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Longhurst, Germany and the use of force.qxd 30/06/2004 16:25 Page i Germany and the use of force Longhurst, Germany and the use of force.qxd 30/06/2004 16:25 Page ii ISSUES IN GERMAN POLITICS Edited by Professor Charlie Jeffery, Institute for German Studies, University of Birmingham Dr Charles Lees, University of Sheffield Issues in German Politics is a major series on contemporary Germany. Focusing on the post-unity era, it presents concise, scholarly analyses of the forces driving change in domestic politics and foreign policy. Key themes will be the continuing legacies of German unification and controversies surrounding Germany’s role and power in Europe. The series includes contributions from political science, international relations and political economy. Already published: Annesley: Postindustrial Germany: Services, technological transformation and knowledge in unified Germany Bulmer, Jeffery and Paterson: Germany’s European diplomacy: Shaping the regional milieu Green: The politics of exclusion: Institutions and immigration policy in contemporary Germany Gunlicks: The Länder and German federalism Harding and Paterson (eds): The future of the German economy: An end to the miracle? Harnisch and Maull: Germany as a Civilian Power? The foreign policy of the Berlin Republic Hyde-Price: Germany and European order: Enlarging NATO and the EU Lees: The Red–Green coalition in Germany: Politics, personalities and power Rittberger (ed.): German foreign policy since unification: Theories and case studies Sperling (ed.): Germany at fifty-five: Berlin ist nicht Bonn? Longhurst, Germany and the use of force.qxd 30/06/2004 16:25 Page iii Germany and the use of force Kerry Longhurst Manchester University Press Manchester and New York Distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave Longhurst, Germany and the use of force.qxd 15/07/2004 10:45 Page iv Copyright © Kerry Longhurst 2004 The right of Kerry Longhurst to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9NR, UK and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk Distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA Distributed exclusively in Canada by UBC Press, University of British Columbia, 2029 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN 0 7190 6708 1 hardback EAN 978 07190 6708 2 First published 2004 12111009080706050410987654321 Typeset by Carnegie Publishing Ltd, Lancaster Printed in Great Britain by CPI Bath Longhurst, Germany and the use of force.qxd 30/06/2004 16:25 Page v Contents Acknowledgements page vii Introduction: the past as prologue 1 1 On strategic culture 5 2 Stunde Null and the ‘construction’ of West German strategic culture 25 3 Germany and the use of force I: adjusting to life after the Cold War 54 4 The momentum of change. Germany and the use of force II: from Afghanistan to Iraq 77 5 Redesigning the Bundeswehr? 98 6 The endurance of conscription 118 7 Conclusions: Germany, the use of force and the power of strategic culture 137 Sources and bibliography 153 Index 169 Longhurst, Germany and the use of force.qxd 30/06/2004 16:25 Page vi Longhurst, Germany and the use of force.qxd 30/06/2004 16:25 Page vii Acknowledgements There are many people I wish to acknowledge and thank for providing the inspiration and support during the writing of this book. To begin, I thank Professor Willie Paterson, Director of the Institute for German Studies at the University of Birmingham, who supervised the doctoral thesis on which much of the book is based. I also thank Professor Charlie Jeffery who, as editor of the Manchester University Press series, provided a balance of guidance and encouragement, complete with stick and carrot, which ensured the completion of this book. I express my gratitude to colleagues and friends, past and present, from the IGS and the European Research Institute, who provided me with a stimulating environment in which to work: Dr Simon Green, Dr Jonathon Grix, Dr Arthur Hoffmann, Vanda Knowles, Dr Johanna Liddle, Carolyn Moore, Dr Rosann Palmer, Dr Adrian Reilly, Dr James Sloam, Dr Henning Tewes, Ed Turner and Professors Adrian Hyde- Price, Anand Menon and John Roper. For their friendship and help over the past few years I thank Tina and James Wilkinson, and Eleanor and Lawrence. Finally, I thank my family: my husband Marcin for his all-encompassing support and encouragement and my son Oskar for many things, not least for intro- ducing me to the delights of Barney – an often much needed distraction from the Bundeswehr. My parents, Jean and David Longhurst, deserve, naturally, a special mention, and it is to them that I dedicate this book. Longhurst, Germany and the use of force.qxd 30/06/2004 16:25 Page viii Longhurst, Germany and the use of force.qxd 30/06/2004 16:25 Page 1 Introduction: the past as prologue This book is