Germany: Selective security provider in the Schröder/Fischer era

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Notes

1. The official terms are Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD) and Bündnis 90/Die Grünen.

2. Richard Rosecrance, The Rise of the Trading State: Commerce and Conquest in the Modern World (New York: Basic Books, 1986); and Michael Staack, Handelsstaat Deutschland: Deutsche Außenpolitik in einem neuen internationalen System (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2000).

3. The classical sentence of Defence Minister Peter Struck (‘Deutschlands Sicherheit wird auch am Hindukusch verteidigt’) quoted in Güther Nonnenmacher, ‘Die “Struck-Doktrin”’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, 4 April 2004.

4. The government positions presented in the following are actually held by the analysts in both ministries in the ongoing process of conceptualizing a German position on MD, but they reflect their stance in a highly different way. In the Foreign Ministry they have been dealt with only on the working level (Referatsebene), whereas in the Defence Ministry the positions have been approved by the Generalinspekteur (Chief of Staff). This is with regard to all three variants of BMD – global, regional, and especially the efforts made for the protection of soldiers in out-of-area activities within a hostile WMD environment. It was the declared policy of the Foreign Ministry in the Schröder/Fischer era at the highest levels of the State Secretaries and of the Green Foreign Minister not to have an official stance towards vital MD issues and, thus, not to have a unified German MD policy. This section is based on personal communication with the responsible diplomats during various international conferences and on the official arms control reports 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 by the Foreign Ministry. Bericht zur Rüstungskontrolle, Abrüstung und Nichtverbreitung (Berlin: Auswärtiges Amt, annual).

5. The struggle for recognition and prestige, and hegemonic aspiration were considered as the most relevant motives, followed by the need for protection. Moreover, the experts in both ministries regarded WMD and missiles as equalizers in a world increasingly characterized by asymmetrical globalized information societies. The officials were of course aware of another asymmetry and its negative impact: the nuclear powers have huge military arsenals at their disposal, whereas a number of countries – among them failed states – which feel threatened by those ‘Western’ developments, have not. To counter them, and to balance this fundamental gap by applying asymmetrical military means was not interpreted in these two German ministries as an irrational act. On the contrary, they were seen as deliberate strategies of would-be proliferators to pursue their (national) interests.

6. The German officials were aware of the specific disadvantages for a state that launched a WMD-tipped missile. The ‘sender’ could easily be identified – and punished. Yet they stressed also the advantages of acquiring WMD and missiles for states – be it for the relatively low costs, the high survivability at least of mobile systems and the possibility of using these kinds of weapons as a credible threat in order to reach the political, psychological or military objectives of the problem countries (which in the official German language were not labelled in a pejorative way as ‘rogue’).

7. On the terminology and its acronyms see endnote 1 of the Introduction to this issue.

8. In a self-critical way the representatives of the Foreign and Defence ministries did not ignore the counterproductive contributions of Western nations – trading states in the negative sense of the term – which have helped countries with WMD aspirations to build their problematic capabilities as well as the indigenous infrastructure that makes them increasingly independent from the original suppliers.

9. Philipp Zettel, Patriot-Abwehrraketen und AWACS-Aufklärungsflugzeuge für Israel sowie für die Türkei: Die deutsche Diskussion im Kontext des Irakkieges (Frankfurt am Main, Raketenabwehrforschung International, Bulletin No. 42, Autumn 2003), <www.hsfk.de/abm/print/bulletin/zettel1.html>.

10. Financial Times Deutschland, 1 Feb. 2003; Mannheimer Morgen, 27 Feb. 2003; Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung, 28 Feb. 2003; see also the contribution by Philip Everts in this issue.

11. In the case of AWACS the offensive/defensive problem was much more complicated, as both characteristics were blurred. That the line could not be drawn in a clear-cut way was a major topic in the German debate, showing how difficult it had become for the Schröder/Fischer government to translate its claim of a non-military involvement into reality. See on this, for instance, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Freie Presse Chemnitz, Handelsblatt, Neue Ruhr Zeitung, 24 March 2003; Mitteldeutsche Zeitung, 25 March 2003.

12. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 24 March 2003; Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 25 March 2003.

13. Friedbert Pflüger, Fernseh-Hörfunkspiegel Inland I (WDR 5/NDR Info), 13 Feb. 2003 (transcript).

14. Berliner Zeitung, 18 Feb. 2003.

15. Der Tagesspiegel, 28 Nov. 2002 (‘Ein bisschen Frieden, ein bisschen Krieg’); die tageszeitung, 28 Nov. 2002 (‘Schröder macht ein bisschen Krieg’).

16. Berliner Morgenpost, 28 Nov. 2002 (‘Schröder hilft USA eng begrenzt’); Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 28 Nov. 2002 (‘Militärhilfe für Israel, aber nicht für Amerika’); Frankfurter Neue Presse, 28 Nov. 2002 (‘Schröder weist Bush ab’); Süddeutsche Zeitung, 28 Nov. 2002 (‘Deutschland versagt USA aktive Militärhilfe’).

