In a piece at Foreign Policy Alex Bolfrass pretty much puts his finger on my gripes with Germany’s security policy:
Germany is also hindered by its commitment to a supposedly values-based foreign policy, in which Berlin prioritizes trade and diplomacy over the military elements of statecraft. Some believe that that was part of an honest reckoning with the nation’s crimes in World War II, but, in fact, the West German state under NATO had a robust military. It was only after unification that Germany, no longer facing any imminent threats, turned to pacifist statecraft, deemed defense expenditures unnecessary, and began expressing its post-militarism as grating moral superiority toward its allies. Although unified Germany’s military has participated in multilateral missions, it has done so under the banner of humanitarian assistance and peacekeeping, and it has played a cautious, subordinate role.
observing:
The problem isn’t just one of idealism. The German government is simply not organized for integrated statecraft. Policies lumber through their siloed ministries and committees, making it difficult for the chancellor to steer the government’s strategy. In its coalition agreement, the new government failed to implement an obvious reform: the establishment of a national security council, which has long been debated and could provide a central strategic organizing mechanism across ministries and the chancellery.
but I don’t think he connects the dots completely correctly. Reunification cost Germany about 2 trillion euro. Coincidentally, German military spending as a percentage of GDP plummeted.
As should be obvious money is fungible. It isn’t too much to say that the Germans took the money they had been spending on defense and used it for reunification, cloaking that pragmatic decision as a moral one. No doubt the collapse of the Soviet Union helped in that decision but Germany’s defense cuts preceded that collapse and coincided with reunification.
Which brings us to the present day. The Germans are now making an equally practical decision to oppose Russia’s war against Ukraine verbally while supporting it financially through continued purchases of oil and gas. The defense is that they have no choice. They did have a choice. They chose to be dependent on Russian oil and gas.
