The Politics of German Defence and Security
Policy Leadership and IsAilitary Reform in the Post Cold War Era
Tom Dyson
Knihovní systém Claviiis
Ústav mezinárodních «tahu, v.v.i.
Při, zMíí
j j ■■> V ŕ
Berghahn Books
NEW YORK • OX HORU
4258000555167
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Chapter 2
The Bundeswehr in its Historical and Structural Context
The Scope for Policy Leadership
This chapter seeks to give more specificity to explanations of policy leadership in military reform by focusing on the domestic parameters of policy leadership in the Bundeswehr, analyzing its distinctive characteristics as a 'policy subsystem', and its interactions with related policy subsystems and the wider macropolitical system in which it is nested.1 The chapter emphasises how the institutional organisation of the military, and defence and security policy, foreign policy, and budgetary policy, the relationship to NATO and to the European Union, determines the scope for, and nature of, policy leadership in Bundeswehr reform.
The Bundeswehr Policy Subsystem
The Bundeswehr can be characterised as a subsystem both separate from and nested within the larger subsystem of German defence and security policy. Though its boundaries are pervious, it represents a distinct set of actors and organisations that interact regularly to influence policy formulation and implementation within their policy domain.2 This policy domain embraces, in addition to the armed forces, the defence administration, the armaments sector, military pastoral work, and the administration of military justice. The Bundeswehr is a 'mature' subsystem in that it has existed for
decades as a common reference point for action.3 Its properties, notably its ethos of professional consensus and reflective practice, are different from those of the defence and security subsystem in which it is nested.
Crucially, the Bundeswehr policy subsystem and the wider defence and security policy subsystem are nested within a framework of constitutional law. Called the Basic Law, it shapes the identity of the policy subsystem and reflects the imprint of the catastrophe of the Nazi period in setting the terms of debate about the Bundeswehr. Article 26 bans preparations for a war of aggression, acts. In this spirit, article 115a-l regulates the definition and declaration of 'a state of defence' (rather than a 'state of war') and its implications for the functioning of political institutions.4 Article 115a is also crucial in reinforcing parliamentary control and oversight of a definition and declaration of a state of defence. It requires a two-thirds majority of Bundestag votes and the consent of the second chamber, the Bundesrat. These provisions are to be understood in terms of 'the determination to promote world peace' outlined in the Basic Law's preamble. Taken together, they promote a historically rooted conception of the identity of the Bundeswehr and the expertise that it requires. This conception stresses an orientation to territorial defence (article 115a) and to peace and humanitarian missions (the preamble and article 26).5
A Shared Identity
The Bundeswehr has the four key attributes of a policy subsystem.6 Firstly, the relevant actors regard themselves as a semi-autonomous community, sharing a domain of expertise and a policy identity. Key actors include the defence minister, the Ministry's planning staff, the general inspector of the Bundeswehr (and his deputy and the inspectors of the individual armed forces), the defence commissioner of the Bundestag, members of the Bundestag Defence Committee, and the Bundeswehr universities in Hamburg and Munich, responsible for officer training. According to Article 65a of the Basic Law, the defence minister is the commander of the armed forces during peacetime and the highest military superior over all soldiers.7 Its shared identity as a policy subsystem has three roots. First, it derives from the key constitutional provisions regulating national defence. Secondly, shared identity within the Bundeswehr policy subsystem is influenced by the way in which it is nested exclusively within the NATO command structure. Consequently, and to a greater extent than any other German policy subsystem, it is exposed to a U.S. and NATO preoccupatipn with threat assessment, deterrence, and war-fighting capacity. This simultaneous nesting within domestic constitutional thinking and NATO/U.S. doctrines creates an ambiguity within Bundeswehr identity that is less noticeable within the Foreign Ministry. It contrasts with the Foreign Ministry's emphasis on a 'civilian
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power' that rests on a symmetry or 'fit' of security policy conceptions between the EU and the UN and German constitutional thinking. 3 Over issues like modernisation of short-range nuclear weapons in 1988 to 1989 and NATO eastern enlargement in the 1990s, the Defence Ministry proved willing to mobilise Washington's support against the Foreign Ministry.
Thirdly, the shared identity comes from the notions of the Bundeswehr as 'citizens in uniform' and innere Führung ('inner leadership'), both closely bound up with conscription.9 The strength of embeddedness of these notions in the policy subsystem owed much to the fact that their two main proponents since 1951, General Count Wolf von Baudissin and General Ulrich de Maiziere, served as Bundeswehr Generalinspekteuren?0 It is also reinforced by the work of the defence commissioner of the Bundestag in safeguarding the rights of soldiers.
The notions of'citizens in uniform' and of innere Führung are given statutory form in the Law Governing the Legal Status of Soldiers [Soldatengesetz) of March 1956 (amended 1975) and the Military Appeal (Complaints) Act of December 1956. Of particular note are the provisions relating to a soldier's rights, commitment to the 'free democratic basic order', obedience, comradeship, the duties of a superior officer, the right of complaint, and the right to continuing general and professional training. In addition, a Ministry of Defence regulation of 1972 clarified the principles and practice of innere Führung. The shared value system of the Bundeswehr is also regulated by the directive on the problem of traditions in the armed forces, issued by the Defence Ministry in September 1982. Taken together they manifest a concern with a Bundeswehr that, in the words of the 1982 directive, is oriented 'toward the suffering of the persecuted and the humiliated', 'political participation and common responsibility, awareness of democratic values, judgment without prejudice, tolerance, readiness and ability to discuss the ethical aspects of military service, the will for peace', 'the active contribution to the shaping of democracy through the role of the soldier as a citizen', and 'an open-minded attitude to social change and the readiness for contact with the civilian citizen'."
These sources of shared identity are important in influencing the dominant ideas about how the Bundeswehr should operate. Notably, these ideas stress the primacy of the experience of members of the Bundeswehr as the source of valid knowledge rather than the primacy of externally generated research findings. This affects the Bundeswehr policy subsystem in two ways. First, the notions of 'citizens in uniform' and innere Führung encourage self-criticism by soldiers of their own practice in an open, collegiate manner, supported by the regular reviews of the Bundestag defence commissioner, resulting in 'reflective practice' in the Bundeswehr.12 Secondly, the Bundeswehr is strongly oriented around the generation of professional
consensus.13 The result is an emphasis on bringing together key professionals to agree on common positions, for instance in Bundeswehr conferences. These two models of reflective practice and of professional consensus support a high degree of autonomy and resilience of the Bundeswehr as a professional policy subsystem.
The Bundeswehr and Policy Learning
The second key attribute of a policy subsystem is that the relevant actors have also sought to influence Bundeswehr policy over a long period of time and engage in policy learning. Policy learning within the subsystem is strongly conditioned by the operational experience of the Bundeswehr. This learning process was stimulated by political decisions during the 1990s to commit more troops to 'out-of-area' operations of a peace-making and humanitarian nature. The result was an internal dynamic of learning, leading to pressures for policy change from within the policy subsystem relating to the Bundeswehr's role and structure. Under Rühe and Scharping political leadership found itself caught up in responding to this 'bottom up' learning process. In particular, two operational issues suggested the need for new types of expertise: the problems of protecting civilian populations in a context of aggressors and victims; and the requirements of involvement in civil-military cooperation projects aimed at reconstruction. New operational experiences of this nature have generated fresh internal policy narratives about the Bundeswehr.
The Bundeswehr at the Federal and Land Levels
Thirdly, within the Defence Ministry, Chancellor's Office, and the Bundestag Defence Committee, there are specialised units dealing with the Bundeswehr. On occasion the Defence Committee constitutes itself as a special Committee of Investigation to probe possible policy failures, such as claims of extreme-right-wing infiltration of the Bundeswehr in 1997.14 However, its investigative activities have had more to do with auditing the reflective practices and professional consensus within the Bundeswehr to ensure that guidelines are effective, than with developing and applying new, externally generated policy ideas to the Bundeswehr.
Within the 16 Länder (state) governments key actors are also drawn into Bundeswehr policy, which affects Länder territorial and economic interests, especially through base closures.'5 These bases involve close ties between the military and locals and become an important focus of community relations, often sustaining thousands of jobs.16 Hence the local politicallnterests oi Länder politicians and Bundestag members are at stake. The politics of base closures has proved especially problematic for Bundeswehr reformers, strongly engaging the interests of Länder Economics Ministries and Chancelleries.
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The development of German participation in peacekeeping missions has also drawn Länder Interior Ministries and the Federal Border Police into closer association with the Bundeswehr. This reflects the increasing involvement of civilian police contingents in peacekeeping. Germany seconded police officers to missions in Cambodia, Namibia, and Western Sahara. More important was the increasing scale of such contributions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Afghanistan. This contribution was part of the process by which the Bundeswehr was drawn into civil-military cooperation projects through peacekeeping.
The Bundeswehr and Civil Society
Finally, interest groups, and specialised subunits within interest groups, regard the Bundeswehr as an important issue. The Bundeswehr has its own professional association to represent its collective interests. Also, the churches, youth organisations, and the trade unions take an interest in Bundeswehr policy. The development of peacekeeping operations has increased the involvement of civil society with the Bundeswehr, especially as the Foreign Ministry, supported by the Bundestag, has led attempts to strengthen the civilian component. Relief organisations, like the Malteser Hilfsdienst and the Johanniter-Unfall-Hilfe, have played a role in providing medical care services and supporting civil-military projects in developing health services.
