German security policy: continuity and change

Abstract

This study examines the continuities and changes in the security policies of the newly reunified Germany, providing the background for American policy makers and strategists concerned with questions about Germany's future. Germany's actions in the year and a half since unification has been less than reassuring for American statesmen. In the Gulf War, Germany refused to participate militarily in the American led coalition on constitutional grounds. The in December 1991, Germany refused to go along with the policies of the United States and its major European allies in linking recognition of Yugoslavia republics to an overall settlement of the civil war in that country. In pursuing these initiatives, Germany demonstrated that it no longer occupied the position of junior partner to the United States in the foreign policy field and that it had national security policies of its own to pursue which were sometimes more European than Atlantic oriented. This attitude unjustifiably alarmed many American and European statesmen who had grown comfortable with the passive policies of the West German government and the constraints that the Cold War had built into the European security system. the year 1989 marked the end of the Cold War and forced Germany to contend with global responsibilities and influence it has not had to contend with since 1945 using the political culture that it has evolved in that time. This study covers the historical development of the present statecraft, the sources of change in Germany, and a case study of the Yugoslavian conflict.