Germany's security policy after unification: Taking the wrong models’1

Abstract

More than half a decade into the present era it seems to be accepted that Germany's power capabilities were strengthened by unification, the end of the Cold War and the attainment of formal sovereignty.2 What is debated, however, is whether in terms of its security and defense policy Germany is continuing its traditional policy of restraint or whether Germany instead will use its new freedom of action to practice much more self-assertive power politics.3 While engaging in this debate, this analysis will also address the question whether Germany is going to use its newly gained power to play the role of an architect in the process of the forging of a European foreign and security policy. It will be argued here that Germany indeed used its new freedom of action to catch up with the two major European powers, France and Great Britain4 in terms of the nature and the understanding of their national military forces as a foreign policy instrument. But it seems that Germany does not intend to exploit its newly achieved capability of having available military forces for the pursuit of - exclusively national - foreign policy goals. Instead, the German government seems intent on adhering to its policy of multilateralism and Western integration. As to whether Germany's future western policy will have a more transatlantic or European proclivity, the analysis of Germany's current security policy suggests that, in the short- and mid-term perspective, Germany is not particularly interested in strengthening the European component of its security policy, but rather in emphasizing its traditional transatlantic security policy in the context of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In the long-term perspective Germany's orientation might again shift towards the European pole depending on the degree of flexibility and leverage the Americans are prepared to grant their European NATO allies. The German government's present priority contributes to and reflects the Europeans' basic decision to select NATO as the principal security organization. However, the assignment of the mandate for Europe's security policy to a traditional system of collective defense, with a tendency of finding military instead of political solutions to conflicts, might turn out