A range of social groups, including the Länder, have an interest in the practice by which conscientious objectors are allowed to do ziviler Ersatzdienst (community service) by working in hospitals and care homes for the elderly and the disabled. This represents a large pool of cheap labor that helps underpin German social services. Bundeswehr reform has financial as well as community-wide implications and links to the social policy subsystem and the concerns of the Ministry for Family, the Elderly, Woman and Youth. These implications were not lost on the SPD and on the social wing of the CDU, for which there was an important social dimension to Bundeswehr policy. Key SPD policy makers feared that a professional volunteer army could lead not just to higher defence spending but to higher social policy spending. This prospect threatened major electoral consequences and set constraints on the capacity of SPD leaders to act as policy entrepreneurs on behalf of a volunteer professional army {see chapters 3, 4 and 5).17
A number of research institutes (such as institutes for peace and conflict research in Frankfurt and Hamburg) and specialised units within institutes (such as the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik] deal with Bundeswehr issues. Potentially they are a source of new policy ideas and long-term influence over the context in which Bundeswehr policy is debated. However, compared to the United States, there are relatively few research institutions
working in this policy subsystem, and 'think tanks' have had a minor role in Bundeswehr reform, and wider defence and security policy issues.
A powerful structure of business interests also depends on Bundeswehr policy and its implications for armaments' procurement. The role and the structure of the Bundeswehr has direct bearing on their commercial interests, and Länder in which these armaments companies are heavily represented, notably Bavaria, Lower Saxony and North Rhine Westphalia, are concerned with promoting their interests.18
Hence the Bundeswehr policy subsystem embraces a wide range of economic and social as well as political interests that had to be taken into account by policy leaders. In the German case, compared to that of the United States, a key feature is the absence of a pivotal role for research institutes in developing new thinking, policy narratives, or 'causal stories' that can be taken up by policy leaders to make sense of ill-defined, problematic situations.19 To the extent that new policy narratives have emerged, they have done so from the ground upward through the operational experience of the Bundeswehr in peace-keeping operations, notably in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan.
Interlocking and Nested Policy Subsystems: Defence, Security, Foreign, and Budgetary Policy
The opportunities for, and constraints on, policy leadership over Bundeswehr reform are conditioned by the complex interactions between this policy subsystem and related subsystems. These interactions take two forms. First, the Bundeswehr is part of the larger defence and security policy subsystem, which overlaps with the foreign and security policy subsystem. Secondly, both the Bundeswehr and the defence and security policy subsystems are nested within NATO and increasingly the EU. The Bundeswehr is appropriately seen as a distinct subsystem from NATO and the EU in that innere Führung is seen as a German innovation and conscription as part of a German concept of the 'citizen in uniform'. In short, Bundeswehr policy is an expression of a sense of a specific national identity and national sovereignty. In addition, only a small proportion of those involved with Bundeswehr policy are actively involved in NATO policy.
The Bundeswehr and the Defence and Security Policy Subsystem
At the time of unification and the end of the Cold War, territorial defence and conscription were the dominant concepts in the Bundeswehr policy subsystem. They found legitimation in the postwar 'bloc' system, in which Germany, as a result of Adenauer's diplomacy, was locked in the pro-West
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camp.20 Moreover, Germany was a distinctively exposed part of the Western bloc because of its borders with the Eastern bloc and the uniquely exposed position of West Berlin. Hence Germany was structurally vulnerable and highly dependent on collective NATO commitment to its territorial defence. Territorial defence was bound up with the notion of an ideological commitment to defend a way of life based on freedom against communism. In short, territorial defence and postwar political identity were closely interwoven. More practically, German leaders prided themselves on having the largest European army in NATO, some 500,000 men, including 220,000 conscripts.
The policy subsystem of the Bundeswehr was nested within the wider policy subsystem of defence and security, characterised by a number of key features. These key features include the constitutionally enshrined rules within which it operates, notably the Basic Law's Preamble and article 26. Not least, German defence and security policies are committed: 'to promote world peace as an equal partner in a united Europe'. The Basic Law enshrines three basic principles: The exclusive power of the federation to establish the armed forces and subject them to rigorous political control; the defensive aim of German defence and security policies, and finally the principles both of compulsory military service, if need be, and of the right of conscientious objection, linked to the obligation to serve a ziviler Ersatzdienst.2i
The second key feature is the pivotal position of the Defence Ministry and its institutional interest in its autonomy in the conduct of its affairs, supported by article 65 of the Basic Law. Because of its origins in the debate about rearmament in the context of NATO entry, the Defence Ministry had a traditionally strong NATO orientation and a deep commitment to deterrence doctrine.22 Interestingly, it is the only federal ministry lacking a European policy unit, whether in the form of a division or even a section (Referai). Over time, Europeanisation pressures have grown, notably through the Franco-German Defence Council, Eurocorps, integration of the WEU into the EU's structures, the development of the ESDP's institutional machinery in Brussels and its Rapid Reaction Force and joint defence procurement projects.
It also possesses all of the attributes of a mature' policy subsystem listed above, including, not least, a policy learning process after German unification that led to a gradual redefinition of identity. Earlier, policy identity had been founded on territorial defence and the capacity to mobilise large numbers of ground troops for this purpose. During the 1990s, this notion began to give way to the idea of a crisis-reaction, mission-oriented Bundeswehr, capable of taking on international responsibilities. This doctrinal reorientation meant a more mobile, highly-trained Bundeswehr taking on tasks of cri-
sis management and humanitarian action, in which policing the safety of civilian populations became a priority.
The subsystem is characterised by a relatively low incentive for senior politicians to interest themselves in defence policy, given the low prestige of military values in German public life and the minor position given to defence in the priorities of the public. Far more attractive in career terms was specialisation in economic, employment, and social policy issues, given the greater importance that electors assigned to them.23
Consequently, only a small number of politicians seeking or gaining senior office had experience and expertise in defence and security policy. Among chancellors, only Helmut Schmidt (1974-82) had earlier been defence minister and took an active, highly-informed interest. During the 1950s, bitter debates about German rearmament and the formation of the Bundeswehr generated a group of politicians with a defence expertise: notably Fritz Erler and Carlo Schmid in the SPD; Erich Mende in the FDP; and Konrad Adenauer and Franz Josef Strauss within the CDU/CSU. However, Willy Brandt, Helmut Kohl, and Gerhard Schroder did not show much enthusiasm for this policy sector. On the whole, chancellors and party leaders were reluctant to become identified with military issues, for electoral as well as historical reasons. There was no electoral incentive for a German chancellor or chancellor candidate to present her/himself as leader of a 'warrior' nation.
The sensitivity to rearmament and deployment issues, especially on the left, underpinned a general 'culture of restraint' within the defence and security policy subsystem.24 Examples include the issues of the European Defence Community and NATO during the early 1950s; the debate between 1959 and 1960 about whether the Bundeswehr should be equipped with tactical nuclear weapons; the early 1980s debate over deployment of American Pershing and Cruise missiles on German soil; the 1985 debate about the U.S.'s proposed Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI); the issue of modernisation of short-range tactical nuclear weapons in 1988 to 1989; the Gulf War of 1991; the Kosovo War of 1999; the Afghan War of 2001; and the Iraq crisis.
Over the period since 1983, on average some 70 to 80 percent of Germans wish to remain within NATO.25 This support was distinguished from a much more critical attitude toward war-fighting strategies, and missile and troop deployments, that might be seen as offensive rather than defensive. This attitude was strongly represented among German intellectuals and students, who were prepared to take to the streets in huge demonstrations. The Pershing and Cruise deployments were implemented against public opinion but legitimated in terms of NATO loyalty.26 Despite NATO loyalty, 'war' was a deeply emotional issue for a people still living in the trauma of the Second World War. Notions of associating the Bundeswehr with a strategy of
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preemptive military action of the kind outlined by the Bush Administration in 2002 threatened high domestic political costs.27
Within the defence and security policy subsystem three distinct policy narratives arose, based on contending definitions of the principal source of security threat. For the 'freedom' coalition the threat came from the enemies of Western values (the Soviet empire and then 'rogue' states); for the 'peace' coalition the threat derived from the spiral of violence' associated with the military-industrial complex; and for the 'pacifist' coalition the threat was U.S. power. The presence of these advocacy coalitions distinguished this policy subsystem from the professional, more consensual, character of the Bundeswehr policy subsystem.
The work of research institutes like the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik (DGAP) fed into these advocacy coalitions. However, it was more important in sustaining and adapting their shared beliefs than in generating new policy ideas. In the U.S., by contrast, a range of think tanks played an active pace-setting role in defence and security policy ideas and agenda change, such as the Brookings Institution, at the heart of the 'liberal' coalition, and the Heritage Foundation at the centre of the traditional 'conservative' coalition. There were no German equivalents for these. Also, there is not the same circulation of people and ideas between Defence Ministry and think tanks as in the U.S., seen, for instance, in the influence of actors like Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz on behalf of the U.S. neoconservative agenda. Nor does the German defence industry play an important role in funding think tanks. More important in the German case is the role of the party foundations like the SPD's Friedrich Eben Stiftung and the CDU's Konrad Adenauer Stiftung in organising debates around defence and security policy. They provide a platform for the exchange of ideas rather than an independent research and thinktank capacity that seeks to shape the political imagination.
