berlin brief

With Minister of Defence zu Guttenberg revealing his plans to modernize the German armed forces, the Bundeswehr, on Monday, the summer break is officially over.

The minister kicked off what will become a foreign policy debate touching on the very foundations of Germany’s security identy.

Guttenberg’s plans include a de facto end to mandatory conscription. His suggestions are controversial even within his own camp.

Spiegel Online International’s “The World from Berlin” media review has compiled commentary on the issue in Germany’s major newspapers: “Germany Weighs the Elimination of Conscription” (24 August 2010).

Guttenberg’s reform plans are “regarded as one of the most radical military shake-ups since the end of the Cold War”, writes Judy Dempsey: “Germany Plans Major Restructuring of Military” (International Herald Tribune, 23 August 2010).

The berlinbrief will follow up soon with the reactions of the political parties.

Last week, Germany’s five major institutes for peace research presented their annual Peace Report (”Friedensgutachten”) at the Federal Press Conference and in an evening discussion on 18 May hosted by the Protestant Academy Berlin (Evangelische Akademie zu Berlin).

Panellists at the evening event at the French Cathedral on Gendarmenmarkt included Jochen Hippler of the Institute for Development and Peace at University Duisburg-Essen (INEF), a co-editor of the 2010 Peace Report; Almut Wieland-Karimi, the Director of the Center for International Peace Operations (ZIF) and an expert on Afghanistan; Winfried Nachtwei, a former MP of the Green Party as well as Sabina Matthay, the ARD’s correspondent in New Delhi. Free Democratic MP Elke Hoffe gave a keynote speech.

The event was jointly organized by the Protestant Academy and the German section of Women in International Security (WIIS.de).

An English summary of the findings of the 2010 Peace Report can be found here.

The Lisbon Treaty has shaken the old rivalry between the Federal Chancellery and the Auswärtiges Amt (Foreign Office) about who leads Germany’s European policies.

Interestingly, after years of quarrels over the entry into force of the new treaty, it looks like the Auswärtiges Amt is now taken by surprise by the new provisions that limit its representation in two of the European Union’s top institutions.

Did the Foreign Office not carefully read and anticipate the impact of the treaty? (more…)

This weekend, the 46th Munich Security Conference took place in the capital of the Free State of Bavaria.

It was the second conference under the chairmanship of Wolfgang Ischinger, a former German ambassador to Washington and London, who took over as the host of the international high-level security meeting in 2009.

Since then, Ischinger and his team have been trying to preserve the international relevance of the annual meeting against formats such as the relatively new Brussels Forum hosted by the German Marshall Fund every spring. Also, Ischinger wants to open up what had been a behind-closed-door-show for many years. (more…)

Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle is still searching for a role. Squeezed between Chancellor Merkel and her glamorous Minister of Defence, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, the leader of the Free Democrats still hasn’t found his place in the new government.

It is not a question of miles. Westerwelle seems to constantly spend his time on airplanes – but doesn’t hit the headlines. He lacks an agenda that would make him more visible in Berlin and abroad. (more…)

Chancellor Angela Merkel had a sober assessment of the climate talks in Copenhagen on her return to Germany: “The deal isn’t enough for us to achieve the 2 degree goal”. According to Spiegel Online, she openly addressed China as one of the major culprits.

Sigmar Gabriel, the new leader of the opposition Social Democratic Party (SPD) and a former minister of the environment, called the outcome of the Copenhagen conference a “mid-sized disaster” and a “disgrace”. Claudia Roth, the chairwoman of the Greens (Die Grünen), said it was “a betrayal of the future for all the children on this planet”. (See DW-World.de, 20 December 2009)

In a blog for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Joachim Müller-Jung quotes Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, the head of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and a member of the German delegation, speaking of the talks as “climate hallucination”. The negotiations were conducted “beyond reality”.

Germany will play a leading role in taking the Copenhagen process further. The mid-term review in the run up to the next round of talks in Mexico City will be held in Bonn at the seat of the UN’s Climate Change Secretariat in July 2010.

Take a look at the current issue of the foreign policy journal Internationale Politik, published by the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP). Sascha Müller-Kraenner of Ecologic Institute and Martin Kraemer, a diplomat who has just returned to Berlin from his London post for a secondment to the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), come up with six recommendations for the Foreign Ministry’s role in German climate policy. (For now only available in German, but there is a short summary in English on the Ecologic website)

The parliamentary inquiry on the Kunduz airstrike in September 2009 starts in Berlin today. (For details on the case check the “Afghanistan” category in the middle column)

This morning, Spiegel Online opened with ten questions that the “war cabinet” of Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Minister of Defence Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg will have to face in the inquiry.

berlinbrief gives a translation of the questions:

1. Why did the bombardment happen at all?

2. Has there been a change of strategy of the German armed forces in Afghanistan; and how was it communicated?

3. Why did zu Guttenberg on the 6th of November initially describe the airstrike as “militarily suitable” and three weeks later fundamentally corrected his statement? (more…)

I want to write about an event at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) last week.

Cornelius Adebahr, a fellow on European foreign affairs at the Council, presented his book “Learning and Change in European Foreign Policy: The Role of the EU Special Representatives”. On this occasion DGAP hosted a timely event on current developments in European foreign policy.

Adebahr had a prominent commentator: Wolfgang Ischinger, the director of the Munich Security Conference and a former German ambassador to London and Washington DC. In 2007, Ischinger also served as the EU special envoy to the negotiations on the status of Kosovo. In his view, European foreign policy has developed at a remarkable speed over the last decade. (more…)

Apart from the discussions about whether Herbert van Rompuy and Catherine Ashton are suitable personalities to lead the European Council and Europe’s foreign policy (see e.g. the Economist of 19 November 2009), there has been a lot of talk in Berlin recently over the German government’s role in the distribution of Brussels’ new top jobs.

Some commentators believe that Chancellor Merkel did not get enough involved in the choice of the President of the European Council and the EU Foreign Minister. (see berlinbrief on 12 November, 2009)

Furthermore, it is argued, Germany will only get the energy portfolio in the new European Commission. Despite the promising title, it is considered less important than e.g. the internal market or the competition portfolio. And with Günther Oettinger, Merkel will send the minister president of the federal state of Baden-Württemberg who has no Brussels experience and not exacly the charisma of a leader to the Barroso II Commission. (more…)

I bet you are surprised to hear that Germany does not have a national security strategy. Well, not yet.

So far, there is only a White Paper on Germany’s security policy published by the Ministry of Defence in 2006 and a failed attempt by the Conservative group in the Bundestag in 2008 to trigger a debate on the topic that is hugely controversial in Germany. (Take a look at the group’s agenda, English version in the right column of the page)

Since the devastating experience of the Holocaust and WWII, German political culture is based on the concept of Germany as a “Zivilmacht” (civil power). (more…)