The post-Cold War era has witnessed a dramatic transformation in the German political consensus about the legitimacy of the use of force. However, in comparison with its EU and NATO partners, Germany has been reticent to transform its military to meet the challenges of the contemporary security environment. Until 2003 territorial defence rather than crisis-management remained the armed forces' core role and the Bundeswehr continues to retain conscription. The book argues that 'strategic culture' provides only a partial explanation of German military reform. It demonstrates how domestic material factors were of crucial importance in shaping the pace and outcome of reform, despite the impact of 'international structure' and adaptational pressures from the EU and NATO. The domestic politics of base closures, ramifications for social policy, financial restrictions consequent upon German unification and commitment to EMU's Stability and Growth Pact were critical in determining the outcome of reform. The study also draws out the important role of policy leaders in the political management of reform as entrepreneurs, brokers or veto players, shifting the focus in German leadership studies away from a preoccupation with the Chancellor to the role of ministerial and administrative leadership within the core executive. Finally, the book contributes to our understanding of the Europeanization of the German political system, arguing that policy leaders played a key role in 'uploading' and 'downloading' processes to and from the EU and that Defence Ministers used 'Atlanticization' and 'Europeanization' in the interests of their domestic political agendas.

This original study based on documents, hitherto not discussed in literature of the Cold War, adds a significant new perspective to an important episode in Cold War History. The subject of this book is the policy of the two Germanies towards the talks on Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions (MBFR) in Europe during the 1970s. Negotiations on MBFR continued for a long time without progress. There has been much speculatuion about the motivations of the Eastern side. This book makes use of newly declassified files and, for the first time, reveals the true purposes and intentions of the Warsaw Pact in those negotiations.

The emergence of the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) in the last two-thirds of the 1990s and continuing into the new century, has been a complex process intertwining politics, economics, national cultures, and numerous institutions. This book provides an essential background for understanding how security issues as between NATO and the European Union are being posed for the early part of the 21st century, including the new circumstances following the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. This study should be of interest to those interested in the evolution of U.S.-European relations, especially in, but not limited to, the security field; the development of institutional relationships; and key choices that lie ahead in regard to these critical arrangements.

The rise or resurgence of revisionist, repressive and authoritarian powers threatens the Western, US-led international order upon which Germany’s post-war security and prosperity were founded. With Washington increasingly focused on China’s rise in Asia, Europe must be able to defend itself against Russia, and will depend upon German military capabilities to do so. Years of neglect and structural underfunding, however, have hollowed out Germany’s armed forces. Much of the political leadership in Berlin has not yet adjusted to new realities or appreciated the urgency with which it needs to do so. Bastian Giegerich and Maximilian Terhalle argue that Germany’s current strategic culture is inadequate. It informs a security policy that fails to meet contemporary strategic challenges, thereby endangering Berlin’s European allies, the Western order and Germany itself. They contend that: Germany should embrace its historic responsibility to defend Western liberal values and the Western order that upholds them. Rather than rejecting the use of military force, Germany should wed its commitment to liberal values to an understanding of the role of power – including military power – in international affairs. The authors show why Germany should seek to foster a strategic culture that would be compatible with those of other leading Western nations and allow Germans to perceive the world through a strategic lens. In doing so, they also outline possible elements of a new security policy.

At the EU's Helsinki summit in 1999, European leaders took a decisive step toward the development of a new Common European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) aimed at giving the EU a stronger role in international affairs backed by a credible military force. This report analyzes the processes leading to the ESDP by examining why and how this new European consensus came about. It touches upon the controversies and challenges that still lie ahead. What are the national interests and driving forces behind it, and what steps need to be taken to realize Europe's ambitions to achieve a workable European crisis mgmt. capability?

This book offers the first systematic, comparative analysis of military education and training in Europe within the context of the post-Cold War security environment. Based on an analysis of military education institutions in the UK, Germany, Finland, Romania and the Baltic States, this book demonstrates that the convergence of European military cultures since the end of the Cold War is linked to changes in military education. The process of convergence originates, at least in part, from the full or partial adoption of a new concept by post-commissioning professional military education institutions: the National Defence University. Officers are now educated alongside civilians and public servants, wherein they enjoy a socialization experience that is markedly different from that of previous generations of European officers, and is increasingly similar across national borders. In addition, this book argues that with the control over the curricula and graduation criteria increasingly set by civilian higher education authorities, the European armed forces, while continuing to exist, and hold significant (although declining) capabilities, stand to lose their status as a profession in the traditional sense. This book will be of much interest to students of military, European security policy, European politics, and IR in general.

In the aftermath of World War II, American policymakers turned to the task of rebuilding Europe while keeping communism at bay. In Germany, formally divided since 1949,the United States prioritized the political, economic, and, eventually, military integration of the fledgling Federal Republic with the West. The extraordinary success story of forging this alliance has dominated our historical under-standing of the American-German relationship. Largely left out of the grand narrative of American–German relations were most East Germans who found themselves caught under Soviet and then communist control by the post-1945 geo-political fallout of the war that Nazi Germany had launched. They were the ones who most dearly paid the price for the country's division. This book writes the East Germans—both leadership and general populace—back into that history as objects of American policy and as historical agents in their own right Based on recently declassified documents from American, Russian, and German archives, this book demonstrates that U.S. efforts from 1945 to 1953 went beyond building a prosperous democracy in western Germany and "containing" Soviet-Communist power to the east. Under the Truman and then the Eisenhower administrations, American policy also included efforts to undermine and "roll back" Soviet and German communist control in the eastern part of the country. This story sheds light on a dark-er side to the American Cold War in Germany: propaganda, covert operations, economic pressure, and psychological warfare. Christian F. Ostermann takes an international history approach, capturing Soviet and East German responses and actions, and drawing a rich and complex picture of the early East–West confrontation in the heart of Europe.