The Institutionalized Nature of
German Strategic Complacency
■ By Alex Williams
(left to right) A U.S., West German, and NATO flag c. 1989
Credit: SSGT. F. Lee Corkran
Introduction
The Russian invasion of Ukraine initially
seemed sufficient to destroy the illusions of
German strategic orthodoxy. Since reunification,
the German state interpreted the downfall of the
Soviet empire as having ratified a permanent and
inviolable democratic security architecture,
whereby Germany, newly restored to a reunited
Berlin, could prosper with minimum defensive
arrangements. No intervening event, including the
annexation of Crimea, that indicated an
increasingly irreconcilable relationship between
the democratic and antidemocratic worlds could
relieve Berlin of its denialist moorings. The
solidification of expansionist intent by
authoritarian actors fell on deaf ears; Berlin,
resisting all dissuasive efforts by democratic
BRANDEIS JOURNAL OF POLITICS 2022-2023
colleagues, instead pursued nearly unconditional
integration with revisionist authoritarian powers.
With the explicit failure of this approach
last year, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz
pronounced a Zeitenwende, a turning-point, which
obligated Germany to increase its military
expenditure and replace authoritarian engagement
with deterrence. The West received this as a
landmark in German strategic policy, and by
extension NATO's combined efficacy.I Yet over a
year later, Germany struggles to transition.
Habitual unabridged authoritarian engagement
and endemic military neglect confirms the
continuance of Germany's strategic incapacity to
accomplish the demands of its own self-professed
turning-point, even as its neighbors' military
posture concretely shifted. The Zeitenwende
suffers not from insufficient breadth in support,
but a limited depth in commitment sustained by
an overriding structural tradition.
25

Background of German Strategic Policy
The story of post-reunification German
strategic policy is one in which West German
defensive prioritization during the Cold War
evolved into a systemic neglect of national security
afterwards. The vanishment of East Germany and
the Soviet Union removed the strategic urgency
for Germany to continue interoperating under an
American strategic umbrella. West German
defense spending, which had dropped from 3% of
GDP in 1980 to 2.5% in 1990, plunged one year
after reunification to 2% in 1991 (reflective also of
new financial challenges in integrating East
Germany). Yet such reductions continued, from
2% of GDP to a historic nadir of 1.07% in 2005,
under the auspices of a transformed post-Cold
War security environment. Annual percentages
thereafter stagnated, before climbing from 1.14%
in 2015 to 1.4% in 2020II (which still remained
below the figure for 1997). By comparison, French
defense expenditures per capita, which remained
level with the West Germans' throughout the Cold
War, never declined to lower than two-thirds of its
1990 total (compared to under 50% in Germany),
with a nadir of 1.85% of GDP.III Western
European public opinion generally agreed,
particularly before 2014, with the political
rationale for decreased military expenditures.
The invasion of Ukraine seemingly
precipitated a regeneration of German defensive
posture. On the same day he proclaimed a
'turning-point' in the twenty-first century security
order, Scholz introduced to the Bundestag a
special fund of €100 billion ($112.7 billion), by
which to modernize, expand, reequip, and prepare
the German armed forces for the new era. The
government also resolved to reach the annual
NATO defense target of 2% of GDP.IV Public
attitudes likewise shifted, from consistent
majorities before 2022 favoring static or decreased
military expenditures to 65% favoring the €100
billion fund. 61% of center-right CDU/CSU
supporters, 60% of center-left SPD supporters,
and 50% of Greens supporters supported the
expansion of German defense spending to 2% of
GDP. Further polls indicated majorities of 68%
and 61%, representing all parties, for the
deployment of Bundeswehr reinforcements to
Eastern Europe and transfer of German arms to
Ukraine, respectively. 68% of Germans believed
Berlin had been too lenient toward Vladimir
26
Putin.V Germans, in acknowledging their
misjudgment of the Kremlin, affirmed the failure
of prior methodologies to correspond with new
international realities. Even when the
three-quarters of Germans who initially predicted
a total occupation of Ukraine were proven wrong,
74% in September, despite increased energy
prices, still professed an obligation to actively