The Bundeswehr and the Budgetary and Foreign Policy Subsystems
Because it was so nested within defence and security policy the Bundeswehr was affected by three key aspects of the interaction of this larger policy subsystem with other subsystems. Firstly, defence and security was nested within the budgetary policy subsystem. From the very origins of the postwar Bundeswehr, the Finance Ministry had presented obstacles to planning and frustrated German ability to meet NATO commitments.28 The Finance Ministry's traditional policy prerogatives were reinforced by two factors: the greater political weight of finance ministers than defence ministers in coalition and party politics (cf. Theo Waigel and Volker Rühe, Hans Eichel and Rudolf Scharping, and later Peter Struck); and the impact of EMU on the relative power of the finance minister in imposing fiscal discipline. Bud-
get constraints remained a key part of the politics of the Bundeswehr reform and were accentuated by the economic and fiscal implications of unification
The Finance Ministry was an important source of pressure for change, especially in pressing the NATO and EU agenda of pooling military capabilities and privatisation.29 Pooling avoided a duplication of efforts by different states and, by economies of scale and overhead, enhanced military capability, while privatisation was seen as the route to efficiency gains. Both the Defence Ministry and the German armament industry were more disposed to identify and stress the potential costs of such changes.
Secondly, defence and security overlapped with the foreign policy subsystem. The Chancellor's Office acted as policy broker between the two, but had a bias toward the foreign and security policy subsystem. This policy bias reflected the weight of the Foreign Policy Division within the Chancellor's Office and the greater political weight of the Foreign Ministry in coalition politics.30 The Foreign and Defence Ministries shared an overall commitment to the Harmel doctrine of 'deterrence with detente', adopted by NATO in 1967 as the basis for a durable and just 'peace order' in Europe as a whole. However, within this broad commitment, and the framework of constitutional constraints outlined above, the Foreign Ministry was disposed to stress the reduction of tensions through diplomatic and political means, the Defence Ministry to emphasise the requirements of deterrence and coercive diplomacy.
There was also a difference in the weight that they attached to different multilateral forums for security policy. The EU and UN, in particular, figured prominently in the thinking of the Foreign Ministry, giving it an important voice in the development of German participation in UN peacekeeping operations.31 Under the Kohl chancellorship, KJaus Kinkel sought to claim credit for this development; as a Green Foreign minister, Joschka Fischer attached particular importance to strengthening the UN's new security role.32 The Defence Ministry had a traditional attachment to the primacy of NATO.
Bundeswehr reform and defence and security policy were subject to a dynamic of change associated with ESDP. By means of its key coordinating role in European policy, both through chairing the Committee of'European' State Secretaries and the permanent representative in Brussels, the foreign ministry saw in sponsorship of ESDP a means to gain more influence over defence and security policy. The Defence Ministry could not distance itself from ESDP as an emerging key element in Germany's priority to European political union, post-Maastricht and, especially, post-Kosovo. Considerations of bureaucratic politics led it to concentrate on ensuring that institutional mechanisms were in place with the new European security committee in Brussels to minimize the opportunities of the Foreign Ministry
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to interfere. This relative autonomy was justified by reference to the distinctive nature of defence and security policy; it depended on a high degree of confidentiality and secretiveness in order to protect the lives of soldiers and to prevent potential enemies gaining an advantage.
ESDP was associated with two forms of Europeanisation pressures on the Bundeswehr. 'Top-down' Europeanisation involved pressures to adapt the role, structures, and appropriate behaviour in the Bundeswehr to meet the stated requirements of ESDP, notably the Helsinki Headline Goals. 'Bottom-up' Europeanisation involved the use by German actors of Europe as a means to push through and legitimate Bundeswehr reforms. As suggested above, however, ESDP, like NATO, is best seen as a distinct policy subsystem that interacts with the German defence and security policy subsystem, and with the Bundeswehr policy subsystem, rather than as in a hierarchical relationship to these subsystems. It has been above all important in opening up domestic political opportunities for policy change, as the Weizsäcker Commission shows.
As we shall see in chapters 4 and 5, potentially far more important for German defence and security policy were the implications of the Bush Administration's unilateral commitment to a new preemptive military strategy, of its use of NATO as a military toolkit for the Afghan invasion, and the unilateral military action against Iraq in 2003. These developments created a new flux and uncertainty about the respective values of the UN, NATO, and the EU as contexts for effective multilateral action on security. They gave a renewed emphasis to developing the UN and EU peacekeeping and humanitarian roles of the Bundeswehr, for instance in Macedonia and Afghanistan, a development consistent with longer-term SPD and Green policy thinking about international security. Ultimately, the consequences of European disarray over the Iraq War led German policy makers to reinforce the traditional 'bridge concept' of balancing Atlanticism' and Europeanism in German defence and security policy by 'ringfencing' ESDP and any European Security and Defence Union within the primacy of NATO and the trans-Atlantic relationship. Paradoxically, this was driven by European concerns: that, in the context of the 'Atlanticisation' of Central and East European states and Germany's West European partners, particularly the U.K. and Italy, the threat of a bifurcated Europe necessitated a strong reassertion of German commitment to NATO and trans-Atlantic partnership.33
Bundeswehr policy is, at one level, a highly specialist subsystem, involving a small elite of actors who are tied together in an intimate world of highly confidential information. In the German case, in contrast to the United States or Britain, this mystique does not derive from the high social and political status and respect accorded to military professionalism. The role of the military in the downfall of the Weimar Republic and in the Third
Reich made such claims politically unsustainable. It is rooted in the more practical concern, shared across states, not to jeopardize the lives of German soldiers or the general public by advantaging those who threaten the use of armed force against Germany.
In addition, the Bundeswehr policy subsystem is held together by a strong sense of shared professional identity that has evolved over nearly fifty years, and that is supported by a carefully cultivated cross-party consensus within the Bundestag. It is dominated by the models of reflective practice and professional consensus, which value the personal experience of soldiers as a source of valid knowledge. Conversely, the organisation of the Bundeswehr policy subsystem shows little support for the idea of new policy ideas generated by external scientific 'think tanks'. Such 'think tanks' would open up the Bundeswehr to a more critical external scrutiny. This dimension has been lacking in Bundeswehr reform because it has not been built into the organisation of the policy subsystem. In addition, policy leaders have shown little interest in reforming its organisation in order to encourage radical new
! thinking, as this may threaten their ability to retain tight control over the
i policy process.
I This shared identity provides defence ministers with a formidable polit-
ical resource in negotiating policy change, not least at NATO and EU levels. The Bundeswehr is a core element in German postwar political and social reconstruction and symbolic of a 'new' Germany of which Germans are proud.
This degree of autonomy is offset by the extent to which Bundeswehr policy is embedded in a much more complex institutional context and one, that generates a great deal of bureaucratic politics around the interacting interests of the Defence, Foreign, and Finance Ministries, as well as of the Länder and of the EU and NATO. The result is a formidable set of constraints that policy leaders must negotiate. An analysis of the complex set of policy subsystems with which Bundeswehr policy interacts, and in which it is nested, suggests that the EU and NATO are important but by no means central to defining the scope and nature of policy leadership.
The institutional context does, however, select for certain kinds of policy leadership roles, strategies, and styles over others. In particular, it favors brokerage and veto-playing roles over entrepreneurship. There is little scope or incentive to embrace a heroic leadership style and to pursue a strategy of creating and sustaining a crisis consciousness on the basis of which to legitimate radical change to the Bundeswehr. Far better adapted to such an institutional context are strategies of promoting policy learning, and 'binding in' opposition by means of 'professional forums' (see Rühe, Scharping and Struck in later chapters) or of sidelining or excluding change agents (see chapter 2). Equally, policy leaders do have choices about how to combine
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and to sequence roles, strategies, and styles, and, on occasion, policy entre-preneurship has made an appearance.
The Three Coalitions in Defence and Security Policy during the Cold War
During the Cold War, up to 1989/90, the defence and security policy subsystem came to possess a basic structure formed around three advocacy coalitions. Their boundaries were by no means firm, and individual actors could cross them and sometimes combine them in complex and changing ways. Nevertheless, these coalitions gave a long term stability to Bundeswehr policy based on the different core policy beliefs that bound them. Above all, they offered different policy narratives about the nature and role of defence and security policy, framing the definition of problems and threats, their causes, and the solutions proposed. Domestically, the Cold War period was characterised by competition between the 'freedom' and the 'peace' coalitions, with the 'pacifist' coalition as the outsider to the policy process and the 'freedom' coalition as ascendant.
