Strategic Culture Shaping Allied Integration: The Bundeswehr and Joint Operational Doctrine

ABSTRACT

With the Afghan mission winding down, the German Bundeswehr is in the process of implementing a new doctrinal system, resting on the adoption of NATO doctrine and a new joint operational doctrine. This is a historical first, which this paper argues is explained by two factors: functionally, for armed forces deeply integrated into NATO, the practical need for a joint operational doctrine did not exist. More importantly, culture matters: Germany features a highly institutionalized strategic culture that places distinct limits on some forms of joint doctrine. Thus, while impressive and logical, current doctrinal plans of the Bundeswehr, relying as they do on an ‘alliance shortcut’, raise important questions that need to be answered to ensure continuously functioning civil-military relations.

KEYWORDS:

• Joint Doctrine
• Strategic Culture
• NATO
• Afghanistan
• Bundeswehr

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank numerous German officers who agreed to discuss current doctrinal plans and have to remain unnamed. Further thanks go to Michael Haas of the Center for Security Studies (CSS), ETH Zurich, for his valuable input.

Notes

¹ Barry R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine. France, Britain, and Germany between the World Wars (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), 13.

² See for example Elizabeth Kier, ‘Culture and Military Doctrine. France between the Wars’, International Security, 19/4 (Spring 1995), 65–93.

³ In the debate on whether culture is a suitable variable, this analysis settles for a compromise working definition that incorporates elements of all three generations of ‘strategic culture’ as defined by Alastair Johnston (Alastair Ian Johnston, ‘Thinking about Strategic Culture’, International Security, 19/4 (Spring 1995) 32–64): culture, in this working definition, is generated through historical processes (first generation); it can potentially be used or misused by policy-makers towards their own political goals (second generation), and it is a potential independent variable that can, on specific and distinct issue areas, effect measurable outcomes (third generation). Only in accepting the tautological nature of ‘culture’ as a methodical concept, enabling both causality and context, can culture usefully serve academic research.

⁴ John S. Duffield, ‘Political Culture and State Behavior: Why Germany Confounds Neorealism’, International Organization, 53/4 (Autumn 1999), 765–803, 769.

⁵ Johnston, ‘Thinking about Strategic Culture’.

⁶ Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine, 44–47.

⁷ John W. Meyer and Brian Rowan, ‘Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony’, in John W. Meyer and W. Richard Scott (eds), Organizational Environments. Ritual and Rationality (Newbury Park/London/New Delhi: Sage, 1992), 352.

⁸ Victor A. Thompson, Bureaucracy and the Modern World (Morristown: General Learning Press 1976), 96.

⁹ See, for instance, Pascal Vennesson et al, ‘Is There a European Way of War? Role Conceptions, Organizational Frames, and the Utility of Force’, Armed Forces & Society, 35/4 (July 2009).

¹⁰ Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State. The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press, 15th ed. 2000), 11.

¹¹ W. Richard Scott, Institutions and Organizations. Ideas and Interests (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2008), 11.

¹² Meyer and Rowan, ‘Institutionalized Organizations’, 27.

¹³ Timo Noetzel and Martin Zapfe, ‘Der Einsatz im Fokus? Das Verteidigungsministerium und die Auslandseinsätze‘, in Robert Glawe (ed), Eine neue deutsche Sicherheitsarchitektur – Impulse für die nationale Strategiedebatte (Berlin: Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2009), 187–94.

¹⁴ See Wolfgang Hoz and Christian F. Arnig, ‘Doktrinelle Herausforderungen der modernen Luftkriegsführung’, Military Power Revue der Schweizer Armee, 1 (2012), 18–31.

¹⁵ Colin S. Gray, ‘Strategic Culture as Context: The First Generation Strikes Back’, Review of International Studies (1999/25), 49‐69, 52.

¹⁶ See Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier. A Social and Political Portrait (New York/London: Free Press, 1964), 83.

¹⁷ See Martin Zapfe, Sicherheitskultur und Strategiefähigkeit. Die ressortgemeinsame Kooperation der Bundesrepublik für Afghanistan (Konstanz: Universität Konstanz, 2011), 52. Published online: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:352-168316.

¹⁸ Ministry of Defence, Grundsätze für die Spitzengliederung, Unterstellungsverhältnisse und Führungsorganisation im Bundesministerium der Verteidigung (Dresdner Erlass), March 2012, 1.

¹⁹ On other states’ experiences with the NATO COIN campaign in Afghanistan after 2009, and their grappling with COIN doctrine, see the article by Olof Kronvall and Magnus Petersson in this issue.

²⁰ Rid and Zapfe, ‘Mission Command without a Mission’, 192–218.

²¹ See Robin Schröder and Martin Zapfe, ‘War-like Circumstances – Germany’s Unforeseen Combat Mission in Afghanistan and its Strategic Narratives’, in Beatrice De Graaf, George Dimitriu, and Jens Ringsmose (eds), Strategic Narratives, Public Opinion and War: Winning Domestic Support for the Afghan War (London/New York: Routledge 2015), 177–98.

²² See Emile Simpson, War from the Ground Up. Twenty-First-Century Combat as Politics (London: Hurst & Company, 2013), 143.