the political obstacles blocking such a policy in the

first place." Clemens, "A Special Kind of Superpower?," p. 200.

20. Konzeptionelle Leitlinie zur Weiterentwicklung der

Bundeswehr, Bonn: Informationsstab, Bundesministerium der

Verteidigung, July 12, 1994. This document was made public

immediately after the Karlsruhe decision, a conscious effort by

Ruhe to preempt the public debate.

21. Ibid., p. 2.

22. The text reads, "Die strategische Lage erlaubt es, die

Präsenz der Streitkräfte fur die Landesverteidigung deutlich zu

verringern." Ibid., p. 4. It goes on to argue, of course, that

this conclusion is based on the assumption that there will be

adequate warning time to shift some of the crisis reaction forces

back to homeland defense should the need arise.

23. Some of those interviewed at the BMVg indicated that a

new document was in the works with a tentative title "Guidelines

for the Use of the Bundeswehr in the Framework of International

Peace Missions." It was apparently not written as part of the

Bosnia decision of June 30, 1995, but this document would

certainly reflect the thinking and analysis going on at that

time. The reader should recall that the groundwork was being laid

for a cabinet recommendation to parliament (subsequently made on

June 26, 1995) that Germany contribute to the protection of the
85

UN Blue Helmets in the former Yugoslavia, including the

assignment of 14 ECR Tornados.

24. Catherine McArdle Kelleher, "Defense Organization in

Germany: A Twice Told Tale," in Robert J. Art, Vincent Davis, and

Samuel P. Huntington, eds., Reorganizing America's Defense:

Leadership in War and Peace, Washington, DC: Pergamon-Brassey's,

1985, pp. 82-107. Kelleher observed: "Until now, the German

central defense organization has functioned more often as an

'unstructured structure,' dependent more on the harmonization of

personalities and political styles than on formal rules for

ultimate decisions." Ibid., p. 83.

25. See the caution in this regard by Clemens, cited earlier

in note 20.

26. This is the result of both design and the personal

policies of past Defense Ministers. See Kelleher, especially pp.

91-96.

27. See, for example, the interview with CDU/CSU defense

policy spokesman Paul Breuer in Welt am Sonntag (Hamburg), July

9, 1995, in the Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily

Report, Western Europe (henceforth FBIS-WEU)-95-132, p. 7. See

also the speeches to the Bundestag by Foreign Minister Kinkel,

June 30, 1995, FBIS-WEU- 95-126, pp. 13-16, and by SPD party

leader Rudolf Scharping, June 30, 1995, FBIS-WEU-95-127, pp. 10-

14.

28. The results of this recent survey are discussed in an

article by Dr. Renate Koecher, "Unerwartete Wende," Frankfurter

Allgemeine Zeitung, June 14, 1995, p. 5.

29. Meiers, p. 84.

30. Ibid.

31. Koecher, p. 5.

32. Meiers, p. 85.

33. The same Demoskopie survey found a similar kind of

agreement in principle but disagreement in specifics concerning

the expansion of NATO. Thirty-three percent favor expansion

generally, 25 percent are opposed, and a very high 42 percent are

undecided. When Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic are

specifically mentioned as candidates for admission, support

climbs dramatically to 47 percent while opposition declines to 20

percent. However, the same survey found that the public does not

make the connection between including these countries in NATO and

being bound to go to their defense if they are attacked! When
86

this point is made, support for NATO expansion drops

precipitously, so much so in fact that 41 percent are now opposed

and only 27 percent in favor of NATO expansion. Apparently the

public is willing to support efforts to address some of the postCold War challenges to international security, but only so long

as there are no real demands made on Germany! Koecher, p. 5.

34. Ibid. Similar statements about the public and

parliamentary perceptions of the Bundeswehr and military missions

generally can be found in Rick Atkinson, "Luftwaffe's Wings

Clipped in First Action Since 1945," Washington Post, August 19,

1995.

35. This view was evident in almost all of the comments of

people interviewed in the foreign and security policy community,

including the CDU staff.

36. This point was made in more than one interview,

including one member of the German Foreign Ministry.

37. Kinkel, p. 3.

38. In fact it was reported that the Deputy Chief of the

German Mission to the UN, Ambassador Gerhard Henze, was forced to

cancel a speech at the last minute in which he was to announce

German willingness to provide troops for future UN peace

operations. The embarrassment was magnified by the fact that the

text of the speech had already been made public. For this and

other details of the request by Boutros-Ghali and the differing

views of Kinkel and Ruhe, see "Ganz heiss," Der Spiegel

(Hamburg), January 23, 1995, pp. 25-27. See also the discussion

in Meiers, pp. 92-94.

39. See the previous discussion of the Ministry of Defense.

40. One article observed that the two presented the

government case "with rare harmony." "Letzter Versuch," Der

Spiegel (Hamburg), July 3, 1995, p. 26.

41. Kinkel, in FBIS-WEU-95-126, pp. 13-16.

42. This latter point has not been very widely discussed in

the US. According to the parameters established in the government

recommendation and approved by the Bundestag, the Tornados can be

used only in very specific circumstances. As reported in Der

Spiegel (Hamburg), these conditions do not "fit with Ruhe's

statements about solidarity" with the allies. For example, the

article notes, a British request for the Tornados to accompany

transport planes carrying powdered milk to Sarajevo would be

denied. So, too, would a request to provide security for a rescue

mission should another US pilot be shot down. As one CSU
87

politician put it, "Woe be unto us if an American pilot is shot

down because then the mood [of the NATO allies] will turn against

us." "Letzter Versuch," Der Spiegel (Hamburg), July 3, 1995, p.

26. See also Atkinson, "Luftwaffe's Wings Clipped . . . ., The

Washington Post, August 19, 1995.

43. Of course, one should note that these differences are

logically related to the two offices and the different

perspectives they have. Kinkel, as Foreign Minister, is expected

to articulate the broader foreign policy views and to be

subjected to more of the external pressures from his foreign

affairs counterparts. Ruhe rightly views himself as the

"protector" of his soldiers, fighting to limit the scope and

range of operations they might be called upon to perform. This is

probably the more fundamental source of the differences as

opposed to pure personality or political philosophy.

44. Welt am Sonntag (Hamburg), July 9, 1995, in FBIS-WEU95-132, July 11, 1995, p. 7.

45. For example, Schröder recently observed, "Sometime the

people will ask themselves which elections the SPD has won with

Scharping as the [party] Chairman." Der Spiegel (Hamburg), July

3, 1995, p. 28.

46. From an interview with the author on June 19, 1995. It

is worth noting, however, that Voigt failed in his attempt to be

directly reelected to parliament in 1994. Having been rejected by

his own voters, he was only able to remain in the Bundestag

through the efforts of the party to get him on the party list of

candidates. Those efforts were not without detractors. The point

is that Voigt became the focus of some controversy precisely

because of his views on security issues, and he was eventually

unable to maintain support among his constituents. Voigt's

influence within the SPD may be limited not only by this

political weakness, but by the fact that he has also opposed

other key party positions.

47. Suddeutsche Zeitung (Munchen), June 29, 1995, in FBISWEU- 95-126, June 30, 1995, p. 16.

48. For this position see the discussion in The Week in

Germany, "Bundestag Approves German Participation in UN Rapid

Reaction Force," July 7, 1995, p. 2.

49. See the speech to the Bundestag by Scharping, ZDF

Television Network (Mainz), June 30, 1995, in FBIS-WEU-95-127,

July 3, 1995, p. 13.

50. See The Week in Germany, July 7, 1995, p. 1.
88

51. This became obvious in the group discussions leading up

to the parliamentary debate, as discussed below, and was

mentioned by a member of the CDU foreign policy staff in an

interview.

52. Suddeutsche Zeitung (Munchen), June 29, 1995, in FBISWEU- 95-126, June 30, 1995, p. 16.

53. See The Week in Germany, July 7, 1995, p. 1.

54. Suddeutsche Zeitung (Munchen), August 1, 1995, in FBISWEU- 95-147, August 1, 1995, p. 13.

55. See FBIS Media Note, in FBIS-WEU-95-167, August 29,

1995, pp. 10-11.

56. One editorial bluntly stated, "The bitter lesson: The

American World policeman will swing its billyclub only when its

national security interests are threatened. And they are

evidently not for the Americans in the Balkans." Bild-Zeitung

(Hamburg), July 19, 1995, as quoted in Deutschland Nachrichten,

July 21, 1995, p. 3.

57. It appeared that Germany faced a dilemma similar to the

United States. A withdrawal by the UN would conceivably bring an

unqualified request from NATO for Germany to honor its commitment

to provide forces in support of that action. Therefore, it would

continue to do whatever is necessary to ensure that its "bluff"

would not be called. In a somewhat ironic twist of policy fate,

Germany had to contribute to the UN Reaction Force in part to

increase the likelihood that the "Blue Helmets" would remain in

Bosnia and thereby obviate the need for Germany to provide

Bundeswehr forces in support of a large-scale NATO action (a UN

withdrawal). President Clinton tried to make a similar point to

the Republican opposition in Congress that pressed for a lifting

of the arms embargo against the Bosnian government; lifting the

embargo would lead to a UN withdrawal which the United States was

committed to support, including the provision of large numbers of

ground forces.