The 'freedom' coalition was united by a shared core policy belief in defence of the Western way of life by an Atlanticist approach, rooted in deterrence of a clearly defined enemy: the Soviet empire. It was represented most strongly by the CDU/CSU and on the right of the SPD.34 The political ascendancy of this coalition derived from the successful way in which Adenauer had used the 1950 Korean War crisis and 1953 Soviet repression of East Berlin and the Hungarian uprising of 1956 to push the agenda of a 'policy of strength' in confronting the enemies of liberal democracy.35 This was tied to a policy narrative that located defence and security policy in the historical story of the 'long journey to the West'. 36
The 'peace' coalition was united in a shared core belief about internationally negotiated disarmament and arms control measures and cemented by a deep bonding to peace. The 'spiraling arms race' was seen as transforming both sides into potential victims, making the enemy the military-industrial complex. Membership of this coalition stretched from the 'realist' wing of the Green Party into the centre-left of the SPD and was strongly represented in the churches, especially the Lutheran Church, youth organisations, the trade unions, and peace research institutions. 37 Protagonists of this policy narrative looked to Austria, Finland, and Sweden, rather than to NATO and its constituent states, as models. Its influence extended into the SPD where leading politicians, like Heidemarie Weiczoreck-Zeul, European spokesperson in the 1990s, preferred imitation of these three states to France as a model for a European defence and security policy.38
Each advocacy coalition offered a policy narrative, based on different lessons from history. For the 'peace' coalition, history taught that Germany had a special responsibility to work to avoid war, notably through detente, that guaranteed a durable, just, and comprehensive peace order throughout Europe based on collective security.39 Its preferred institutional arenas for policy development were the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the UN. For the 'freedom' coalition, history taught that Germany must never again isolate itself by seeking to pursue a Sonder-weg.40 Its peace and security depended on the closest possible integration into the Atlantic Alliance and the EU as a reliable, loyal ally. Its preferred institutional arena was NATO and development of a European pillar within NATO, preferably linked to the EU. The particular political skill of Hans-Dietrich Genscher as FDP Foreign minister (1974-92) was to act as policy broker between these two coalitions.41
A third 'pacifist' advocacy coalition comprised those opposing the doctrine of Landesverteidigung (territorial defence) and conscription and was to be found on the fringes of the political system. These figures and organisations were united by deep core policy beliefs stemming from a fundamentalist opposition to war, advocacy of unilateral disarmament, and neutrality. The epicentre of this coalition was provided by the 'fundamentalist' wing of the Green Party and the peace movement.42 Pacifism had strong roots in the country's catastrophic experience of World War Two and was influential within university towns and cities. However, it was an 'outsider' rather than an 'insider' coalition. Its means of influence were petitions (like the Krefeld Appeal of November 1980 against the NATO 'dual-track' decision) and mass demonstrations.
Of particular importance was the fact that the main split between the 'peace' and 'freedom' coalitions cut right through the SPD and was opened wide by Chancellor Schmidt's initiative of 1977 in calling for a coordinated Alliance response to the challenge of Soviet medium-range missile deployments in centra] Europe. For those associated with Willy Brandt, the SPD's chair, the party's mission was to promote international peace and reconciliation; for the fewer around Schmidt, the priority was defence of the Western way of life based on freedom and fulfillment of Alliance commitments. In the aftermath of the highly divisive deployment of Cruise and Pershing missiles in 1983, the 'peace' coalition gained power within the SPD.43 Under Brandt's chairmanship the SPD advocated arms control, disarmament, and a 'nuclear-free' zone in central Europe to reinforce detente, distancing itself from deterrence.44 The 'peace' coalition gained power in part because Brandt found himself cast into the difficult political position as party chair of having to act as policy broker between the presence of the 'pacifist' coali-
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tion within the SPD's ranks (and fears of defections to the Greens on this issue) and the 'freedom' coalition.
However, crucially, the SPD's advocacy of Egon Bahr's ideas'of a 'second Ostpolitik' and of'common security', endorsed at the Nuremberg party conference of 1986, did not challenge the conception of the Bundeswehr as purely defensive, to be used only to defend the territory of Germany or that of another NATO member. The key questions and debates were about how that defensive role was to be organised, notably what role, if any, nuclear weapons should play in war fighting. Thus a broad consensus existed among all the major parties (FDP, SPD, and CDU/CSU), academics, journalists, and defence institutions about the basic role of the Bundeswehr. Critically, this consensus was reinforced by the constitution.
Dominant Policy Doctrines: Territorial Defence, Conscription, and Citizens in Uniform
Despite this overall adversarial contest about defence and security policy, the Bundeswehr policy subsystem during this period was dominated by a deeply entrenched policy doctrine of territorial defence, of conscription, and of'citizens in uniform'. They formed the key elements within a policy narrative that resonated with past historical military failures. Its reach was spread widely across the Defence Ministry, the Chancellor's Office, the Foreign Ministry, the two main 'catch-all' parties of the CDU/CSU and the SPD, the FDP, IMnder governments, and a range of social institutions like the churches and the trade unions. It was also supported by the international institutions in which Germany was embedded. Even at the height of the polarisation on defence policy between SPD and the CDU/CSU in the early and mid-1950s, this consensus was not seriously contested.45 The debate was about the political and institutional context of a future Bundeswehr, and whether this context should be NATO or the SPD-sponsored idea of a system of collective security for a unified Germany.46
Notwithstanding this polarisation, on the basis of advice from his key military advisers, Adenauer proceeded to base the foundation of the Bundeswehr on careful cross party agreement about basic principles. In this process there were careful consultations with the Bundestag's new security committee, involving many meetings between key SPD politicians like Fritz Erler and military officers. Hence, from the outset, Adenauer adopted a leadership role of policy brokerage rather than policy entrepreneurship. This approach prevented the formation of advocacy coalitions within the Bundeswehr policy subsystem.
This leadership role was reinforced by Germany's semi-sovereignty: externally, as a 'penetrated' state constrained by the international treaty system under which Germany was rearmed in the 1950s.47 Internally, the
consensus was buttressed by the Constitutional Court's role in interpreting the constitution, the Länder interest in maintaining military bases, the Finance Ministry's interest in budgetary control, and by the interest of a range of social groups in Ersatzdienst, and the dependence of the social policy subsystem on this supply of carers. In particular, the Basic Law prescribed a limited role for the German armed forces, allowing their use only in the context of attack upon German territory or another NATO member. At the same time, this consensus owed a great deal to Adenauer's choice of leadership role.
The two elements of 'territorial defence' doctrine and conscription within the policy narrative gained legitimacy, not just from the geostrategic position of West Germany during the Cold War, but also from her historical experience. Her position as a 'front line' state of the West necessitated a large number of ground troops ready for mobilisation in the event of a USSR 'first strike'. Conscription was justified by the fear that a professional army would not attract enough troops to provide effective territorial defence, deter a potential Soviet aggressor, and meet NATO commitments.
More fundamentally, conscription was bound closely with the refashioned political identity of the postwar state. The system of conscription was seen as crucial in the context of Germany's past civil-military relations. In one sense it was a useful way of connecting to German tradition and establishing appropriate and much-needed role models after the disaster of complicity with the Third Reich. The idea of a 'citizens' army' could be linked to Prussian military reformers like Gerhard von Scharnhorst, August Count von Gneisenau, and Karl von Clausewitz.
Crucially, the 'citizens' army' was a way of transforming the Bundeswehr into a different type of institution from the old Prussian-inspired Wehrmacht. One key aspect was a change in leadership style, a new code of conduct, and tough parliamentary control. These themes were pressed by the SPD.48 The emphasis was to be on personal responsibility, and a culture of discussion and persuasion, rather than unthinking obedience. Here the crucial innovator was Count von Baudissin and his concept of innere Führung.*9 This concept of 'inner leadership' emphasised the importance of political education, teamwork, and, above all, personal responsibility as the essential components of an army of 'citizens in uniform'. Democratisation of the Bundeswehr was underpinned by the specification of the aims and objectives of the Bundeswehr in the Basic Law (especially in the Preamble and in article 26, 1); the new defence commissioner accountable to the Bundestag; the subservience of members of the Bundeswehr to the civil courts, and explicit regulation of military tradition, including the symbolic features of the Bundeswehr.
34
The Politics of German Defence and Security
The Bundeswehr in its Historical and Structural Context
35
A second aspect was conscription as a way of ending the military's isolation from society, a theme that was pressed by the CDU/CSU.50The role of the military during the Weimar Republic was seen as a central example of how the first republic had been doomed. The lesson was to put in place arrangements that would ensure the Bundeswehr's political loyalty by closely integrating it into society. Conscription was justified as a means of ensuring that there could be no recurrence of a 'state within a state'.51 Through a citizens' army, conscription would firmly embed the notion of the military's subordination to democratically elected government.
Adenauer's success was demonstrated by the way in which Germany was brought back into the international community as a respected partner and by the way in which Germany built a civic society with strong civil-military relations. Most importantly, territorial defence and conscription were deeply bound up with postwar German political identity. In this respect it can be argued that conscription went beyond a core policy belief to partake of the characteristics of a 'deep core belief in conscription as 'a pillar of our democratic state' through its contribution to a sense of citizenship.52 Consequently, it was a deeply entrenched belief as an integral part of actors' value systems and highly-resistant to change.53
Territorial defence and conscription remained the dominant doctrines right up to the end of the Cold War. Their dominance was intimately related to the bipolar character of the international security environment, Germany's vulnerable front-line status, and the depth of German embed-dedness in NATO. Not least, conscription was a key part of postwar national political identity, linked to painful memories of elite behaviour during the Weimar Republic and resistant to change as a deep core belief. Both concepts were further held in place by the institutional constraints of internal semi-sovereignty represented by the Constitutional Court, Länder interest in avoiding closures of bases, and the Finance Ministry's interest in defraying costs by retaining the use of young men in Zivildienst. In this strategic context, the prospects for leadership in support of an alternative policy were very limited.
