Germany Is Right To Take On A Global Role
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Over 60 years since the end of the Nazi dictatorship, Germany is putting the past behind it to formulate a sharper sense of its international commitments.
It has taken Germany a long time to emerge from the shadow of the second world war - and with good reason. The post-Nazi taboo on the use of force was first ignored when the Federal Republic re-armed and joined Nato back in 1955. The rationale then was the need to defend western Europe against the Soviet Union, whose tank divisions were poised (in theory at least) to sweep across the continent through the Fulda Gap in the German Democratic Republic. Still, as the cold war ended in silent collapse rather than shooting, the ghosts of German militarism were safely laid for 35 years.
Fast forward to reunification in 1990, and efforts were focused on the integration of the East German army into West Germany's Bundeswehr. Then came the catastrophic implosion of the former Yugoslavia, war and ethnic cleansing in Croatia and then Bosnia, and the European Community's fumbling diplomatic attempts to contain the crisis in its - and Germany's - own backyard.
The then German chancellor, Helmut Kohl was the first to break the taboo of deploying German troops abroad in 1992 when he sent army medics to support the UN mission in faraway Cambodia - where there were no echoes of the Hitler era or tasteless jokes about jackboots and goose-stepping, still the staples of British tabloids which always relish mentioning that war. A year later German soldiers were doing good works in warlord-plagued Somalia.
The really significant change came in 1999 when the Social Democratic chancellor, Gerhard Schröder and his Green (and former pacifist) foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, defied domestic criticism to allow German bombers to take part in Nato attacks on Serbia during the Kosovo war.
Since then there have been deployments in Congo, Bosnia and Macedonia - evidence of an increasingly confident foreign and defense policy that is commensurate with Germany's size and economic weight. Schroeder, of course, stayed well away from Iraq, joining Jacques Chirac to lead "old Europe" in opposing the war, but then mending fences by making a substantial contribution to stabilizing post-Taliban Afghanistan, albeit in the relatively safe north of the country.
Angela Merkel went a dramatic step further this month by dispatching the German navy on its biggest post-1945 mission to patrol, under the UN flag, off the coast of Lebanon - part of the international response to the summer war between Israel and Hezbollah guerillas. That broke a specific and hyper-sensitive taboo about staying well away from the Middle East and avoiding any situation where Germans might conceivably be shooting at Jews, (even though it is Lebanese who are more likely to be in the firing line if Bundesmarine sailors find themselves boarding and searching suspect vessels).
This gradual change has now been codified in a government white paper that reviews the country's overseas deployments and implies that it may well do more in future. It is a declaration of intent rather than a blueprint for action. Much of it states the obvious: " Germany's security is inextricably linked to political developments in Europe and the rest of the world," it says. "A united Germany has an important role to play in the future shaping of Europe and further a field."
Its commitments to Nato, the EU, multilateralism and the UN are familiar enough principles, though critics point out that it fails to spell out in what circumstances German forces will be deployed abroad - always the crucial question.
It was unfortunate to say the least that the white paper was approved on the very day the mass-circulation Bild published macabre photos showing German troops in Afghanistan posing with a human skull - hardly the best advertisement for appropriate behavior while flying the flag on humanitarian missions in far-flung trouble-spots. Talk of Germany's "Abu Ghraib" will hardly help supporters of a robust defense and security policy.
Still, the defense review is another sign that over 60 years since the end of the Nazi dictatorship, Germany is putting the past behind it as it formulates a sharper sense of its international commitments. For the largest country in the EU, that is surely a good thing - for itself, Europe, and perhaps even for the world.
Source: Guardian Unlimited, October 25, 2006
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