Hands Off Our Shackles, Please

On many levels—equipment, leadership, information, communication, strategy, and perhaps even perceptions of the incident itself—grave mistakes were made, not only by Colonel Georg Klein and his staff, but also by Germany’s military and civilian leadership. These issues are now the subject of a parliamentary inquiry. Yet at best, this forum will only indirectly address the core questions of German security policy. Does Germany actually have a security policy worthy of the name? If so, is this policy actually based on a strategy? How effective are the actors and institutions that shape and implement such policy? Do Germany’s alliance policies bear inspection? Finally, how good are the tools at its disposal? The following theses and recommendations are intended as a contribution to this debate.

Thesis #1: Germany is fully sovereign; its security policy is not.

In the 1970s a U.S. cigarette brand courted the emancipated woman with the slogan: “You’ve come a long way, baby.” The same could be said of Germany. No other country in Europe had as much ground to make up in the field of security policy after 1989 as the Federal Republic. Germany’s armed forces, the Bundeswehr, were created as the price for NATO entry in 1956, against massive domestic resistance, with a single mission: to defend the country’s 1,700-mile border along the Iron Curtain against a possible Warsaw Pact attack. The Bundeswehr’s ranks swelled to nearly 700,000 after taking over the GDR’s “National People’s Army.” Twenty years on, it has shrunk to a third of that size. After an agonized national debate about whether the Basic Law even permits “out-of-area missions” (the Constitutional Court handed down a conditional yes in 1994), Germany sent troops to UN, NATO and EU missions in Cambodia, Somalia, the Balkans, the Horn of Africa and Afghanistan; German soldiers saw combat for the first time in Kosovo. All the while, a succession of German governments firmly maintained the primacy of the civilian executive over the military and the pre-eminence of soft over hard power. These were and are remarkable achievements. Still, from the point of view of even its most sympathetic neighbors and allies, Germany still looks like a “nation in shackles of its own making,” as the Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Stefan Kornelius put it.

This became particularly conspicuous from 1998 onwards under the “red-green” coalition formed by the Social Democrats and the Green Party. In this period, German security policy lurched wildly between a commitment to the culture of restraint and plunging into military actions, between self-congratulatory paeans to its “civilian power” and hard power projection, between hypermoralism and opportunism. The new “black and yellow” coalition formed by the Christian Democrats and the Free Democrats, like the grand coalition before it, operates with rather less heat and noise. Nevertheless, the impression remains that the strategic framework of German security policy is rudimentary, above all when it comes to the “hard” questions now besetting the West: the Afghan “surge,” sanctions against Iran, and a more assertive approach towards Russia and China.

It is symptomatic of this state of affairs that fundamental decisions regarding German security policy have been repeatedly forced into the Procrustean bed of moral necessity, domestic imperatives, or the demands of external alliances. German politicians sent the Bundeswehr into Kosovo in 1998 with the slogan “Never again Auschwitz” and to Afghanistan in 2002 out of “unconditional solidarity” with the United States. More recently, intra-coalition tensions or the need to co-opt the opposition and/or the German public have been cited as grounds for resisting allied entreaties for more German soldiers in the Hindu Kush. It is no less telling that it took the Kunduz bombing to wring her first government declaration on Afghanistan from Chancellor Merkel together with the overdue acknowledgement that the Bundeswehr’s operations in the north of the country had now become a “combat operation.”

The result of all this, as the Hamburg historian Klaus Naumann wrote recently, is a security policy that substitutes “a tactical policy dictated by caveats instead of a strategic logic dictated by goals.” All too often, decision-making and accountability are shunted out of the policymaking sphere and dumped on the military leadership. This is politics fleeing from itself—the very opposite of responsibility. And it inevitably leads to excessive burdens being placed on military commanders.

Hence my first recommendation: Shaping security policy is the sovereign duty of the political leadership. It requires conceptual vigor, a willingness to lead, a sense of responsibility and courage.

Thesis #2: Germany does not have a security strategy.

The United States has a national security strategy. The United Kingdom and France have one. Even the European Union has one. What Germany has is a White Paper issued by the Ministry of Defense and thus a programmatic void at the national level.

The 2006 White Paper is an appraisal of Germany’s security policy and has the approval of the other ministries. But no government has the right to ask its soldiers to die for a White Paper. A national security strategy must come from the chancellery. The fact that all attempts to produce such a policy over the years have foundered on the rocks of petty departmental competition is also a consistent failure of political leadership.