assist Ukraine.VI
These conclusions, though ubiquitous in
the democratic world in 2022, nonetheless
obligated those countries that traditionally
marginalized their defense sectors, such as
Germany and Japan, to most heavily modify their
post-Cold War security assumptions. German
accommodationists long accustomed to armament
export controls suddenly resolved in early 2022 to
furnish Ukraine with missiles and artillery.VII
While the shock of the invasion set its
initial tone, Germany increasingly failed to match
the other rearming democracies in converting
rhetoric into action.VIII Within weeks, coalitional
wrangling engulfed the question of arms transfers
to Ukraine. Growing concerns dogged the
ambiguity of Scholz's twin promises, particularly
over the relationship between the €100 billion
fund and the 2% defense target.IX If the
government intended for the fund to subsidize the
target, Germany could only afford to maintain the
2% level (equalling $75 billion annually) for a few
years, without any of the modernization,
procurement, or recruitment initiatives for which
the fund was intended. By December, amid a
projected failure to meet the target in 2023 and
again from 2026,X Germany effectively retracted
its 2% objective.XI Berlin concurrently witnessed
the technical failure of its Puma tanks,XII delays in
the procurement of American F-35s,XIII increasing
volatility in public opinion, and state backsliding
on authoritarian deterrence. In March 2023, the
German defense minister pronounced that Berlin
could not bridge its military gaps until 2030.XIV
Non-NATO Japan, by contrast,
committed to a 26.3% increase in defense
spending for 2023, elevating its defense budget
from 0.96% to 1.19% of GDP, with the intent to
annually increase it toward 2% of GDP.XV France,
having already exceeded 2% of GDP since 2020,
resolved to increase its seven-year defense budget
further from €295 billion to €413 billion from
2024-30.XVI The contrasting trajectory for German
security investments, despite a consensus of the
BRANDEIS JOURNAL OF POLITICS 2022-2023
state and people, suggests a deeper
institutionalization of military neglect. Various
structural elements conspired to dissuade, distort,
relegate, and impede the drive for rearmament.
Official policy thus remained complacent long
after democratic opinion broadly ceased to be.
Original Factors of German Complacency
German strategic neglect draws from a
postwar socio-political consensus forged by
ideological motivations and reinforced by practical
realities. These factors have institutionalized a
tradition of strategic deference that undermines
immediate policy shifts toward proactivity. Even if
the breadth of German public favorability toward
increased military spending resembles that of
other countries, the shallower depth of such
approval reflects the moderating influence of
unique structural determinants. For instance, while
72% of Germans polled in 2022 considered Russia
a military threat, only 22% labeled it a strong
military threat while 50% considered it a minor
threat.XVII This distinction indicates subsurface
factors that consolidated in Cold War-era
Germany and dominated the strategic policy of
reunited Germany.
When its fate was suspended between
opposite blocs, Germany's strategic agency lay
beyond its control. The unique frontline status of
West Germany, reinforced by hundreds of
thousands of U.S. troops, positioned Washington
to call the military shots so Bonn wouldn't have to.
Upon the dissolution of the Soviet bloc, this
guarantee became an institutional blank check for
the domestic neglect of strategic affairs, facilitating
strategic isolationism.
The de facto disbandment of postwar
German strategic agency worked because it
received the full cooperation of the
Vergangenheitsbewältigung, Germany's process of
"overcoming the past."XVIII Just as the Japanese
stance against nuclear weapons logically developed
from experiences in 1945, the psychological
memory of wartime devastation in Europe
influenced not only the social and educational
sensitivities of postwar German society, but the
orientation of political thought in the German
governing class. The political scientist Anja
Dalgaard-Nielsen detailed two competing
interpretations of the war, which formed a
baseline cross-party consensus rejecting military
proactiveness:
BRANDEIS JOURNAL OF POLITICS 2022-2023
On the left, a pacific interpretation took
hold and 'never again war' became the
rallying cry . . . On the right . . . '[n]ever
again alone' was the precept for
Germany's democratization,
rehabilitation, and reconstruction . . .
