The Challenge of Creating an Adaptive Bundeswehr

Abstract

This article examines the capacity of the German Army to establish key conditions for successful tactical- and operational-level adaptation, innovation and emulation. In doing so, it explores the factors which stimulate and block adaptation, innovation and emulation. The article points to the need for accounts of German foreign, defence and security policy to pay greater attention to the intra-organisational barriers to effective policy implementation. Finally, it highlights avenues for future empirical and theoretical research on military change, especially the need for greater understanding of the role of learning processes in linking military adaptation in the field to wider organisational learning.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tom Dyson is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the Department of Politics and International Relations, Royal Holloway College, University of London. He is the author of The Politics of German Defence and Security: Policy Leadership and Military Reform in the post-Cold War Era (Berghahn, 2007); Neoclassical Realism and Defence Reform in post-Cold War Europe (Palgrave, 2010); European Defence Cooperation in EU Law and IR Theory (Palgrave, 2013, with Theodore Konstadinides) and Organisational Learning and the Modern Army: A New Model for Lessons-Learned Processes (forthcoming, Routledge, 2019).

Notes

1 Adaptation and innovation exist on a continuum, from small-scale alterations to tactics, techniques and procedures, through to far-reaching change to an area or areas of military activity that is formally codified in new organisational structures, doctrine or technology (Farrell 2010, 569).

2 The tactical level of conflict refers to the individual battles and engagements in the field; the operational level of conflict refers to activities which relate to the overall planning and design of a military campaign or operations, while the strategic level of conflict addresses the distribution of national resources to achieve political goals and strategic objectives.

3 In 2015 the decision was taken to increase the German defence budget by 6.2 percent by 2020 (Reuters 2015).

4 See, for example, Dalgaard-Nielsen 2006; Longhurst 2003; Hilpert 2014. Exceptions include Muench (2015), Sangar (2014) and Wiesner (2013a, 2013b).

5 On German defence and security policy see, for example, Chappell 2012, Dalgaard-Nielsen (2006), Longhurst (2003), Hilpert (2014), Crawford and Olsen (2017, 601). On the inter-institutional impediments to effective foreign policy implementation, see Bulmer and Paterson (2013, 1397–1400).

6 As Bueger and Gadinger (2014, 5) note, the problem-solving stream of the practice-turn in IR, seeks to ‘ … get closer to the actions and lifeworlds of the practitioners who do international relations, to produce knowledge which is of relevance beyond the immediate group of peers and might even address societal concerns or contribute to crafting better policies’. On the problem solving stream, see also Cornut (2015, 18–19).

7 See, for example, the scholarship of Catignani (2012); Dyson (2012); Farrell (2010), Farrell, Osinga, and Russell (2013); Serena (2011).

8 Inner leadership: Leadership Development and Civic Education’, Federal Ministry of Defence, 28 January 2008, pt.613

9 For further detail on the Bundeswehr’s organisational culture and its impact on individual, group and organisational learning at the tactical and operational levels, see Dyson (2019).

10 For further detail on the establishment, development and performance of the German LL process please see Dyson (2019).

11 The article points to the potential theoretical purchase of Neoclassical Realism, which posits that while the threat of defeat is a key driver of the adoption of successful military best-practice, domestic level variables endogenous and exogenous to the military play an intervening role in slowing this adoption (Dyson 2010). They may also exert a longer-term effect on defence and security policy, in which case one should expect to see a state losing relative power (so called ‘system punishment) (Rathburn 2008, 311).

12 Such accounts include the scholarship of Chappell (2012), Crawford and Olsen (2017), Dalgaard-Nielsen (2006), Longhurst (2003) and Hilpert (2014).

13 For a more in-depth investigation of this research agenda, see Dyson (2019).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Gerda Henkel Foundation under the ‘Security, Society and the State’ research programme: [grant number AZ 05/KF/15].