It is not absolutely necessary to write down strategies and publish them, but it helps. It promotes discipline, sets standards, and fosters public debate. But  grand strategy is more than assembling a catalog of values, threats, and plans. Strategy is the attempt to translate a nation’s raison d‘état into coherent, long-term governmental action.

What, then, is Germany’s raison d‘état? Quite simply, it is to protect something that many Germans appear to take for granted: the freest, most democratic, open, peaceful, and lawful state ever created on German soil. In a globalized world of porous borders, threats to this momentous achievement can come from far away. Inasmuch as they are man-made, such threats are typically asymmetrical in the sense that they originate from less privileged parts of the world.

The most effective way of protecting Germany’s societal model—the Western-style open civil society—is still to export it (and German policy on Eastern Europe would do well to remind itself of this more often). But sometimes the last resort is to defend it militarily, for instance against a terrorist organization such as Al Qaeda or against the Taliban that provided it with sanctuary and protection. This may displease those whom journalist Gero von Randow has described as harboring “a critical attitude to the new realities of security policy inasmuch as they deny the existence of these realities.” But such denial is not an option in the real world.

Multilateralism, meanwhile, is a method, not a strategy. Nor is it enough to derive a raison d‘état from a conviction of moral superiority based on Germany’s recognition of its responsibility for two world wars and the Holocaust. That is narcissism, not strategy. Such hubris (not to say moral megalomania)alienates even Germany’s most forgiving friends and produces distorted views of reality. How else could a German government attempt to establish its claim to a permanent seat on the UN Security Council not on bank transfers or troop deployments but on the fact that it said no to the Iraq war? The persistent denial of the dangers facing German troops in northern Afghanistan, founded on the conviction that Germany is on the side of the angels (due, among other things, to its refusal to support the Iraq war) is just one more instance of these distorted perceptions.

Every German government—and this is my second recommendation—should commit itself to formulating a national security strategy at the beginning of its tenure and submitting it to the parliament as a government declaration.

Thesis #3: Germany’s security policy elites and institutions are underdeveloped.

According to a popular cliché, Germany does not have a “strategic community.” In reality, there is a great deal of expertise, experience, and a desire to see Germany taking on greater responsibilities in the ministries, the Bundestag, the military, universities, think tanks and non-governmental organizations. The real problem is that the community’s size is in no way commensurate with Germany’s weight. One of the reasons is that—unlike other nations—Germany does not have a tradition of institutions dedicated to teaching the making of public policy. (Germany’s first public policy schools were founded in the 1990s; they are a step in the right direction, but more needs to be done.)

Instead, Germany’s culture relies on a kind of politico-bureaucratic Darwinism: leadership positions are conferred on those who, having clambered laboriously up the career ladder and survived old boys’ networks, hierarchies, the seniority principle, tribal warfare, male feminism, and sundry other mechanisms designed to repress temperament and talent, finally surmount the first ridge in relatively unbowed condition (at about 50 years of age). The consequences of this process are on permanent display in our politics. In a political culture that institutionalizes immaturity, the lack of mature characters should not come as a surprise.

Moreover, the German strategic community, such as it is, is strictly subdivided and circumscribed. In America, there is an institutionalized revolving door between government and civil society, which connects the two and allows for the regular flow of new ideas; its German counterpart is not much more than a crack in the wall.

However, the deficits of German security policy are not primarily due to individuals or a lack of personnel. There is another reason for the cacophony of voices combined with lowest-common-denominator policies (the best example of both being the Russia policy of the last grand coalition). Formally, it is the Chancellor who directs policy; in reality, German foreign policy is being forged in several places at once, and the chancellery’s imprint is often hard to discern.

In fact, the dissipation of energies and lack of coherence that we are only too happy to attribute to the European Union or NATO equally permeates the policymaking process within Germany; this is best exemplified by our engagement in Afghanistan. We demand that NATO and our allies subscribe to our notions of a comprehensive approach and networked security; but we are not even able to implement these ideas at home. The result: paralysis, blockades, and sham control mechanisms. What we need is an interdepartmental, integrative mechanism subject to the oversight of the Chancellor. The Federal Security Council—an interministerial committee which meets ad hoc and essentially restricts itself to oversight of defense exports—would be an obvious candidate for this role.