58. Kinkel's address to the Bundestag on June 30, 1995 is

notable in this regard. "But what is asked in the decision we

have to make today is not only solidarity, but this is also about

our very own German interests and the consistency and credibility

of our German policy . . . . It is we who would have to take in

the major flow of refugees in the event of a withdrawal of the UN

troops." ZDF Television Network (Mainz), June 30, 1995, reported

in FBIS-WEU-95-126, June 30, 1995, p. 14. While no one, least of

all this author, argues that Realpolitik is the driving force

behind German peace support policy today, the unwritten taboo on

talking about German national interests is weakening, a point
89

made by more than one individual in interviews.

59. A reasonably successful outcome of German participation

in NATO operations in Croatia and western policy generally will

reinforce positive developments in Germany, whereas a clear

failure or disaster could well result not only in the defeat of

the policies and the government that enacted them, but in an

anti-internationalist backlash that would see Germany close

itself off even more from the power politics of the West. One

hopes that leaders in the United States and other western

countries see such a development as profoundly not in their best

interests, and definitely as something to be avoided. To date

they have not demonstrated such an understanding.

60. This statement was made in an interview on June 19,

1995, well in advance of the Bundestag vote on the UN Rapid

Reaction Force, and even prior to the cabinet recommendation.

61. Scharping minced no words on this issue in his speech to

the Bundestag on June 30, 1995, in which he stated, ". . . the

course that was set in 1991 was wrong, and it damaged the trust

in Europe and toward Germany. The policy of quick and early

recognition put pressure on the states in the EU to follow the

German example. That contributed to the failure of the Yugoslavia

policy and the messed-up situation in Bosnia." ZDF Television

Network (Mainz), June 30, 1995, reported in FBIS-WEU-95-127, July

3, 1995, pp. 10-11.

62. Clemens, p. 228.
90

6

POWER AND MORALITY:

ON A NEW GERMAN SECURITY POLICY

Michael J. Inacker

(translated by Daniel Weisbaum)

German foreign and security policy has suffered a painful

loss since 1989. This has been the loss of inter-allied security,

i.e., the end of the German national anomaly. Germany can no

longer hide behind the illusion of collective defense and, in

this connection, Bonn must now take responsibility for its own

security and politico-military affairs. While the German

political class has gradually become aware of these external

changes, they are still a long way from drawing the proper

conclusions for the determination of a sovereign German policy

and discerning national interests which support it. Directly

related to this is the concomitant necessity of recognizing the

changed basis of German defence policy, as well as Germany's

relations with its own armed forces, the Bundeswehr.

Until 1989, German security policy limited itself to a sort

of "contribution policy," Germany rendered first and foremost

contributions to the West's common interests. These contributions

were in the form of solidarity pronouncements, the Bundeswehr's

commitment (but perhaps not the will to actually use it in

battle), and of placing its own territory at the disposal of

allied armed forces. German foreign policy was, in large part,

nothing more than the co-administration of Alliance policy.

In terms of security and politico-military affairs, divided

Germany was mostly just along for the ride. This Cold War

mentality of "non-responsibility" was at first encouraged by

Bonn's alliance partners and international security

organizations; later, though, it was only tolerated. The Gulf War

showed that other capitals were no longer inclined to accept

Germany's ducking when military decisions had to be made. Also,

in July 1994 the Constitutional Court ended the Social Democratic

Party's (SPD) and the Free Democrat Party's (FDP) living a lie in

foreign policy, i.e., that the Bundeswehr could not participate

in military operations outside the NATO area.

Germany was, and still partially is, also on probation in

terms of foreign and security policy, since it is consistently

under external and internal political pressure of having to prove

its peacefulness. German and European history have been first and

foremost, wrote Thomas Kielinger, the history of political

rehabilitation. "The probationer from time to time makes soothing

and reassuring avowals, which served to signify that he has used

his probationary period well and has become a thoroughly changed
91

and reformed member of the 'Family of Man.'"1 If the wellgroomed, pin-striped pacifism of German diplomacy was, until the

end of the Cold War, a prerequisite for the international

acceptance of the growing economic power of Germany, this became,

in the second half of the 1980s, more and more of a collective

excuse as far as the assumption of military responsibility is

concerned.

Uncomfortable truths, allegedly contrary to the contemporary

mood, are still kept from the nation. The impression, moreover,

of dishonesty intrudes, especially in connection with Germans'

attitude toward the acceptance of their own military

responsibilities in the Balkans War. Because German soldiers

caused so much harm and suffering in the Balkans during World War

II, a deployment there was supposed to be taboo, or is now--after

the deployment of German fighter aircraft to Italy and a medical

unit to Split--still sensitive. Yet, by this argument, any future

Bundeswehr deployment could not be justified anywhere in and

around Europe, and these regions are the most important for

German security. In short, the German political class inflates

"guilt" in order to decline military participation. Only the

Germans, as a partner in the Western Alliance, allow themselves

this absurdity, according to the historian Hans-Peter Schwarz.