The Post-Cold War World: Unification, New Security Threats, and Responding to U.S. Power
The end of the Cold War brought a number of fundamental changes, giving it the quality of a critical juncture for German defence and security policy. However, its main effects were longer term, taking the form of a process of policy learning over a decade and more During the 1990s, the new issue of the Bundeswehr's role in military intervention and crisis-management dis-
placed the traditional centrality of its role in collective defence. This issue was focused on the participation of Germany in UN-led and NATO-supported peacekeeping missions and the question of NATO 'out-of-area' operations. The development of a military intervention and crisis-management role and capability challenged the traditional policy narrative of territorial defence and a conscript army, opening a new opportunity for the reconfiguration of domestic advocacy coalitions within the defence and security policy subsystem. This responded to the emerging realities of the post-Cold War world, notably the growing instability associated with state failure, for instance, in Yugoslavia, Somalia, and Rwanda.
German Unification
The most immediate effect of the end of the Cold War was a new united Germany, unleashed from the remaining constraints of four-power Allied control. New questions emerged about whether, and in what ways, Germany might pursue a more interest-based and assertive security policy.54 Observers detected a new discourse of'normalization'.55 In the case of the Bundeswehr, it became clear that 'normalization' did not mean a structural transformation into a professional, war-fighting army. It meant a stronger assertion of a specifically German interest in retaining conscription and developing a new international crisis prevention and peacekeeping role.
The change in German defence and security policy did not involve a new effort to project power at the international and European levels but rather a complex adaptation to changing domestic and international conditions.56 These conditions included: the enormous budgetary problems facing Germany, consequent on unification; the relative decline in German economic performance and the more assertive behaviour of Länder governments, keen to protect their economic interests in more competitive globalising and Europeanising economies. The problem for political leadership was how to reconcile these mounting domestic constraints with growing international (especially U.S.) pressure to radically upgrade Germany's defence contribution.
The difficulties that such pressure could cause for Germany were apparent in Kohl's embarrassed reaction to President Bush's offer of a 'partnership in leadership' with the U.S., reflecting U.S. estimation of the pivotal role of Germany in the development and provision of European security. However, it also contained the implication of a partnership at the global level. It was not taken up in Bonn because it threatened to create both internal political difficulties, over the idea of a global security role for Germany, and external difficulties, within the Franco-German relationship and for European integration.
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The Politics oi German Defence and Security
The Bundeswehr in its Historical and Structural Context
37
German unification had more immediate implications for the Bundeswehr. During the cold war, the Nationale Volksarmee [NVA) of the GDR numbered 175,000 troops, whilst the West German armed forces totaled some 500,000 troops. However, the first democratic government of the GDR sacked all senior personnel over the age of 55. Additionally, 60,000 soldiers deserted. By the summer of 1990, the NVA amounted to some 103,000 troops. The Two Plus Four (the two German states plus the four wartime Allies) Treaty set a ceiling on the upper limit of permitted troop numbers at 370,000.57
The result was a radical reorganisation, involving downsizing and problems of cultural change, as elements of the much more traditionally organised, hierarchical NVA were absorbed into the Bundeswehr's concepts of 'citizens in uniform' guided by innere Führung}9 In consequence, irrespective of other changes that came with the post-Cold War order, German unification imposed an immediate major reform that meant politically sensitive base closures.59 There was little time and energy to reflect on other major reforms till this period was over. Hence the process of policy learning about the new security environment was impeded in the short-term by the exigencies of German unification. German unification imposed its own reform agenda that had temporal precedence over any other basis for reform.
German defence and security policy was also influenced by the changing domestic political context with unification. Public opinion in the Eastern Länder was less enthusiastic in its endorsement of loyalty to the Atlantic Alliance.60 The policy narrative that Berlin was in danger of serving as a satellite of Washington gained meaning and resonance from the way in which the GDR regime had served as a satellite of the Soviet Union. This critical distance was accompanied by a lack of the kind of economic benefits associated with U.S. bases located in the Western Länder. In addition, the East German Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) aligned itself closely with the 'pacifist' coalition.61 As the East had a much higher percentage of floating voters than the West, the political parties came to view the East as a critical electoral batdeground. Hence a political strategy of neutralising the appeal of the PDS to anxious Eastern voters had an obvious appeal to the SPD leadership. German unification provided a political incentive to adopt a less Atlanticist defence and security policy, although this incentive had to be balanced against the dangers of losing Western voters who were more likely to fear isolation from the United States.
New Security Challenges and Changing Policy Narratives
Another source of transformation came from new forms of conflict within the international security environment, from the 1991 Gulf War via heightened 'ethnic conflicts' with the Balkan wars of succession, to the terrorist
challenge represented by the events of '9/11' and the Bush doctrine of preventative intervention.62 The consequent uncertainties about the nature of security challenges, the international institutions best suited to the new security environment, and whether U.S. policy should be followed, threw the defence and security policy subsystem into flux. In the words of Riihe, the newly united and sovereign Germany had to 'redefine its foreign and security policy under changed conditions'.63 In 1992 it was not clear just how far those conditions were changing. Hence the process of redefinition extended over the period of a decade and more, in a process of policy learning involving new information about sources of threat. This learning process generated two main policy narratives.
Two central questions were the nature of the source of threat and the appropriate response. The first question was whether the traditional interstate model of security challenge, with its priority to territorial defence and war-fighting capability, was becoming an anachronism.64 For some, especially neo-conservatives and 'realist' unilateralists within the U.S. Bush Administration, the key threat was now from 'rogue' states, meaning a continuing need for a war-fighting capability to topple the regimes of these states. Seen from this perspective, the problem was the rapidly increasing military capability gap between the U.S. and Europe. The crisis was defined as the lack of combat preparedness of Germany, and the appropriate response was fundamental structural transformation of the Bundeswehr.
More influential within Germany was an alternative model that stressed the importance of multilateral action in areas of'soft' power, in an age in which the information revolution, technological change, and globalisation elevated the importance of transnational issues.65 In this perspective the key threat came from new types of privately-organised warfare against civilians (the 'privatisation' of war), spilling across borders in the form of refugees, asylum seekers, organised crime, identity-based networks, and terrorism.66 According to this model, the priority shifts to a more piecemeal restructuring of the Bundeswehr around international law enforcement in defence of civilian populations.
These two policy narratives about new security challenges had important implications for the role and structure of the Bundeswehr. In one narrative (embraced by the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), the appropriate response was the classic security approach of raising defence expenditure, especially on increased military capability in precision weapons, transport, and intelligence. This narrative accorded with the position of those who sought to liberate German policy thinking from the constraints of the Nazi period around a reconstructed postwar identity. In the other narrative (represented by the left-wing Tageszeitung), the pressing need was for new, more flexible forms of humanitarian intervention and policing beyond borders, to protect civilian populations and support nationbuilding. This second narrative
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The Politics of German Defence and Security
The Bundeswehr in its Historical and Structural Context
39
had greater resonance in the German defence and security policy subsystem, in which the 'peace' coalition had a stronger impact than in the U.S. and in which the 'pacifist' coalition was a more influential contextual constraint.
The Changing Role of the United States and United Nations
Two critical aspects of the post-Cold War period were the responses of the UN and of the U.S. to the changing security environment. The UN was crucially important in providing the moral authority for German 'out-of-area' military participation, through the 'Agenda for Peace' strategy of its Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali in June 1992. This expanded the traditional concept of peacekeeping operations, as set out in Chapter VI of the UN Charter, to include preventive deployments. It also began a debate about the right and duty of the international community to intervene in the traditionally sovereign internal affairs of states, and about the links between conflict prevention and democracy and good governance.67
The second important factor was the way in which successive U.S. administrations redefined U.S. security policy on military intervention. Most problematic for Germany was the tying of this policy development to a progressive toughening of the notion of'coercive diplomacy' in the U.S., and the emerging political consensus between Democrats and Republicans around the idea of a role for the U.S. as a global sheriff, forging coalitions or posses of states. The events of September 1 1th, 2001, a major terrorist attack on the territory of the U.S., were critical in this respect. 68
Broadly, two phases in the development of a military intervention and crisis-management role can be detected. The first phase involved the elaboration of a new security strategy of intervention during the presidency of Bill Clinton (1992-2000) under the auspices of both the UN and NATO. This strategy began with the Gulf War, and stretched through Bosnia, Somalia, and Haiti, to Kosovo. For the U.S., especially the Democratic Party, it involved the exorcising of the ghosts of the Vietnam War of the 1960s. Its reception in Germany was influenced by the fact that this new, tough minded military interventionism emerged under the Democratic presidency of Bill Clinton. Clinton was a multilateralist by conviction, and humanitarian ends of protecting civilian populations and opposing ethnic cleansing seemed to play an important role in his attitude to crisis intervention. There was room for tension with the domestic German 'peace' coalition, which feared being drawn into an escalating spiral of violence in crisis regions, and continuing implacable opposition from within the 'pacifist' coalition, where the collusion of exploitative U.S. corporate interests with U.S. military intervention remained the chief suspect.