[T]he political mainstream converged on a
set of assumptions and policies that
honoured [sic] both precepts: a strong
urge to seek partnership and cooperation,
emphasis on creating trust between
Germany and her partners and neighbors,
renunciation of national nuclear weapons,
an emphasis on the need to demilitarize
international affairs, and a defensive
military posture, with the role of the
Bundeswehr circumscribed to territorial
defense of Germany and its NATO
partners.XIX
This consensus is vital in understanding
the willingness of postwar German politics to
abide by Allied-imposed strategic constraints.
Germany, fatigued by endless geopolitical conflict,
readily cemented a tradition of strategic deference
which absolved it of responsibility for proactive
geostrategy. Once Soviet-American strategic
interests withdrew from their positions along the
intra-German Iron Curtain, the postwar
consensus ascended to become the default
geopolitical blueprint of reunified Germany. The
end of Cold War-era incentives for military
spending elevated the persuasiveness of this
consensus as a practicable doctrine.
The implicit conflation in Germany of
military investment with militarist posture parallels
postwar conclusions of fellow defeated power
Japan. In 2015, 68% of JapaneseXX and 69% of
Germans desired to limit their countries' military
roles in world affairs.XXI In 2022, 68% of Germans
still opposed a military role on the Continent and
favored restraint over engagement.XXII German
military policy observes a very high threshold for
armed operations, for which highly specialized
conditions, set both by the left and right, must be
satisfied.XXIII Yet unlike Japan, which exercises its
preferences for restraint under a U.S.-imposed
constitution and without multilateral security
obligations, Germany fully regulates its terms of
restraint (like rules limiting arms shipments)XXIV. A
postwar aversion to strategic initiative distances it
27
from any stakes worth risking escalation. The
compulsions of geopolitical context, however,
enforce only part of this political consensus.
Berlin also disavows military unilateralism
for the sake of its rehabilitated image.
The cultural ubiquity of Eurocentric
World War Two triumphalism in the
West serves to perpetuate these concerns
by uniquely associating Germany with
the conquered evil, thus rendering it a
ceremonial object of fixed villainous
connotations. In 2015, 51% of young
Americans associated Germany first with
the Holocaust.XXV Unlike Japan, which succeeded
(at the U.S.'s initial behest) in controversially
concentrating wartime culpability in the hands of
militarist elites, Germany must continually wage a
reputational battle against historical associations
that easily drown out its modern allies' rather
technocratic insistences today that Berlin must
proactively defend the global security architecture.
The Kremlin is itself adroit at leveraging
German culpability in Operation Barbarossa to
insist upon modern-day "atonement," meaning
German deference to Russian strategic wishes. A
halt to such deference amounts to a "betrayal of
history"XXVI – notwithstanding Moscow's own
unpunished rampage through Germany. Historical
sensitivity underlies fears of Russian retaliation
and encourages Berlin to hide behind an ally's
precedent, such as last January when it refused to
supply Ukraine with Leopard tanks unless
America first delivered its M1 Abrams tanksXXVII
(the latter's conservatism stemmed partly from an
awareness of its threat factor to other states).
Here, the overlap of "never again alone" and
"never again war" is visible as a deeply-ingrained,
multi-generational consensus. Entrenched
reputational concerns perpetuate Germany's
discomfort with the military responsibilities of a
more interested strategic stakeholder.
The sprawling mechanics of the
Vergangenheitsbewältigung closely implicate America.
A distrust, far-flung among European intellectuals,
has traditionally pervaded German impressions of
America and later its military force. Anti-American
feeling, disproportionate within nationalist and
leftist circles, led sizable components of the state,
public, and intelligentsia to attribute a degeneracy
to any ripple that emanated from the emerging
American Century. The feared drift toward
"American modernity"XXVIII became an ideological
28
dog whistle which readily reconfigured itself in
accordance with the principles of whichever
imperial, National Socialist, Communist, and even
democratic polity contemporarily existed.
East Germans especially, but also West
Germans, adapted prewar American caricatures to
the military situation of the Cold War. While
fanning the usual insinuations of capitalist cultural
rot, these elements reconceived America as an
occupier and aggressor state. This anti-American
construct outlasted the Cold War, feeding into the
Vergangenheitsbewältigung by offering a nationalist
narrative to counter that of the Western Allies and
thereby relativize German war guilt. A subliminal
nationalist resentment could account for a rather
Gaullist German discomfort in conforming to a
westward, "Anglo-Saxon" bloc (vilified either for
its military basis or liberal-atlanticist principles), by
which it considers Russia a counterbalance to
ensure German strategic independence.
