ABSTRACT
This article examines Germany’s past, present and future approach to UN peacekeeping, particularly in the context of a potential ‘European return to UN Peacekeeping’ and the country’s recent commitment to contribute to the Multidimensional Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA). By applying a conceptual framework for assessing facilitating and inhibiting factors related to Germany’s past and current participation in UN peacekeeping operation, the article argues that core reasons for German troop contributions range from bilateral partnerships and multilateral pressures, to the role of individual policy entrepreneurs and inter-organizational aspects. Yet, Germany’s culture of restraint and public scepticism towards military operations act as important inhibiting factors. Most crucially, Germany has since the early 1990s pursued an instrumentalist approach to UN peacekeeping in order to strengthen its international profile within a discourse of ‘assuming more responsibility’, to advance ‘normalization’ in security affairs and to enhance internal political and external bilateral security cooperation schemes. Germany’s recent commitment to MINUSMA and its discourse will not result in a ‘big bang’ return to UN peacekeeping, but rather to selective commitments on a carefully assessed case-by-case basis.