Crucially, the notion of a role in protecting civilian populations from ethnic cleansing created a new opportunity for domestic policy leadership from
within the 'peace' coalition. Joschka Fischer was able to relate this new interventionism to constitutionally mandated German goals of promoting world peace and situate it in a policy narrative emphasising Germany's historical responsibility ('never again Auschwitz').69 Notably, this transformation within defence and security policy was not linked to a crisis narrative about the Bundeswehr. There was no immediate attempt to define a radical 'misfit' between these international security developments and domestic conceptions of defence and security and of the role of the Bundeswehr. The focus was on the Bundeswehr having a new opportunity to meet the purpose for which it was designed.
The second phase in the development of a U.S. interventionist role was more complex, problematic, and dramatic. It was linked to a perception of a radical 'misfit', in Washington and Berlin: with the Bush Administration arguing that Germany's lack of an appropriate Bundeswehr marginalised it; and the Schröder government rejecting the role that the U.S. sought from it. This new U.S. interventionist role was driven by Bush's response to the watershed events of 9/11, the Afghan War, and the second Iraq War. The U.S. response was informed by the enhanced influence of the traditional conservative and the neo-conservative advocacy coalitions within the Bush Administration. In particular, 9/11 and the ease of U.S. victory in Afghanistan empowered the neo-conservatives.
These events engendered an increased optimism about U.S. military power and its capacity to serve as a force for good by transforming the world in the U.S. image. This new emphasis on U.S. primacy went along, not just with an accentuation of the coercive element in U.S. diplomacy, but also with the development of a new political programme to rewrite the postwar world order. In this new narrative, American interests no longer lay principally in Europe, and the test for Europeans was 'who was prepared to enter into coalitions of the willing with the United States'. A multilateralism of conviction gave way to multilateralism of convenience.
This evolving phase drew out a crisis narrative in Germany, but one whose referents changed as events unfolded. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Schroder and the SPD situated themselves firmly in the narrative of the 'freedom' coalition, declaring 'unlimited' solidarity with the U.S. Envisioning a global expansion of the area of the deployment of the Bundeswehr, Schröder forced German military participation in Operation Enduring Freedom through the Bundestag by tying it to a vote of confidence in his government over the deployment of 3,900 troops.70 Against this dramatic background, observers such as Heins concluded that the historic frame of reference of German defence and security policy had been abandoned, notably the 'culture of restraint' rooted in the traumas of theThird Reich.71 This transformation seemed to be signaled by the militant Atlanticism of the
40 The Pontics of German Defence and Security
editorials of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and their identification of the crisis as residing in the lack of combat readiness of the Bundeswehr for an active role in the anti-terror alliance.'2
The turning point came in 2002 with the Bush Administration's definition of a new world order based on the right to preemptive military strike. The National Security Strategy reserved to the U.S. the right to decide who might be its enemies and how they were to be dealt with. Both the process involved [bypassing NATO) and the content (the assumption of U.S. primacy and aggressive war fighting) deeply offended elite and public opinion in Germany. This new security doctrine was a 'watershed' event, representing both a challenge to the core beliefs of the 'peace' coalition and a radical 'misfit' with the role and structures of the Bundeswehr. One effect was to mobilise the 'pacifist' advocacy coalition around opposition to the U.S. as the cause of a potentially uncontrollable escalation of violence by its 'failed' Middle East policy and aggressive conduct stimulating the growth of terrorism.
Above all the behaviour of the Bush Administration offered a mobilising and unifying issue for a politically beleaguered coalition government, facing the imminent prospect of defeat in the September 2002 federal elections. From a mixture of principle and opportunism, Schröder crafted a political position for the elections that met two requirements. He took a stand on widely accepted principles of defence and security policy (no commitment of German troops to a preemptive strike) and unified party and public opinion on this issue to his electoral advantage. His position, outlined in the Bundestag debate of 13 February 2003, was that: 'No Realpolitik and no security doctrine should lead to the fact that, surreptitiously, we should come to regard war as a normal instrument of politics'.73 This position opened up a profound political gap between the Bush Administration and the Red/ Green coalition.
Strikingly, this turn of events put the 'freedom' coalition on the defensive and was judged to have contributed to the narrow defeat of the CDU/CSU in the 2002 federal elections. Its strongest advocates were still to be found within the CDU/CSU, especially the party chair, Angela Merkel. They focused on the historic debt to the U.S. for defeating Hitler, confronting the Soviet threat, and backing German unification.74 They also stressed the historical lessons about the dangers of German isolation and the need to sustain pressure on dangerous dictators. However, German public opinion was overwhelmingly anxious about the new U.S. security doctrine of preemptive strike. Also, the Bundeswehr was not structured or equipped for such a role. There was, in short, a closer 'fit' between the peace' coalition's conception of defence and security and the changing role of the Bundeswehr, than between the 'Ireedom' coalition's conception and the Bundeswehr's capabil-
The Bundeswehr in its Historical and Structural Context 4i
ity. In public debate two definitions of crisis competed: a crisis in German-American relations, ascribed to U.S. unilateralism, and a crisis of isolation of the Schroder government. But neither crisis narrative identified the Bun-
i deswehr as the source of the problems and sought to address the problems
i by its structural transformation.
These external developments toward a new crisis interventionist role illustrated the resilience of the domestic 'peace' coalition and the way in which events had empowered it. Schroder could proudly point to the transformation in defence and security policy and the Bundeswehr. Germany was, by 2002, the second biggest contributor to international peacekeeping after the United States, with an annual budget of €Z billion, compared with 22 million in 1998.75 The missions in Macedonia and Afghanistan were seen as models of a new kind of defence and security policy that cast the Bundeswehr in a major role in economic and social reconstruction, and in protecting civilians. In short, the Red/Green government was no longer appealing to a 'culture of restraint' grounded in the historical traumas of the Third Reich, as Kohl had in rejecting military participation in the Gulf War. Its policy narrative stressed German defence and security policy and the Bundeswehr as positive role models about which postwar Germans could be proud.
U.S. Hyperpower and NATO Crisis
The second fundamental change was that Germany no longer found itself caught up in the bloc rivalry between two superpowers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union. This rivalry, with its ideological basis and clearly defined external threat, had imparted a powerful sense of a shared transatlantic security identity, symbolised by NATO. The postwar transatlantic security identity was further reinforced by memories of the critical importance of U.S. will and resources for the victory of freedom in the two world wars. However, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Warsaw Pact left NATO and, above all, the U.S. militarily ascendant, and acted as triggers for a long-term process both of redefining NATO and how individual states like Germany related to the U.S. through NATO. Crucially, it was no longer so clear that Germany and the U.S. were united against a common enemy. In this new context, U.S. and European actors had to come to terms with the realisation that they had overlapping but frequently different interests and perspectives and that divergences were growing.76
In the early stages of this process of redefining NATO, Germany played an important role, especially in shaping NATO's 'London Declaration' of July 1990 and the far-reaching 'Strategic Review' and subsequent 'New Strategic Concept' adopted at the November 1991 Rome summit. The trigger was the withdrawal of Soviet troops from east central Europe and the disbandment of the Warsaw Pact. This process of engagement in NATO
42
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The Bundeswehr in its Historical and Structural Context
43
reform involved close coordination between Genscher's Foreign Ministry and Gerhard Stoltenberg's Defence Ministry, with a strong role for the Chancellor's Office under Kohl's foreign policy adviser, Joachim Bitterlich. Genscher also worked very closely with U.S. Secretary of State James Baker to achieve German-U.S. coordination in developing political dialogue with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe through the new 'North Atlantic Cooperation Council'. More importantly from a military perspective, the 'New Strategic Concept' involved a shift from forward defence and a reliance on nuclear response to a new stress on reinforcements in the event of war, and smaller, more mobile forces configured in multinational corps. The German government welcomed the consequent development of a NATO Response Force.
Of more immediate importance for German defence and security debate was the shift in NATO's strategic concept away from an emphasis on nuclear escalation. This emphasis had been a trigger for the formation of the 'peace' coalition and support for withdrawal from NATO. The 'London Declaration' defined nuclear weapons as 'weapons of last resort' and called for the negotiated elimination of all short-range, ground-launched nuclear weapons. NATO's nuclear strategy was no longer the key divisive issue in German defence and security policy, reducing the incentives for the 'peace' and the 'pacifist' coalitions to mobilise.
However, another development, U.S. emergence as the military 'hyper-power' and its implications for NATO, provided a new catalyst for the 'peace' and 'pacifist' coalitions, sharpening domestic debate about defence and security. A poll in FT Deutschland in February 2002 showed that 74 percent of German respondents believed that the U.S. had too much power.77 This change in public opinion suggested that Germans no longer felt so confident that what was happening within NATO, and to NATO, reflected German policy preferences.
The first change was an accelerating imbalance of military capacity within NATO. U.S. military superiority as a war-fighting machine was demonstrated in the Gulf War, the former Yugoslavia, and the Kosovo War in 1999, Afghanistan in 2001 to 2002, and the second Iraq War of 2003. Illustrative of the imbalance was that the defence budget of the Bush Administration in 2002 exceeded the combined military budgets of the next 14 biggest spenders.78 New military technologies, as well as new external security challenges, forced a reassessment of U.S. military strategy, based on the recognition that the U.S. had a 'war-fighting' capability way beyond other states. This transformational leap in military capabilities found expression in the Bush Administration's adoption of a 'preventive' strategy in its National Security Strategy of September 2002.