Ideological radicalism positively correlates
with this degree of dissociation with America.
This form of right-left alignment manifested
recently when the far-right Alternativ für
Deutschland and far-left Die Linke jointly
attended an event marking Victory Day at the
Russian embassy, which mainstream parties had
shunned.XXIX Yet whether in the chauvinist interest
of relativizing German war guilt or leftist interest
of diabolizing the anticommunist orientation of
the United States, the postwar environment made
such analogies between American security policy
and Prussian militarism highly opportune and
influential, particularly during periods of American
military reinforcement in Western Europe.XXX
Not even a reduced post-Cold War
American military presence could clip the wings of
"Ami Go Home" sloganeering. In 2019, 55% of
Germans believed that European NATO defense
from collective attack should exclude American
help.XXXI Nearly half of Germans supported a
withdrawal of US troops.XXXII In polls from 2020,
60% of PolesXXXIII and only 4% of GermansXXXIV
BRANDEIS JOURNAL OF POLITICS 2022-2023
wanted to increase American troop numbers on
their home soil. Despite the fact that Poland and
Germany share equal security guarantees, Berlin
differs from Warsaw in its moral appraisal of the
American military establishment and trust in U.S.
foreign policy.XXXV Historical prejudices absent
among Poles have led the Germans to entertain,
to some extent, a moral equivalence between
American and Russian motivations. This exposes a
conundrum expected of a people aloof from
strategic pressures, who disfavor both increasing
responsibility for their own national security as
well as strategically associating with the principal
allied force which guarantees it.
Whether such morally relativistic attitudes
reflect more a genuine postwar disillusionment
with idealist claims to righteousness, or a cynical
effort to deny anyone "the right side of history,"
this reductionism situated Berlin, without its own
Munich cautionary tale, to ignore a psychological
distinction between increasingly decoupled free
and unfree worlds. In misattributing Realpolitik for
ideological conviction, Berlin tactically disregarded
Russian and Chinese political dissatisfaction with a
liberally-oriented global order. Such states share a
commanding motivation to revise a Western-based
order which Germany currently enjoys and from
which America has no incentive to retreat.
Self-Reinforcing Factors of German
Complacency
The Cold-War-era Wirtschaftswunder and
Ostpolitik became adaptive foreign policy tools of
the Vergangenheitsbewältigung. The rapid recovery of
postwar German industry, followed by the
political ascendance of the SPD in the 1960s, with
its conciliatory approach to intra-German
relations,XXXVI enabled a new, pragmatic model of
foreign policy, tailored to the postwar political
consensus, whereby authoritarian engagement
could substitute for military preparedness. During
the Cold War, the intractability of the military
situation facing divided Germany obliged the
Bonn Republic to recognize East Germany and
navigate the status quo by diplomatic means.
Reunified Germany later strove under Gerhard
Schröder and Angela Merkel to synchronize its
economic and political interests with those of
Moscow and Beijing.XXXVII Though its rationales
for this corresponded with American idealist
expectations that economic integration could
inspire political reform in closed societies, and
BRANDEIS JOURNAL OF POLITICS 2022-2023
Franco-Italian desires to "normalize" Russia as a
stakeholder in the European ecosystem, Berlin
abused such bases to justify its habitual military
neglect, long after NATO trends reversed in 2014;
they became a distinctive ideological framework
whose wreckage littered the road to Ukraine.
In representing autocratic engagement as
an antidote to strategic adventurism, Germany
exposed itself to unwelcome practical realities.
Asymmetric economic interdependence had left
Germany reliant upon Russia for 55% of its coal,
45% of its natural gas, and 35% of its petroleum
by 2022.XXXVIII The breadth of Russian leverage,
extending quite beyond its nuclear blackmail,
contributes in practical terms to Berlin's fears of
rendering itself a target for Russian retaliation.
The failure to recognize the dead ends of
Ostpolitik, and properly anticipate the possibility of
irredentist wars in the twenty-first century, belongs
not only to Franco-German intelligence, but
institutionalized patterns of German behavior.
Berlin proved loath to revisit the assumptions of
its postwar ideological template. Its geographic
position afforded it some undeniable distance
from revisionist actors in Moscow and Beijing.
The American nuclear and conventional military
umbrella, within a multinational transatlantic
security alliance, continued to effectively nullify
the gravity of German national security by
delegating defense into multilateral hands.
The accumulation of military neglect over
decades generated a cyclical malaise, impeding
future drives for reform, expansion, and
deployment. In 2015, underequipped troops used
broomsticks instead of machine guns during
exercises. In 2018, a parliamentary commissioner
lambasted Germany's state of military
preparedness ahead of its turn leading NATO's
Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF),
reporting inoperable submarine and air fleets, as
well as shortages in tanks, mobile accommodation
units, and basic equipment, including winter
garments and protective vests.XXXIX
Murkier governmental factors inform the
practical basis for German strategic complacency.
Parliamentary infighting and coalitional rivalries
reliably delay the implementation of consequential
changes; the greater their consequentiality, the
greater the caution of democratic operatives –
especially those accustomed for decades to an
opposite orthodoxy. The unease of breaking
tradition, regardless of necessity, reflects in the
29
unelected institutional machinery. Since its
inception last spring, a parliamentary body
established for the allocation of the €100 billion
fund for modernization met only once by early
2023.XL The defense ministry, under pretenses of
caution and prudence, has declined to adapt or
intensify its operations to fulfill procurement
initiatives. A languid bureaucracy disbelieves the
military urgency of its obligations, while its poor
coordination hampers efficiency. The practical
headwind of internal reticence reinforces the
structural permanence of strategic policy.
One must even question intent, given the
susceptibility of long-neglected defensive and
intelligence infrastructure to foreign infiltration.
Among NATO states, the unique permissiveness
of German engagement with authoritarian powers
disproportionately elevated its vulnerability at all
levels to Russian spy networks. In October, the
German government purged its cybersecurity
chief over his alleged ties to Moscow;XLI that
December it arrested one of its own intelligence
officers.XLII The unknown level of Russian
presence, cultivated throughout decades of
commercial Ostpolitik, tangibly affects the
implementation of German security policy.
Counterarguments and Implications
The failure of the Zeitenwende, and even
its manner of failure, is disputed. To some,
Germany justified its Zeitenwende merely by
publicly overturning the theoretical basis of its
foreign policy;XLIII to others, it fell short for
various reasons. One argument posits that the
origins of German complacency are largely not
structural, but attitudinal;XLIV if Germany merely
overcame its historical discomfort with military
power, its strategic maladaptation would resolve
itself. The argument is undermined, however, by
the already broad approval among the German
population of military increases; it would seem
that Germans already "changed their mind" and
reconciled with this moral quandary, which hardly
affected Germany in the Cold War: West
Germany devoted significantly more to defense in
1985XLV than even modern-day France.XLVI
A democratic great power with such a
liability exposes the position of all democracies.
Multilateral efforts depend upon unilateral labors;
German abstinence has colossal stakes for allies
which rely upon Berlin. Any discrepancy in
German-NATO strategic readiness compromises
30
their interoperability. Revisionist autocracies might
endeavor to penetrate NATO's armor through a
German chink, to which the present extent of
Russian infiltration lends credence. German
cultural distrust of the North Atlantic purpose
sustains three pathways for damaging the integrity
of inter-democratic relations: German dissociation
with fellow democratic regimes; allied anger over
compensating German military neglect; and
opportunities for antiliberal powers to divide and
conquer their systemic rivals, for instance by
promoting "European sovereignty".XLVII The
German question thus presents a formidable
danger to its allies. In Ukraine complacency
already has costed: in the time the West spent to
dither, Moscow flooded Ukrainian soil with mines.
Solutions
The approval of rearmament resembled
acquiescence more than endorsement by the
German public. Germany must undertake efforts
to increase its intensity of willingness to override a
self-imposed conditional threshold for military
projection. Contradicting enthusiasms for strategic
proactiveness engender deadlock and constantly
downgrade the prioritization of decisive strategic
reform. Time has drained both the relevance of
German military restraint (maintained largely out
of reputational interest, despite its moral framing)
and the patience of its neighbors (including those
traditionally wary of German power) for its
continuation in the changing world.
