EXTERNAL SHOCKS OR DOMESTIC PRESSURES: WHAT LED TO GERMANY'S ZEITENWENDE?

• Author: Ganter, Julia

INTRODUCTION

We are living through a watershed era. And that means that the world afterwards will no longer be the same as the world before.... What is needed to secure peace in Europe will be done. Germany will contribute its share to these efforts in a spirit of solidarity. (1) More than a year ago, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz argued using these words for what has since been discussed as Zeitenwende, a major shift in German foreign and security policy in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

When Scholz delivered his policy statement to the German Bundestag on February 27, 2022, very few in the audience were aware of the magnitude of changes he would announce several minutes later in the speech: a special fund of 100 billion euros for the German military, annual investments in defense of more than two percent of GDP, the supply of defensive weapons for Ukraine, and additional packages of sanctions against Russia. Scholz had only discussed the details of this package reacting to Russia's invasion of Ukraine with a small circle of people--even some members of the Chancellor's Social Democratic Party seemed surprised during his statement.

From an international perspective, increasing military spending and assuming a more active leadership position in defense policy were long overdue steps that Germany's allies had been requesting for many years. Therefore, Germany's Zeitenwende might seem like measures of a country finally catching up to reality and meeting the expectations of its partners. However, for Germany itself, the announced changes were epochal--even if the government has, more recently, tried to manage expectations, such as in the recently-launched, first-ever National Security Strategy.

Although there was some movement in the way German officials talked about their country's role and responsibilities in the past decade--one example is the Munich Security Conference of 2014, when Federal President Joachim Gauck called for a stronger German foreign policy commitment (2)--a new foreign policy approach was never put into practice.

With this 100 billion euro special fund, the German parliament approved in June 2022 an additional military spending that is the equivalent of doubling Germany's current annual defense budget. Consequently, Germany is set to have the largest defense expenditure in Europe and the third largest on earth.

To understand the extent of these changes from a German perspective and why they could only take place at such a specific moment in European history, one must consider Germany's foreign and security policy traditions, the party lines and principles of the three governing parties, and most importantly the perspective of the German public and how Germans view their country's international role.

A closer examination of German public opinion also helps to understand why--without such a far-reaching event as the invasion of a country on the European continent--a Zeitenwende in German foreign and security policy would not have been announced any time soon. It was rather the external security threat due to Russia's full-fledged aggression that made German decision makers rethink and adapt, leading political parties to abandon their long-held principles, than the fact that the German public was now finally ready for such a massive foreign and security policy turnaround. In fact, as survey results of the annual public opinion survey "The Berlin Pulse," commissioned by the German foundation Korber-Stiftung, show since 2017, they were not ready at all.

GERMANY'S FOREIGN AND SECURITY POLICY TRADITIONS

The atrocities committed by Germans during the First and Second World Wars led to a deeply entrenched pacifist attitude in German foreign policymaking. The claim "Never Again" was one of the reasons for Germany's longstanding policy of not sending weapons into conflict zones.

As argued by Maull and Kirste, internal learning processes and active encouragement by the U.S. resulted in Germany's development as a Civilian Power in the post-war period, (3) after having caused a fracture point in civilization: the Holocaust. Civilian powers are defined by Maull as "states which are willing and able to advance the civilization of the international system." (4) Therefore, one of their characteristics is to reduce and contain the use of force organized by individual states. (5)

The reduction of Germany's troop size after the end of the Cold War indicates that Germany even reduced its ability to use force. The reunification was taken as further proof that civilian--and not military power--mattered. (6) The GermanBundeswehr, the country's armed services, focused mainly on international crisis management rather than deterrence and defense of German territory; the Bundeswehr was active in the UN...