This new U.S. strategy raised sensitive political problems for a German defence and security policy subsystem constitutionally forbidden from anything other than defensive policies.79 It contributed to an increasing difficulty of communication and understanding between the Red/Green government and the Bush Administration. This difficulty was accentuated when the Bush Administration demonstrated a new willingness to isolate the Schröder government. Its Secretary of State for Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, wrote Germany off as part of 'old' Europe.80 This behaviour of the Bush Administration provided the context for the Schröder government to reexamine its traditional caution about working with the French on ESDP. It also offered a political opportunity for Chirac to woo the support of Schröder for his ambitions of a more independent Europe.81 Defence and security emerged as a key pillar of strengthened Franco-German cooperation in Schroder's second term.
The second, linked change was in U.S. attitudes to NATO, above all when invoking Article 5 in the aftermath of '9/11 \ This article states that an attack on one ally is an attack on the whole alliance, obliging other states to assist. Influenced by the lessons of the Kosovo War, the U.S. did not wish to be impeded by the requirements of multilateral action. Instead, in Afghanistan, the Bush Administration opted to use NATO as little more than a forum for building coalitions of convenience on the principle that the mission determines the coalition. In addition, given the U.S.'s very low estimation of the military capabilities of its European allies, it wanted very little from them. Consequently, there was a loss of confidence among German policy makers in NATO's capability to influence U.S. power. The result was a crisis narrative about NATO that focused on U.S. policy and behaviour as the cause.82
More positively for German policy makers, discussions about reform of NATO's role and structures pointed to its transformation into a strengthened role in 'out-of-area' operations, based on a structure that encouraged 'niche' capabilities and force specialisations among its expanding membership. In this context Germany, like other NATO members, had the potential to develop its own relationship to the U.S. focused around its particular, limited military capacities, especially in peace keeping and humanitarian roles. This emerging NATO doctrine offered a domestic opportunity to stress that structural reform should focus on a clearly specified and specialised range of tasks suited to Germany, namely crisis prevention and management. However, this role specialisation could not overcome the political problem that Germany and other NATO members were seen as dependents and used as convenience dictated.83
These changes in the U.S. role and NATO meant that the parameters of German defence and security policy had changed. No longer was it defined by the ideological clarity of a bipolar system and contending advocacy coali-
44
The Putiücs of German Defence and Security
The Bundeswehr iu its Historical and Structural Context
45
tions over nuclear weapons policy. 84 It was characterised by a new uncertainty about how far to go along with the consequences of a radical change in both structural and relative power that left Germany as a marginal player. Many key players in the German defence and security policy subsystem did not feel that Germany was capable, or prepared, to participate in new U.S.-style war-fighting strategies.85 For them Bundeswehr structural reform could not go beyond a crisis prevention role. In this respect, the parameters of Bundeswehr reform were set more by domestic than NATO factors. In so far as Germany was to be subject to 'top-down' pressures, these were more likely to come from the development of an ESDP whose development Germany could shape more readily than it could shape NATO.
A key result of post-Cold War developments was an increasing sense that German defence and security interests were more effectively promoted in an EU rather than a NATO context, because German policy actors were better able to 'upload' German ideas within the EU. However, this shift of view threatened the autonomy of the German defence and security policy subsystem because EU policy coordination was traditionally the preserve of the Foreign Ministry. The challenge for the Defence Ministry was to work with fellow EU ministries to develop arrangements in council decision making that would insulate EU defence and security policy from both the foreign ministers and from the German permanent representative in Brussels.
It is dangerous, though, to exaggerate Germany's willingness to look to the EU as a key institutional forum in which to locate its defence and security policy. This underestimates the continued importance, not only of the trans-Atlantic relationship, but also of Germany's relationship with its Atlanticist neighbours - Britain, Italy, and east and central European states. The second eastern wave of NATO enlargement, begun at the Prague Conference of 2002, acted as an important brake on Schroder and Fischer's willingness to privilege the EU as the core institutional venue for German defence and security policy. States such as Poland and many forthcoming new members of NATO were strongly Atlanticist, perceiving that in NATO the U.S. would act as their 'champion' and that a European Security and Defence Union could well lead to their domination by France and Germany [see chapter 5).
While the impact of the Bush Doctrine resulted in a greater willingness within the Red/Green coalition government to look to the EU as a key institutional forum, the 2002 NATO Prague Conference and NATO enlargement also reinforced NATO's importance. Fischer and Schroder faced the prospect that a 'bifurcated' Europe could result from forging ahead with a 'core Europe' based on European Security and Defence Union, while neglecting the trans-Atlantic relationship and NATO.86 Chapter 6 examines
Bundeswehr reform in the context of the development oi the European Security and Defence Policy in greater detail.
Conclusion
The end of the Cold War and developments within the international system acted to empower or disempower advocacy coalitions within German defence and security policy. The results were reflected in changing policy narratives about the Bundeswehr's role and structure that are documented in later chapters. On the other hand, exogenous shocks did not lead to radical structural transformation of the Bundeswehr because they were not translated into a persuasive crisis narrative that identified the problem of failure as residing in the Bundeswehr. To the extent that an influential crisis narrative arose, its referent has been elsewhere, not least in German-U.S. relations. More influential with respect to the Bundeswehr has been a long-term policy learning process deriving from its accumulating operational experience in international crisis management. This process has been linked both to policy change (which is analysed in chapters 3-6) and to the emergence of a policy narrative that reflects an increasing sense of confidence in the Bundeswehr as a model.
However useful it is in identifying the main lines of policy thinking, an explanation grounded in the advocacy coalition framework needs to be handled with caution. It has three main limitations. The first stems from its essentially heuristic nature and the danger of reifying coalitions as if they were actors. In practice it is not easy to clearly shoehorn individual actors and institutions into coalition membership. This is true, for instance, with respect to the SPD (whose members cross the 'freedom' and 'peace' coalitions) and the Greens (where members of both the 'peace' and the 'pacifist' coalitions are to be found). Hence the Red/Green government was crosscut by, and bestrode, these contending coalitions, so that it is not surprising that a wide variety of narratives inform German defence and security policy.
Within the SPD opposition during the 1990s the dominant feature in defence and security policy was a strengthening belief in the EU as the core security framework, in concert with the CSCE, but with ambiguity about the role of NATO. However, 'western Europeanists' (including Oskar Lafontaine), 'pan-European' institution-building advocates (including Karsten Voigt, Heidemarie Wieczoreck-Zeul, and Giinther Verheugen), Civil Democrats (including Gert Weisskirchen and Hermann Scheer), and Anti-Militarists (including Katrin Fuchs) had different views about the relative usefulness of these institutional settings.87
46
The Politics of German Defence and Security
The Bundeswehr in its Historical and Structural Context
47
'Western Europeanists' dominated SPD thinking on foreign, defence, and security policy and argued that integration and interdependence should replace national sovereignty in all areas of policy, prioritising a deepening of European unification rather than its widening. This would cohere around the Franco-German axis, with the EU as the central institutional venue.88 'Pan-European Institutionalists' believed that the core function of the EU was the avoidance of war and conflict between its members and were informed by ideas of common security.89 In contrast to Western Europeanists, they argued for a rapid and full expansion to Central and Eastern Europe, rather than a multi-layered' EU with a Franco-German core, and promoted an enhanced role for the CSCE.90 Civil Democrats perceived Europe's future as lying in Central and Eastern Europe and the universalisa-tion of human rights standards, prioritising the CSCE in the creation of 'European society of citoyens', rejecting NATO as an exclusively Western security institution.91 Finally, Anti-Militarists were focused upon preventing the use of force, prioritising the Helsinki process over NATO and the WEU.92 NATO was therefore rejected with the CSCE viewed as the appropriate institutional venue for U.S. involvement in European affairs.93
The governing CDU/CSU and FDP under Chancellor Kohl were also subject to internal debates about German defence and security policy. Their thinking was much more clearly dominated by the 'Atlanticism' of the 'freedom' coalition and by the importance of NATO to German security policy and the need for an emerging European defence and security identity to be within this framework. But it was by no means clear what this set of core policy beliefs implied, as the next chapter shows.
The second, more serious limitation of the advocacy coalition framework stems from the fact that, even if it can be shown that actors share core policy beliefs, there is not always clear evidence of significant, or even minimal, coordinated action across institutional boundaries. Thus the FDP and then the Greens came to agree on the need for a professional rather than conscript Bundeswehr, but did so independently and without sharing much in the way of deep policy beliefs. It can be argued that the Green Party and the FDP came to adopt this position despite their ideological distance. Each party took up the idea of a professional Bundeswehr because of its own particular ideological outlook, in short for internal reasons related to its own clientele. But there was no coordinated action to promote this idea.
Finally, it is critical to remember that individual policy actors, rather than advocacy coalitions, seek out leadership roles in defence and security policy, whether by promoting a particular idea and policy narrative or acting as a broker. Their strategies are vital: whether creating a crisis narrative or pursuing 'salami tactics' (small but regular series of policy change) to push through new ideas; promoting policy learning and 'binding in' opposition; or
sidelining or excluding change agents. These leadership roles and strategies highlight the role of individuals and are explored in the following chapters.