17. Bernd W. Kubbig, Als Entscheidungsgrundlage für das Raketenabwehrprojekt MEADS ungeeignet. Eine Analyse der Dokumente von BMVg und Berichterstattergruppe, HSFK-Report 2/2005 (Frankfurt am Main: Hessische Stiftung Friedens- und Konfliktforschung, 2005), also available at <www.hsfk.de/downloads/report0205.pdf>. The interested reader will find a lot of sources in this report which was presented at a press conference on 21 Dec. 2004 in Berlin.

18. Sascha Lange, Teilfähigkeitsverlust durch MEADS, SWP-Aktuell 4 (Berlin: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, 2005).

19. Among the critics was former Air Force general Hermann Hagena, whose involvement and unique technical-military expertise increased the credibility of this faction. General Hagena (ret.) was also the co-author of a major critical study on MEADS. See Hermann Hagena (ext.), Hartwig Hagena (ext.), and Niklas von Witzendorff (ext.), Eine Raketenabwehr für Europa? Probleme und Erfahrungen mit den Systemen MEADS und PAC-3 (Ebenhausen: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, 2000).

20. See the contribution on the US in this issue.

21. Bernd W. Kubbig, MEADS – Neue Erkenntnisse, neue Fragen, neue Zweifel. Eine Analyse des BRH-Gutachtens, der BMVg-Replik, der Zwischenentscheidung sowie der Vertragsdokumente (Frankfurt am Main, Raketenabwehrforschung International, Bulletin No. 57, Spring 2005), <www.hsfk.de/abm/bulletin/pdfs/kubbig10.pdf>. The updated version was published as the second PRIF Report. Id., Raketenabwehrsystem MEADS: Entscheidung getroffen, viele Fragen offen, HSFK-Report 10/2005 (Frankfurt am Main: Hessische Stiftung Friedens- und Konfliktforschung, 2005). This PRIF study documents that the MEADS critics were also vindicated regarding their view of the €3 bilion price tag as a political hurdle which the proponents did not want to cross before the basic decision on developing the tripartite system was taken in Parliament in late April 2005. But shortly thereafter it became known that the Ministry of Defence increased the procurement costs in its 2006 budget plan for MEADS from €2.26 billion (2005) by €1.55 billion to €3.81 billion. See ‘Bw-Plan 2006: minderdynamisch’, in geopowers, 21 June 2005, <www.geopowers.com/Machte/Deutschland/Rustung/Rustung_2005/rustung_2005.html>.

22. In one of his last interviews, parting Defence Minister Struck repeated his early mistake again. (See Welt am Sonntag, 23 Oct. 2005.)

23. Markus Wehner ‘Der Geräuschlose’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, 5 Dec. 2004.

24. Axel Nitsche, Martina Glebocki and Bernd W. Kubbig (eds), MEADS KONTROVERS. Pressedokumentation zur internationalen Debatte (Frankfurt am Main: Hessische Stiftung Friedens- und Konfliktforschung, 2005).

25. The paramount relevance of maintaining industrial core capabilities was confirmed in the Bundeskanzleramt (Federal Chancellery) during a closed meeting of the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (German Institute for International and Security Affairs) on 9 June 2005 in Berlin. The same official had reassured the author during a telephone conversation on 13 Jan. 2005, however, that the threat issue was the decisive factor behind the German government's interest in participating in the development of MEADS.

26. Bernd W. Kubbig, Wissen als Machtfaktor im Kalten Krieg. Naturwissenschaftler und die Raketenabwehr der USA (Frankfurt am Main/New York: Campus, 2004).

27. This central document constituting the substantial basis for the MEADS decision raised a number of technical and financial questions leading to an assessment not made in the Working Paper which served as the basis for the Rapporteurs Group. These inconsistencies revealed in the second PRIF Report on MEADS concerned two aspects in particular: on the one hand the timeframe of the development phase which was portrayed in the MoD's Working Paper as a predictable period of about eight years; on the other hand this paper included the promise that there would be hardly any cost overruns. The Zwischenentscheidung in contrast started from the explicit assumption that both the time and the cost frame of the development phase could not be met. See Kubbig, Raketenabwehrsystem MEADS (note 21) pp.9–13.

28. Contrary to claims made especially by the German prime contractor EADS on the symmetrical character of the MEADS cooperation at the company level as well, the second PRIF publication stated that this was only part of the entire picture, because the contract placing institution NAMEADSMA would be permanently led by a US general. (See ibid.)

29. Griephan Briefe, No. 17, 25 April 2005, p.1.

30. This is the assessment by the Green Member of Parliament Winfried Nachtwei who became especially active in the controversy. See Winfried Nachtwei, Die MEADS-Entscheidung. Eine kritische Bilanz, Berlin, 27 April 2005, p.5 (typescript).

31. Stephan Böckenförde, Bewaffnete Auslandseinsätze der Bundeswehr und das Parlamentsbeteiligungsgesetz (typescript).

32. James Kurth, ‘Why We Buy the Weapons We Do’, in Foreign Policy, No. 11 (Summer 1973), pp.33–56.

33. Thomas Enders, The TBM/ATBM Conundrum: What Role for Arms Control? November 1986, p.26 (draft manuscript submitted to the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt).