Pacifism Thawing, Germany Looks for Bigger Role in Regional Security by John Vandiver, Stars and Stripes.
A new era of security burden-sharing could be on the horizon for a war-weary U.S., with France taking an aggressive lead in Africa and Germany showing a willingness to take a more assertive role in global security matters.
Recently, Germany has begun a cautious rethink of its policy that often amounts to military abstention - it refused to participate in the NATO mission against Libya’s former strongman, for instance, and has insisted on combat restrictions for its troops deployed to Afghanistan…
Comments
Is it not interesting that at the end of WW2 we were supposedly to beat the warmonging out of the Japanese and German systems---which in the case of Germany was to stop them from ever starting again a war.
Now that we seem to have been successful in both countries and there is great reluctance to commit troops to an hostile environment both countries get beat up for not rearming and engaging in hostile environments for other than in self defense reasons.
I remember the Germans openly questioning the mental state of the Americans (President Bush)when he wanted Germany to assist in the invasion of Iraq the second time around.
We complained the first time around concerning Iraq/Kuwait--but the 7th Corp was totally moved in record time by the German rail system and they opened their munition depots for tank and arty munitions which we did not have in place.
What did it get them---more NSA surveillance.
But in the end who was actually more correct on what would happen if the US entered Iraq?
If one looks at the NSA spying focused against Germans and their Chancellor---that has driven the number of Germans believing the US is really off to increase in a negative way which has never been seen before in polling results.
When Germans start comparing the NSA to the Gestapo and Stasi then there is something seriously wrong in the relationship and then when we want Germans to become more aggressive in their foreign policy---come on--that indicates that the "thinkers" in Washington have no earthly idea of what Germans are thinking.
By the way the FU comment did not help things at all---if anything it just cemented once more the feeling that the US has no idea what the heck it is doing any more. By the way if a government official in the German government made the same comment say against the US that individual would be out of a job within minutes---and what happened to the DoS individual?--absolutely nothing.
So far it's little more than the president (who has almost exclusively ceremonial powers; the chancellor sets the executive branch's policy), a minister known for not getting stuff done after talking much about it and a politician who's known for never winning an election. Well, them and a couple usual suspects of less to zero relevance.
This is far from "Germany" doing something.
This concerted effort has partially caught the news cycle for a few hours, was mocked and was probably primarily about pushing the doves into the defensive by framing the (very low-intensity) debate.
If in doubt, look up the news reports from January 31st, 2014, keyword "Auslandseinsätze": A poll was published that day in almost all newspapers:
58% against more military missions in foreign places
20% for more
Only 13% think that the critique about Germany not having assumed its place in the world is valid.