Notes
1. Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith define a policy subsystem as 'A group of actors interacting with some regularity in a functional policy domain'. Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith. 'The Advocacy Coalition Framework', 135.
2. Sabatier, 'The Advocacy Coalition Framework', 135.
3. Ibid., 135.
4. Basic Law, Articles 26 and 115a-l, Deutsche Bundestag, December 2000.
5. Ibid.
6. Taken, with the addition of shared identity and corporate interests, from Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith,'The Advocacy Coalition Framework', 136.
7. Basic Law, Article 65a, Deutsche Bundestag, December 2000.
8. S. Bulmer, C. Jeffrey, and W. Paterson, Germany's European Diplomacy, [Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 25.
9. D. Walz, ed., Drei Jahrzehnte Innere Führung: Grundlagen, Entwicklungen, Perspektiven, (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1987).
10. Ibid.
11. Bestandsaufnahme, Die Bundeswehr an der Schwelle zum 21 Jahrhundert, Bundesministerium der Verteidigung, May , 1999, 171-8; see also The Bundeswehr in 2002, Current Situation and Perspectives, Defence Ministry, April 2002, 53.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid., 4-5.
14. Tageszeitung, 29 Ortober 1997.
15. Dyson, 'German Military Reform 1998-2004', 370.
16. 'Jobs für Wachhunde', Spiegel, 9 October 2000.
17. Dyson, 'German Military Reform 1998-2004', 365.
18. Interviews, Marcus Lackamp, CDU Central Office, Berlin, 6 August 2002; Bernd Weber, Berlin, 26 August 2002; Defence Ministry, Berlin, 6 August 2002; British Embassy, Berlin, 9 September 2002.
19. E. Roe, Narrative Policy Analysis: Theory and Practice, (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994).
20. K. Adenauer, Erinnerungen 1945-1953, (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1965), 245; Schwarz, Konrad Adenauer, vol. 2, 801.
21. Basic Law, Article 26, Deutsche Bundestag, December 2000.
22. I,. Gutjahr, German Foreign and Defence Policy after Unification, (London: Pinter, 1994), 109.
23. R.C. Eichenberg, 'Defence/Welfare tradeoffs in German budgeting' (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1981).
24. Hans Maull, 'Germany's Foreign Policy Post-Kosovo: Still a Civilian Power?' in Germany as a Civilian Power? The Foreign Policy of the Berlin Republic, ed. S. Hämisch and H. Maull, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 113.
25. Figures provided by interview partner Chancellor's Office, Berlin, 2 September 2002.
26. Gutjahr, German Foreign and Defence Policy, 40.
The Politics of German Defence and Security _. , , , ,.• ,,. ,~ _____ !                         Hie Bundeswehr in its Historical and Structural Context 49
27. 'Grüne: Regierung baut Bundeswehr zur Interventionsarmee aus', DPA 261053, 26 September 1995'; Interview, Axel Schneider, Referent, SPD Working Group on Defence and Security Policy, SPD Parliamentary Party, Offices of Peter Zumkly and Heidemarie Wiezoreck-Zeul, MPs, Berlin, 4 September 2002.
28. Schwarz, Konrad Adenauer, vol. 2, 217.
29. Interviews, Finance Ministry, Bonn, 28 August 2002; interviews, Defence Ministry, Berlin * 14 August 2002.
30. H.D. Genscher, Erinnerungen, (Berlin: Siedler, 1995), 581-621.
31. Maull, 'Germany's Foreign Policy Post-Kosovo', 110.
32. Joschka Fischer's speech to the 35th Munich Security Conference, 6 February 1999.
33. Dyson,'German Military Reform 1998-2004', 376.
34. Gutjahr, German Foreign and Defence Policy, 22.
35. Schwarz, Konrad Adenauer, 11, 81-86.
36. H.A. Winkler, Der Lange Weg nach Westen, (München: Beck Verlag, 2000).
37. Gutjahr, German Foreign and Defence Policy, 154-62.
38. Ibid., 141.
39. J. Fischer, Risiko Deutschland, (Köln: Kiepenteuer and Witsch, 1994), 185-233.
40. G. Gillessen, Germany's Position at the Centre of Europe' in Germany's New Position in Europe, Problems and Perspectives, ed. A. Baring (Oxford: Berg, 1994), 30-31.
41. Enscher, Erinnerungen.
42. Gutjahr, German Foreign and Defence, 154 - 75.
43. Ibid., 109.
44. Ibid., 124.
45. V.F. Löwke, Die SPD und die Wehrfrage: 1949-1955, (Bonn: Bad Godesberg, 1976).
46. Gutjahr, German Foreign and Defence Policy, 21-26.
47. WF. Hanrieder, Die stabile Krise, Düsseldorf, Bertelsmann 1971.
48. Fritz Erler in Bundesminister der Verteidigung, 161-65.
49. Velten, Baudissins ursprüngliches Konzept'.
50. K. Longhurst, 'Why Aren't the Germans Debating the Draft? Path Dependency and the Persistence of Conscription', German Politics 12, no.2 (2003): 148.
51. Longhurst,'Why Aren't the Germans', 152-53.
52. Genscher, Erinnerungen, 1022.
53. K. Longhurst, 'Why Aren't the Germans'.
54. Josef Joffe, 'German Grand Strategy After the Cold War' in Germany's New Position in Europe, ed. A. Baring, Oxford, Berg 1994, 79-91.
55. Hyde-Price and Jeffery, 'Germany and the EU', 689-717.
56. M. Kreile, 'Zur Nationalen Gebundenheit: Europapolitischen Visionen, das Schröder Papier und die Jospin Rede', Integration 3, no.l (2001): 250-57.
57. 'Ein Staat , ein Armee: Streitkräfte im vereinten Deutschland' , 1AP-Dienst Sicherheitspolitik, 1 August 1990.
58. DR. Herspring, Requiem for an Army: The Demise of the East German Military, (London: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998).
59. Interview, Bernd Weber, Defence Policy Working Group, CDU/CSU Parliamentary Party, Berlin, 26 August 2002.
60. Gutjahr, German Foreign and Defence Policy, 166—70.
61 Ibid., 162-70
62 Heinz Gartner, 'Introduction' in Europe's New Security Challenges, ed. H. Gärtner and A. Hyde-Price (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2001), 1-23; Nicholas Wheeler, 'Introduction' in Dimensions of Western Military Intervention, C. Mc.Innes and N. Wheeler, (Frank Cass: London, 2002): 1-28.
63. V. Rühe, Deutschlands Verantwortung, Perspektiven für das neue Europa, (Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein Verlag 1994), 467.
64. M. Coward, 'International Relations in the Post-Globalisation Era', Politics 26, no. 1 (2006): 54-61.
65. Maull, German Foreign Policy', 1-24.
66. Gärtner, Europe's New Security Challenges, 1-23..
67. M. Keren and D. Sylvan, International Intervention: Sovereignty vs. Responsibility, (London: Frank Cass, 2002).
68. A. De Benoist, Die Welt nach 9/11, (Tubingen: Hohenrain, 2003).
69. J. Luppes, 'Never Again War, Never Again Auschwitz', The German Greens and Military Intervention in the 1990s', Paper to the LSE/KCL European Foreign Policy Conference, London 1-2 July 2005.
70. 'Thank You So Much, Mr. Chancellor', Tageszeitung, 6 October 2001.
71. V. Heins, 'Germany's New War: 11 September and Its Aftermath in German Quality Newspapers', German Politics 11, no. 2, 2002, 128-46.
72. Ibid., 134.
73. 'Schröder hält Kurs gegen die USA', Handelsblatt, 14 February 2003.
74. CDU/CSU Executive Committee Resolution. 28 April, 2003, CDU Federal Office.
75. Figures provided by interview partner in Finance Ministry, Bonn, 28 August 2002.
76. Carpenter, T. ed. NATO Enters the 21st Century, (Portland, Oregon: Frank Cass: 2001), 1-6.
77. FT Deutschland, 2 February 2002.
78. www.defencelink.mil/comptroller/defbudget/fy2002.
79. Basic Law, Article 26, Deutsche Bundestag, 2001.
80. Zorn auf die Zauderer', Welt, 24 January 2003.
81. B. Irondelle, 'Europeanisation without the European Llnion? French Military Reforms 1991-96', Journal of European Public Policy 10, no. 2 (2003): 208-27.
82. S. Harnisch, 'German Non-Proliferation Policy and the Iraq Conflict', German Politics 13, no. 1 (2004): 11. 'Neue Aufgaben, neuer Kurs' Spiegel no. 42, 2003.
83. Harnisch, German Non-Proliferation Policy', 8.
84. S. Hoffmann, World Disorders, Troubled Peace in the Post-Cold War Era, (London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000).
85. 'Die Grenzen der Verteidigung', Süddeutsche Zeitung 21 January 2003.
86. 'Lernen aus der Iraq Krieg und Furcht vor Lähmung nach Osterweiterung', FT Deutschland, 27 March 2003.
87. Gutjahr, German Foreign and Defence Policy, 135-46.
88. Ibid., 139-40.
89. Ibid., 140-42.
90. Ibid.,142^14.
91. Ibid., 143.
92. Ibid., 146.
93. Ibid., 146.