"After almost 50 years since the end of the war Germans are

vulnerable to propaganda about the war and still psychologically

blackmailable. More precisely, they are not blackmailed, but

rather they blackmail themselves by constantly raising the

specters of the Second World War."2 The fact is, however, what

happens and can happen in war is always deplorable and hideous.

But, as the basis of a new German defense policy, it remains

extremely questionable, as Hans-Peter Schwarz goes on to write,

"to allow contemporary foreign policy to be influenced by

collective feelings of long-past occurrences, in which our

grandfathers' generation was involved."3

Above all, the younger generation is more receptive than

published opinion would have us believe. At least, it is

difficult to get across to them why, of all countries, the one

that was partly established with the avowal "never again" stands

aside when once again states' right of self-determination (as in

Kuwait) or the human rights of ethnic groups (as in former

Yugoslavia) are disregarded. "The lesson of our history cannot be

that we content ourselves with bewilderment . . . when other

nations on our continent are prepared to act collectively to

maintain peace or protect threatened lives" writes the Chief of

Staff of the Bundeswehr, General Klaus Naumann.4

It is required, therefore, to begin by picking up the

threads of "positive orientation points" of German history, as

described by the contemporary historian Karl Dietrich Bracher,
92

The negative lessons from the period 1933-1945 were

certainly decisive for the older generation, foremost

as negative lessons of an earlier period of history.

They were motivating to make efforts to do it better;

they stood in constant contrast to the experiences of

the Weimar Era and the German dictatorship. Of course,

the same does not apply to that majority of the

population that has since been born. The majority has

another historical-political frame of reference. Their

different breadth of experience coincides with the

natural desire to want positive orientation points,

even in a fractured history.5

For German security policy, this means finding a way back to the

dignity and composure with which the political classes in Great

Britain, France and the United States are wont to act in times of

crisis.

The very foundation of the Bundeswehr was not based, or only

partly, on patriotic legitimation. German defence policy and the

Bundeswehr owe their legitimacy to the West's collectivelyperceived threat from the East Bloc. The Bonn jurist Josef

Isensee, an expert in constitutional law, pointed out the purely

functional legitimation. The establishment and mission of the

Bundeswehr, wrote Isensee, were

not ascribed to the Federal Republic as an individual

state, but rather to the Western alliance, in which the

Federal Republic was included from the outset. Whatever

remained of the Federal Republic's decision-making

powers, her armed forces were subject to supranational

control from the beginning; the Bundeswehr always

existed in a supranational context. The Bundeswehr was

not created for the sake of the Federal Republic;

rather, for the sake of the West.6

With that, the question of national self-assertion and the

identity crisis brought on by Germany's own divided statehood was

resolved in the framework of worldwide alliances and conflicts.

Yet to the extent that this global conflict has been overcome and

replaced by a web of international power and national interests

of a rather classical character, to the extent that normal

statehood has been created for the Germans, substantial

prerequisites have been met for the normalization of the

consideration of defense policy matters in Germany.

It is correct, of course, that the heroic pathos of national

sacrifice be worn out. A hedonistic society has become unfamiliar

(the Bundeswehr was created under the slogan Primat der Politik--

the primacy of politics--domesticated and even pacified) with the

former interpretation that military force is not just a means of
93

keeping external order, but at the same time, the moral

engagement itself of the nation. Yet, absent such a national

conscientious, the political class and citizens are dependent on

the understanding of their country as a strong democracy which is

necessary to protect and maintain society.

The Bundeswehr is, and will remain, the instrument, and

above all the symbol, of a protective and self-maintaining

society. It gives the nation its external form; as a society with

a common fate (according to Wolfgang Schäuble, the leader of the

Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU)

faction in the Bundestag) and--as the ultima ratio of politics—

its main virtue. At the same time, the political philosophical

concept of a strong democracy for the individual citizen becomes

visible and tangible in the armed forces. The Bundeswehr removes

the abstraction from the ideas of self-maintenance and risksharing and makes it a vivid process. The belief in the state as

a society bound by fate can also give political power back to the

concept of patriotism. It can also promote the public association

and helps to convey to the people, as the pillar of a democracy,

the sense of unity. This, of course, presupposes the renunciation

of the negative patriotism of the old Federal Republic, which was

chiefly coupled with the flight from national self-preservation,

and questioning the legitimacy of the Bundeswehr by advocates of

such a creed.

Of course, in a time of increasing potential for conflict at

the edges of Europe, of modern long-range missile technology and

the spread of weapons of mass destruction, national selfpreservation remains firmly tied with NATO and an alliance with

the only remaining superpower and most faithful friend of the

Germans, the United States. Only in an alliance of like-minded

nations sharing common values can the global-strategic dangers to

national sovereignty be overcome. This necessitates an equal

partnership within the Western Alliance; i.e., neither privileges

for one, nor special rights of abstention for others. The

inclination toward self-preservation is not, therefore, a means

for a nationalist-isolationist German defense policy. Rather, the

first requirement for a equal and sovereign Germany is

participation in international politics through active

participation in key security organizations, i.e., NATO, European

Union and United Nations.

Nation-Europe-Western Alliance: Germany's foreign and

security policies follow from this triad. General Naumann

formulated this connection in the following manner: "The Germans

need...a healthy measure of patriotism, to hold their own in the

international community. We can guarantee integration and

multinationality of the armed forces only if we acknowledge

ourselves as Germans."7

 Yet, this inclination towards selfassertion, writes Hans-Peter Schwarz in his book on the forgotten
94

use of power amongst German elites, presupposes just such a "love

of the Fatherland."

That is also the willingness to sacrifice and take

risks. Where the old republican virtues are forgotten,

however, where they are only cause for mockery or

concern, it cannot be expected that a people stands

firm in the maelstrom of power politics in the long

run.8

Germany is a steadfast member of the Western Alliance.

Without NATO, every German government would lack the foundation

for sovereignly-designed foreign and security policies. Both as a

non-nuclear power and a medium military power in the centre of

Europe, Germany remains dependent on a common and partially

integrated security and defence policies.

But do the armed forces and command organizations of NATO

and the Bundeswehr accurately reflect the altered political

landscape? Will Germany, measured by its military contributions

to Alliance defence, be treated as an equal amongst equals? Or,

are not adherents of the old school of thought to be found,

primarily in the armed forces, whose views are stamped by

mistrust of the democratic maturity of Germans and therefore

integrate the Bundeswehr more into NATO formations, even more

than is militarily necessary, than all other armed forces in the

Alliance?

NATO was organized multinationally at the command and

control level for good reason. With the end of the Cold War,

command and control should have been assigned to the largest

western formation, the corps; when necessary, at the division

level. However, neither in NATO's Southern nor in the Northern

Command Regions is there any sign of multinational corps being

organized; only in the Central Region <F"NewBrunswick">--<F255>

in Germany. Although multinationalism is advocated by all NATO

members, Germany remains the only country in Europe in which

foreign ground troops are stationed in great numbers. The result

is that on the territory of the old Federal Republic, the

Bundeswehr no longer has a single corps designated solely for

national use. Only in the new eastern states, and then only as an

interim measure, does an all-German combined army/home defence

corps exist, due to the "Two-plus-Four" Treaty. Germany,

has fallen into a situation which the federal

government always wanted to avoid: Germany being the

odd man out. Only in Germany do large numbers of

foreign troops remain stationed, and only German corps

lose their homogeneity through the resolution to

establish multinational corps.9
95

Other nations within NATO are giving up their national corps

organizations, but these are without exception countries with

small land armies. In this context of multinationality, the

Bundeswehr adheres to one future principle above all else:

contributions to large multinational units. These large units are

the ones which other nations, having radically reduced their own

ground forces, allow themselves to occupy General Officers'

positions that, based on the size of their armies, they have no

claim to. No other army in NATO has their units in such a

confusion of attachments to other units as the Bundeswehr. This

means that the German army, besides having to deal with the

reduction from formerly 42 to 22 standing brigades, must also

accomplish the mission of the hitherto organized 12 divisions and

three purely German army corps.

The Bundeswehr also has to deal with a military

multiculturalism, which goes to the core of the armed forces'

conviction. Just as parts of the Maastricht Treaty consider

Germany's integration for its own sake (and to reassure other

European countries following unification), and thus place a

burden on Germany for the thoroughly-reasonable idea of "European

unification," there exists a similar situation regarding military

integration. The Bundeswehr will be so integrated that it is

threatened with losing its own German identity. In essence, the

Bundeswehr has become not an instrument of the alliance and for

the sovereign reshaping of German foreign policy and interests;

rather, it is part of an anonymous and opaque military apparatus.

This all results in a weakening amongst the troops (and

especially in the officer corps) of the conviction of service to

the Fatherland, of serving in an important institutional part of

society. Whether the Bundeswehr, already financially strapped,

can attract those people it would like to recruit is

questionable. There is a similar concern about the convictions of

society. The further the Bundeswehr is detached from society's

purpose of national self-preservation and is internationalized,

the more its underlying social ethos and patriotic foundation

will be weakened.

The question of militarily-superfluous integration of the

armed forces also implies a further question, namely, the

national command capabilities of the Bundeswehr. During the Cold

War, when only the Bundeswehr's deployment as part of NATO in the

Central Region was imaginable, there was no need for extensive

national command and control. Yet here, too, the decisive turning

point in 1989 brought with it a drastic change. In the meantime,

international deployments of the Bundeswehr in the Gulf region,

in aiding the Iraqi Kurds, in Cambodia, and Somalia make clear

that the Bundeswehr needs its own planning and command

organizations in addition to the NATO integrated command

structure. It is simply incomprehensible that the largest
96

industrial nation in Europe conducts its operations outside NATO

from various sections within the Ministry of Defense, without a

standing "J-3" operational staff. The individual services have,

in the meantime, established operational commands of their own,

but a command organization encompassing all branches of service,

better known as a General Staff, is lacking. Also missing are

extensive strategic reconnaissance capabilities. For the sake of

Germany's ability to act internationally, politicians must

finally come to grips with the question of a central, national

armed forces command (i.e., a J-3) with a national military

commander at its head.

In a system threatened by power, an opposing power is

indispensable for self-preservation and stability. The use of

force and power in the protection of freedom places an obligation

on a democracy, is an integral part thereof, and belongs to

European tradition since the Declaration of Human and Civil

Rights of 1789, whose twelfth Article states: "The guarantee of

human and civil rights requires military forces. This authority

is thus to be employed for the common good, not for the private

use of those in command of this authority." The German

constitution, or Basic Law, has incorporated this tradition by

making all governmental authority, including military power,

serve to protect the dignity of man.

This part of the tradition of enlightenment and humanism,

the descendants of which they like to characterize themselves as,

was disavowed by the German Left and the FDP with their ParlorProgressiveness. The former Foreign Minister and leading FDP

politician, Hans-Dietrich Genscher (Bonn's foreign minister for

fair-weather international politics), especially tried to

construct a distinction between bad "power politics" and good

"responsible politics". This distinction was cultivated to the

limit by a political class that has forgotten the use of power.

Moreover, the desire for self-preservation, the protection of

national interests, and a sovereignly-designed security policy

are tightly bound up with an enlightened and normal understanding

of responsible power politics.

Such power politics do not mean a return to inept

"Wilhelmine" German statecraft, but rather to an orientation of

one's own development of power toward the values of peace,

freedom, and human-rights, as well as the protection of the outer

shell of sovereign freedom, i.e., the state and therewith the

maintenance of national and alliance self-determination. To this

extent, patriotism and constitutional patriotism should merge to

form the foundation of society's right to act. Patriotism and the

concept of a stable democracy externally and internally derived

from "constitution patriotism," love of one's own liberal

constitution, complement one another. Then primarily this

conviction of democratically legitimate stability, taught and
97

cultivated in schools and universities and protected from the

irresponsible media, is the non-waiveable basic condition of life

in all open societies.

In international relations, only legitimated power can

create and secure the conditions of a nation's own liberty, in

which rules are made and enforced so that the liberty of one

state can co-exist with the liberty of another. This requires a

renunciation by the political class of the concept of the state

as a domesticated leviathan, from considering it as a collective

colony of sharecroppers. The political class needs to return to

that democratic strength that is characteristic of all

historically-anchored democracies, as it, and it alone, can

protect a society from extremism, whether internal or external.

But as long as security policy is managed primarily with a

small-group mentality, a new German attitude towards the politics

of power is not possible. Hans-Peter Schwarz writes in his

analysis of Germans' understanding of power that

small-group mentality and morality have, of course,

their high, positive significance; in family circles,

amongst friends, in the neighborhood, in the work

place, in the company of those politically like-minded

or of the same faith. But their naïve transference has

a corruptive effect on political institutions, on the

state and on relations between states. There, a

different ethos is required: watchfulness, battlereadiness, capability of enforcement, a sense of

justice and power relations and rationality, prudent

assessment, imperturbability.10

These principles, within the framework of a new German security

policy, need to be transmitted to society. The extent to which

substantial portions of the pertinent university education, of

so-called "peace research," of political education, of the

churches and their affiliated institutions, predominantly develop

and pass on moralizing, unrealistic, distorted ideas about

international power cannot be overlooked.

Germany needs a clear voice regarding real-life balance of

power, the risks to its existence, and the necessity of

developing its own power nationally and in the EuropeanTransatlantic alliance. If the broadest possible consensus about

the foundations of policy, with the balance of power at its

centre, can be attained, then the acceptance of the resulting

defence burdens, the deployment of the Bundeswehr, as well as the

deployment and preservation of the Western Alliance, can also be

attained. For example, a public convinced of the need for a

military operation in Bosnia may be more likely to accept

increased levels of flight training or other military exercises
98

in their own country.

Alas, one hesitates to speak of uncomfortable things. This

is why a large segment of the political class in Germany has lost

the understanding of war as an ultima ratio, as sometimes the

only remaining alternative to the impotent tolerance of foreign

aggression. Just as with George Orwell's New-Speak, all military

terms and even allegedly-military symbolisms are embellished,

demilitarized and in part made taboo. With the Neue Wache (the

national memorial) in Berlin, a game of hide-and-seek is being

played with the Bundeswehr and an honor guard. A national command

bunker, such as all normal countries possess, is now thought to

be superfluous by SPD and CDU politicians; even the conservative

Defence Minister Volker Ruhe prefers to speak not of defense

policy and politico-military affairs, but (in the spirit of the

times of political-correctness) of a "defense culture." Perhaps

in the future the idea of military operations, of the fight for

one's own existence on the field of battle, will be changed to

the phrase "battle culture"?

