ABSTRACT
The history of Germany’s reluctant security policy – the aversion to exercise military power and the preference for multilateral diplomatic action – has often been told. And yet, 20 years after unification a paradox becomes apparent. The Federal Republic’s security trajectory still features several characteristics of a ‘civilian power’ security culture: it has been a key protagonist of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP), of several diplomatic conflict resolution initiatives (e.g. the Fischer Plan, the Bonn conference on Afghanistan, the E-3 initiative, the Berlin conference on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) and one of the main opponents of the US-led intervention in Iraq. And Berlin even pursues security policies in some areas – e.g. the Iraq case or the question of Ballistic Missile Defence – where costs for its vital alliance with the US are sizeable. At the same time, since 1990 German governments from the left and right have displayed a new robustness in security affairs, both in word and deed. In particular, German armed forces have been deployed in ever more dangerous military campaigns despite ‘Germany’s security culture of reticence’. After the attacks of 11 September 2001 (9/11), Germany’s executive has also centralized its anti-terrorism policies and institutions, thereby shedding basic principles of Germany’s federalist and fragmented policy process which emerged after the dramatic failure of the separation of powers during the Nazi period.