While an incrementalist policy in Ukraine
might gradually shift German feet to uncharted
territory, the cessation of that conflict risks
defaulting such policy to its accustomed position;
Russian defeat would revitalize complacent
instincts. This question of threat perception, with
its existential stakes, influences the efficacy of
Germany's commitment to strategic readjustment.
Though 86% and 83% of Germans regarded
Russia and China as global threat factors,
respectively, such threat factors invariably register
as indirect. German fears principally concerned
the prospect of further Russian invasions targeting
Eastern Europe, which 61% feared in November,
despite recent Ukrainian counteroffensives.XLVIII
Such geographically influenced threat perceptions
likewise underlay Sweden's application to NATO
and Ireland's lack of one. Germans would register
the potentiality of a Russian invasion of Moldova
quite differently from that of an expansionist
BRANDEIS JOURNAL OF POLITICS 2022-2023
thrust into Germany itself, indicating the contrast
between a broadly and deeply felt security threat.
The German strategic psychology must
affix the stakes of Germany's immediate national
security to the world beyond its front door. This
process obliges Berlin to promote and invest in
the defensive and diplomatic bonds of all parties
interested in the maintenance of the Westphalian
order. The more ably Berlin associates with such a
community of nations, the likelier it is to regard it
as an extension of its own foundational security,
and therefore eschew strategic deference in favor
of newfound initiative on their behalf.
This obliges Germany to internationalize
its values-based perspective. No more must it
associate the liberal order with Cold War-era U.S.
custodianship of geostrategy; it must recognize the
interregional connectivity of democratic security
amid the rising coordination of authoritarian
designs. Grasping the contiguity of Sino-Russian
aims in Eurasia, for instance, would predispose
Berlin to more actively cultivate such an affinity. A
more developed emotional attachment would
furnish the necessary urgency to override
complacency and overhaul geostrategy.
The road to restoring German confidence
in its strategic agency, such that Berlin becomes an
active arbiter of its own destiny, requires proactive
participatory outreach. Rather than attempt to
re-engineer deep-worn sentiments and trigger
conscious resistance, such outreach would expose
their obsolescence and facilitate their subliminal
abandonment. The task is difficult given the role
of such sentiments in shaping strategic mentality.
In 1956, two-thirds demanded strategic neutrality
during the Hungarian Revolution.XLIX Modern
Germany defies the democratic consensus on
China, having provoked U.S. and E.U. fury in
October when it decided to grant China a stake in
Hamburg port.L Credible German pluralities have
opposed American partnership on Pacific affairs.LI
Of course, while the French have expressed
similar reservations regarding American
domination of strategic policyLII and NATO's
involvement in the Pacific,LIII the former is
motivated by concerns over organizational focus
and the marginalization of French strategic power,
rather than by Franco-American partnership; Paris
and Washington, in fact, conducted Pacific naval
drills in June 2023.LIV Unlike Berlin, Paris long
grasped its strategic duties, subsuming even
BRANDEIS JOURNAL OF POLITICS 2022-2023
unilateral strategic interests, as a democratic
stakeholder in the global security architecture.
At stake is the faithfulness of Germany to
the defense of nations beyond its immediate
vicinity. From being just the depository of its
national security obligations, Berlin must reassess
NATO as an instrument of multiregionally
reciprocated security guarantees, in which its own
expectation of allied military protection relies
upon the credibility of its military capacity to
satisfy its allies' expectations.
This consummation of German strategic
obligations as a great power must derive from
deeper incentivization to care. If diplomatic and
economic engagement were complemented by
more strategic coordination with other free states,
Germans would better appreciate the stakes of
such global solidarity. The democratic world has
already extended an invitation: Romania, in fact,
has demanded that Germany station troops in its
territory;LV Taiwan has inquired for Germany to
invest in a Pacific role,LVI as have Japan and South
Korea, who have strengthened their mutual
security ties.LVII The passage of a German warship
through the South China Sea in late 2021,LVIII
followed by the planned deployment of two
warships to the Indo-Pacific in 2024,LVIX alongside
new measures to curb trade dependence on China,
embody welcome signs of a long-term correction,
especially so under an SPD-led coalition. As Berlin
layers such strategic connections, it gradually
restructures its mission as a concerned democratic
power, "alone behind friends" no longer.