Thus, my third recommendation for Germany is to do better at training and recruiting security policy professionals. The Federal Security Council should also be remodeled as an organ that coordinates the shaping of security policy.

Thesis #4: Germany’s value as an ally is measured by its will to bear an appropriate degree of risk.

Bluntly put, the policy notions that Germany sets store by, such as the “comprehensive approach,” will never be taken seriously if our combat troops are not. Still, the question of our value as an ally is by no means just a military one. Obviously, it is a problem for our allies when we are unable or unwilling (or both) to supply military clout to joint operations. And when we do decide to contribute military force, we place it under geographical and legal caveats which substantially restrict its efficacy. Lastly, the handicaps we so compulsively impose on ourselves make us politically vulnerable to the demands our allies make.

Still, the core problem of our value as an ally is one of political will. Among NATO members the Germans are seen as passive, reactive, and inclined to block or put a brake on things: in short, the Germans are the new French.

Of course it is acceptable for Berlin to be skeptical toward the volleys of turbocharged concepts that emanate in regular intervals from the United States, such as the revolution in military affairs, global war on terror, global alliances, or a league of democracies. There are legitimate strategic debates to be had here—and Germany is by no means alone with its doubts in the alliance. Even Germany’s position on the current process of rewriting NATO’s Strategic Concept of 1999—which might not unfairly be summarized as “it wasn’t all bad”—is defensible. But it is also far from enough.

Quite possibly, it is not so much our lack of will as our lack of ideas that risks relegating us into the second tier of alliance partners. Take nuclear arms control. Germany, as is well known, does not have nuclear weapons of its own, but it stores a small number of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons. Their military value is infinitesimal, as is their relevance in the current arms control debate; however, they do assure us a seat at the table in NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group. Nonetheless, the majority of our leading politicians have enthusiastically and populistically embraced a “Global Zero” solution for strategic nuclear weapons, and called for a “return to sender” policy for the tactical nukes—ensuring simultaneous irritation in Paris, London and Washington. Here too, we need only remember that Germany was once valued as an expert and honest broker in complex multilateral arms control negotiations; not least, because we were discreet about it. If we want to be taken seriously in this field, we need to bring new ideas and political clout to the table; waxing nostalgic about Cold War institutions and treaties simply does not make the grade.

Much the same is true of Germany’s bilateral relationships with traditional allies like France, the UK and the United States—former ironclad constants of German security policy. Yet our current approach to them is one of listless routine even when, as is now the case in the United States, there is a real readiness to reset policy and engage with the world.

Our frequent use of the term Bündniszwang—an untranslatable term that amounts to saying: we don’t want to, but we have to, because of our allies—is revelatory in this context. In reality, our alliances are force multipliers that we cannot afford to do without.

Which is why my fourth recommendation is: the German government should review its alliance strategies and commit to sharing the burden of military and political risk in a manner that is commensurate with its weight.

Thesis #5: Even measured against Germany’s own ambitions, the instruments of its security policy are inadequate.

As a major civilian power Germany has a lot of experience to offer. And yet it exhibits an odd inability to act on lessons learned. In 1995, Berlin first promised police and judges for Ruanda, then for Bosnia, later for Kosovo, and then again for Afghanistan; today, Germany has a Center for International Peace Operations (ZiF) which prepares civilian professionals for international peace operations, and an “action plan” for civilian crisis prevention. Nevertheless, in all these operations including the current one in Afghanistan, Germany struggles to fulfil the promises made to its allies and partners; and each time we have blamed these shortcomings on our federal structures. (Police or other civilian personnel are mainly provided by the German Länder; and when they fail to do so, the federal government’s powers of persuasion or coercion are practically nonexistent.) Why are we not specifically training police for international deployments or administrators and trainers for nation-building projects? And if we can’t, why do we keep promising them?

All this is harmless compared to the problems facing the Bundeswehr. The military transformation initiated 10 years ago is now in a state of paralysis. Out of 253,000 soldiers only four battalions are ready for combat operations. The military leadership is holding on to compulsory military service because they see it as the cheapest way to attract qualified personnel; in reality it is merely tying up valuable resources. Rigid rules of engagement, inadequate equipment, and above all a public debate that denies operational realities: all this has created a deep sense of frustration in the armed forces, whose achievements have been extraordinary and who deserve better.

My fifth and final recommendation is therefore the creation of a commission charged with formulating proposals for improving the civilian and military instruments of German security policy.