This changing phraseology reveals the warped self-esteem of

German security policy: the Germans are responsible for peace and

other nations for war. Faced with conflicts beyond its own

horizons, German foreign policy, especially those on the German

Left, reacts charitably and rhetorically; usually, resolutions

are demanded from international organizations, as well as aid for

the victims of violence and the population suffering from war;

i.e., international humanitarian aid. Amongst the German

political class, wars are understood as catastrophes, not as a

process whose causes and the inherent test of forces often make a

peaceful settlement impossible. Accordingly, German policy

searches for peaceful solutions even in those cases where only

soldiers can help to end the violence.

 This German idiosyncrasy, to understand foreign policy as a

sort of international "social work," has just as negative an

effect on the political understanding of the use of military

power as it does on the self-esteem of the Bundeswehr. More and

more, "humanitarian operation" is spoken of as a pretence for the

existence of the Bundeswehr, while its primary military mission

and the consequences of its use are suppressed. The result is

that the Bundeswehr is increasingly becoming a sort of technical

relief organization in battle dress. Such an understanding of the

Bundeswehr is morally extremely chic; humanitarian "troops"

settle the conscience of those politically responsible ("We sent

German soldiers to the aid of the suffering") and simultaneously

relieves politicians of the perhaps difficult but necessary

decisions of war and peace. Humanitarian aid, however, presupposes a certain amount of order which, in turn, cannot be

established by humanitarian means.
99

The misfortune of humanitarian aid for the victims of war in

the recent past is that some third parties do not want to bring

about order, but only to help in "humanitarian" ways. The trend

is growing stronger to use the armed forces to air-drop supplies,

procure them by ship, and distribute them by soldiers. Yet the

cause for this operation, aggression, is something no-one wants

to directly oppose.

In short, the phrase, "the armed forces on a humanitarian

mission" is nothing more than an expression to help the Left and

Bundeswehr-critics, but which causes needless confusion; armed

forces exist, as the name implies, for fighting in armed

conflicts. They can provide assistance through technical means

after natural catastrophes, which one could call "humanitarian."

When third parties intervene in armed inter- or intranational

conflicts to end the war, this can only be understood in a

further sense of "humanitarian intervention." But if traditional

German foreign policy shrinks away from that and wants the

Bundeswehr to do solely charitable work, then this is nothing

more than a flight from responsibility and the realities of

international politics and a denial of the essentil role of armed

forces--to use force to deter war or bring about a decisive end

to the conflict.

Beyond that, a break with another taboo is necessary for a

new German defense policy: the assertion that having national

interests is something for morally second-class nations.

Especially in the German Left, the impression is aroused that the

use of military force is legitimate only when it no longer

follows from national decision-making, but rather results from a

collective organization. The United Nations especially, by this

argument, receives the rank of a supranational court of justice.

Undoubtedly, the UN remains an important international influence

on potential hot-spots. Yet, the main point is that, whoever sets

his stock in "world domestic policy" and demands a UN resolution

for every Bundeswehr and NATO out-of-area operation must know to

what and to whom he is making his policy hostage. The concept of

a "world domestic policy" means, in the final analysis, forgoing

the essence of one's own sovereignty in foreign and security

policy, as Raymond Aron has defined it. According to Aron,

sovereign states are political units, which claim the right to be

their own judge and sole master of the decision to fight or not

to fight.11 Certainly, German membership in the European Union and

NATO means the transference of sovereignty in foreign and

security policy to an international organization, yet here it is

considered much more as a democratic legitimation, the

possibility of exerting influence and control, as well as sharing

a fundamental identity of values, and especially interests.

But in the course of a "world domestic policy," Germany

would be laying its freedom of decision-making about the
100

protection of German and Allied interests in a body in which, of

the almost 180 members in the General Assembly, the majority

represent dictators and authoritarian regimes, and in whose

Security Council such potentially difficult nations as Russia and

China can use their veto at any time; their veto against measures

that could possibly be of great importance to German, European,

or transatlantic interests. What is thus required is the removal

of the UN from its pedestal, and the enlightenment of the German

public that the UN is nothing more than a body for the channeling

of diverse interests on the basis of an international law

inclined toward euphemism. But in this game, only he who has a

clear idea of his national interests can participate and codetermine the rules.