As for reputational concerns, we must
acknowledge the inevitability that our era should
base its origin story upon the defeated power of
1945, just as the nineteenth century defined itself
by the French stand at Waterloo. Yet although
young Americans were the likeliest to recall the
Holocaust when thinking of Germany, this same
age cohort was also likeliest, at 64%, to say that
Berlin had apologized sufficiently for the War.LX
The turnover of generations confirms a rising
consensus that however vast the Nazi past may
loom, it presents no reason for Berlin to ignore
the summons of a changing present to step into
the future. The past is only overcome by starting
rather than suppressing a new chapter, through a
restored self-confidence. Whether Germany quells
its ancient reservations willingly in the present
peace or forcibly in a future crisis, the passage of
time will reshape its historical reputation. It is
31
within Berlin's powers to choose whether the
character of this evolution is positive or negative.
It is notable that within the governing
coalition, the foremost proponent for militarily
reinforcing Ukraine, foreign minister Annalena
Baerbock, a Green,LXI is part of a new generation,
less predisposed to antiquated Ami caricatures or
hamstrung by reductive and outdated postwar
conclusions. Fearlessly emphasizing the perils of
passivity,LXII she views European and Indo-Pacific
security soberly and, quite frankly, trailblazes the
future of German foreign policy. Younger
Germans more freely discern a global democratic
community of intertwined fates, committed to a
worthy strategic purpose which obliges a new
Germany to act, with a greater impetus of
historical duty than others, in defense of it.
Conclusion
The German strategic tradition remains in
limbo as it transitions from a prewar revisionist
mindset to a twenty-first century mindset
defensive of the existing order. The postwar
German political class, in fashioning a consensus
reflective of intersectional social opinions both
ancient and recent, externalized and renounced
German strategic responsibilities such that
complacency became the sole strategic tradition to
which it was accustomed. While the end of the
Cold War resolved the territorial aspect of the
German question, the consequent peace enabled
Berlin to ignore the aspect of reclaiming its
strategic responsibility. Modern-day Germany
i. Tausendfreud, Rachel. "Zeitenwende - The Dawn of the
Deterrence Era in Germany." The German Marshall Fund,
February 28, 2022.
ii. "Military expenditure % of GDP - Germany." The World
Bank.
iii. "Military expenditure % of GDP - France." The World
Bank.
iv. Marksteiner, Alexandra. "Explainer: The Proposed Hike in
German Military Spending." Stockholm International
Peace Research Institute, March 25, 2022.
v. Kinkartz, Sabine. "Germans Approve of Government
U-turn on Ukraine." Deutsche Welle, March 4, 2022.
vi. "Hohe Preise: Für die Mehrheit Großes Problem."
ZDF-Politbarometer, September 30, 2022.
32
found itself with no structural tradition by which
to prepare for the trials of the present century.
The strategic reassessment among
Germans must add a depth of resolve to its
present breadth by overthrowing the lingering
prejudices which continue to encourage their
dissociation from the urgency of Germany's
unilateral strategic obligations toward the liberal
order. Such prejudices structurally limit the depths
of both public and political conviction. They have
had a cumulative effect upon the latter by
inspiring and maintaining a now outdated postwar
consensus of strategic negligence, exercised by the
ossified structures of an uncooperative, and
possibly compromised, internal machinery. The
inability to structurally accommodate changes in
public attitudes could mean, amid accelerating
international rearmament, that Germany ceases to
function within NATO. We can expect no
Zeitenwende until Germany addresses the
structural basis underlying its complacency. If
Germany actualized its individual stake in
interregional security, it would be incentivized to
avert the perils of strategic indecision. The
responsibilities of global projection would advance
the interest of Berlin in the strategic fate of
remoter regions, to the benefit of its military
preparedness against antiliberal revanchism. If a
predetermined cycle of strategic complacency
were broken, a true Zeitenwende could elevate
Germany to its responsibilities in the new world.
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