inspired by the often puzzling array of continuities and changes that has characterised German security policy since unification in 1990. Change has been manifest most profoundly in the lifting of the legal and political barriers which had formerly curtailed the use of the West German armed forces, a transformation which arguably reached its zenith in Germany’s military contribution to the war in Kosovo in 1999. Since then, German perspectives on the use of force became, especially in the context of the expansion of the US-led war against terrorism in 2003, more reminiscent of the restrictive, amili- taristic, foreign policy style of the pre-1990 Bonn Republic. This mixture of change and continuity also pervades the structure of the Federal armed forces and the pace of defence sector reforms. While the Bundeswehr, Germany’s armed force, has become better equipped for modern out-of-area missions, its post-1989 process of transformation and modernisation remains limited and largely inadequate due to the continuation of conscription, coupled with a static defence budget. On a conceptual level, inspiration for this book derives from the body of literature in the field of security studies on strategic culture. Broadly speaking, strategic culture focuses on the domestic sources of security policy and attempts to identify how the past impacts and shapes contemporary policy behaviour. In contrast to some of the more tra- ditional approaches in security studies, the strategic culture approach is interested in the subjective, nationally specific, aspects of security and defence policy and the ways in which collective historical experi- ences, channelled through pervading values and norms, play a role in defining interests and thus shaping policy choices. Reflecting on the critical junctures and ruptures that characterise German history over the course of the past 100 years, the aptness of Longhurst, Germany and the use of force.qxd 30/06/2004 16:25 Page 2 2 Germany and the use of force strategic culture to a consideration of contemporary security policy is clear. The deleterious relationship that obtained between the military and politics in all former incarnations of the German State, the pro- found rupture brought by the Second World War, followed by the Western-sponsored rearmament of West Germany point to a highly fractured backdrop to current security policy. This book argues that in the protracted phase of West German rearmament, which stretched from 1949 to 1956, a fresh strategic culture was actively constructed. This strategic culture emerged out of the intense collective physical and moral trauma in West Germany, manifest in the notion of Stunde Null, or ‘zero hour’, combined with the expectations and demands which emanated from the Western powers in the context of the emerging Cold War. Aspects of this new strategic culture included the legally restricted role of the new West German armed forces; the full democ- ratisation of civil–military relations; the reintroduction of conscription; and the Federal Republic’s tight integration with multilateral security institutions. Permeating all this was the widespread conviction that West Germany should maintain a low profile in security matters above and beyond the immediate task of defence of national and alliance ter- ritory, and that the ‘lessons of the past’ and ‘responsibility’ should be at the forefront of West German security policy thinking. Bringing the discussion up to date, the idea of German strategic culture remains pertinent. The ending of the Cold War and German unification represented a further break in Germany’s fractured history. The events of 1989–90 propelled the new Germany from being a net beneficiary to a net producer of security in Europe as a radically new security environment emerged. This revolutionary change, the book argues, served to challenge many of the central tenets of (West) German strategic culture, as seen in the debates on the legality of Bundeswehr out-of-area deployments in the early 1990s, the intra-German debate over Iraq in 2002–3 and also in the emerging controversy over the relevance of conscription. Policy-makers in Germany appear to be acutely aware of their strate- gic culture, regarding themselves as subject to some form of cultural boundedness which determines their choices and predisposes them to certain options. Evidence of this can be found in the language of defence white papers, speeches and debates, which are imbued with convictions of the ‘weight of the past’, ‘the lessons of German history’, ‘the defence culture of our country’, and so on. It is surely indisputable that the past has a strong bearing on the Longhurst, Germany and the use of force.qxd 30/06/2004 16:25 Page 3 Introduction 3 changes and continuities that have characterised Germany’s changing perspectives on the use of force since 1989.