If, nevertheless, one listens to the Leader of the

Opposition in the Bundestag, the SPD politician Rudolf Scharping,

then only "other nations undertake specific interventions out of

national interests." Germany, however, according to the SPD

politician, who assumes the attitude of a morally-pure

politician, "ought to differ from this."12 Thus, according to this

view, national interests are, in principle, reprehensible. One

can thus awaken uneasiness and fritter away one's international

reputation as a reliable alliance partner; then the international

uneasiness about German policies that arises from time-to-time

comes from the suspicion that an excess of idealism in politics

is either a sign of being out of touch with reality or a strategy

of camouflaging interests that one does not really want to talk

about.

It is an old German phenomenon to hold itself politically

and morally above its alliance partners, who are corrupted by

their interests and political pragmatism. Alliance partners are

especially disconcerted by this verdict and react with mistrust

to a Germany that rejects that normality, as British Foreign

Minister Douglas Hurd has characterized it for his country:

"British foreign policy has the task of protecting and promoting

British interests. Despite the changes in the world, this

fundamental truth has not changed. The question, what Britain's

interests are, must be answered by each generation anew."13

This normality, in the context of its own interests, is

central to the understanding of German security policy and

politico-military affairs. That this normality has not yet been

reached is less a question of morality, but rather fear of the

possible consequences; the determination of national interests

leads to the necessity of actively shaping the international

surroundings, on which the security and prosperity of the Germans

depends. It also leads to the necessity of having to act or

decide on a sovereign basis, including the risk of making the

wrong decision. The determination of national interests leads

directly to a changed understanding of military power and the use
101

of the armed forces, as well as how they are to be equipped and

financially supported. Such a new German defense policy will be

more expensive; this is what deters a nation that draws its sense

of self-worth from the growth-rate of its leisure time, and from

the recognition of its political normality.

Notes

Author's Note: This essay is an updated and modified version

of an earlier work which appeared in German as "Macht und

Moralität: Uber eine neue deutsche Sicherheitspolitik," in Heimo

Schwilk and Ulrich Schacht, eds., Die Selbstbewusste Nation,

Berlin: Ullstein, 1994. The essay was translated by Mr. Daniel

Weisbaum through the generous support of the US Defense Nuclear

Agency.

1. Thomas Kielinger, "Der Golf-Krieg und die Folgen aus

deutscher Sicht," Aussenpolitik, Vol. 42, No. 3, 1991, pp. 244-

245.

2. Die Welt (Hamburg), March 1, 1994.

3. Ibid.

4. Klaus Naumann, Die Bundeswehr in einer Welt im Umbruch,

Berlin: Siedler Verlag 1994, p. 215.

5. Karl Dietrich Bracher, "Zeitgeschichte Erfahrungen als

Actuelles Problem," Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, Vol. B11/87,

March 14, 1987, p. 6.

6. Josef Isensee, "The Law and the Liberty of the German

People,"G4

 in Dieter Wellershoff, ed., Frieden ohne Macht, Bonn: Bouvier

1991, p. 66.

7. Naumann, p. 211.

8. Hans-Peter Schwartz, Die Gezzaehmten deutschen: von der

Macht bessesseheit zur Macht vergessenheit, Stuttgart: DVA, 1985,

p. 163.

9. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 24, 1993.

10. Schwartz, p. 165.

11. Raymond Aron, Peace and War: A Theory of International

Relations, trans. by Richard Howard and Annette Baker Fox, Garden

City, NY: Doubleday, 1966, p. 8.

12 Die Zeit (Hamburg), September 3, 1993.
102

13. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 25, 1993.
103

About the Contributors

Donald Abenheim is an Associate Professor, Department of National

Security Affairs, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA. He is

the author of the Reforging the Iron Cross: The Search for

Tradition in the West German Armed Forces. He received his Ph.D.

from Stanford University.

Robert H. Dorff is an Associate Professor, Department of

Political Science and Public Administration, North Carolina State

University. From 1994 to 1996, he was a Visiting Professor of

Foreign Policy, Department of National Security and Strategy, US

Army War College. He received his Ph.D. from the University of

North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Michael J. Inacker is Chief Correspondent for Welt am Sonntag, a

Hamburg-based weekly newspaper. He is the author of a work

describing Bonn's contribution to the Gulf War, Unter Ausschluss

der Öffenlichkeit: Die Deutschen in der Golfallianz, Bonn:

Bouvier Verlag, 1991. He holds a Ph.D. from the RheinischeFriedrich- Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn.

Karl-Heinz Kamp is Head of the Foreign and Security Policy

Section within the Department of Political Research of the

Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Sankt Augustin, Germany. He holds a

Ph.D. from the Universität der Bundeswehr, Hamburg.

Franz-Josef Meiers is a Fellow, Forschungsinstitut der Deutschen

Gesellschaft fur Auswärtige Politik (Research Institute of the

German Society for Foreign Policy) in Bonn. He received his Dr.

phil. from the University of Munster.

Thomas-Durell Young is a Research Professor, National Security

Affairs, Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College. He

received his Ph.D. from the Graduate Institute of International

Studies, University of Geneva.