"Germany and the European strategy of defense."

By Christophe Réveillard.

In Europe, since the events of the last decade of the last century, two Orientations of the German geopolitics prevail and they have to be conceived interdependent and concomitant. The first of these orientations was perfectly defined by the Chancellor Kohl in his speech addressed to officers of Bundeswehr : "Let me say to you with clarity that:" we do not want to replace our structure of security got from the Alliance and NATO by autonomous European structures of security." Chancellor Schröder in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung : "Germany and America can and want to begin successfully the big tasks of the 21th century", quite as by Joschka Fischer, his foreign Minister: "We need that the United States hold a strong role here, in Europe. They help to balance internal contradictions among European interests. I am convinced that the United States will have to play a very important role for us." Of the absence of solidarity to the short French attempt to establish a real European pillar of the NATO to be translated notably by an European command for the South sector, to the satisfaction to see Paris operating finally a beginning of reinstatement, by way of preservation of institutionalized treaties of Maastricht and Amsterdam of common Foreign policy and security supervised by the NATO (title J), Germany did not stop to apply literally to its politics of defense this Atlantic allegiance as matter of fact classic since she adhered to the Alliance.

The completion of a political process.

But to this "heavy tendency" of the German diplomacy since forty years came to add a fundamental new order : the outcome of the conquest strategy of power within the European Union. From a slight, painless and unofficial ascendancy they gradually passed to an insistent and maintaining institutionalized German domination. So in the European council of Nice in December 7-11, 2000, this last one was translated by a certain number of measures. Mainly, the obtaining, nevertheless dreaded in Paris, of the "unhooking" with France, United Kingdom and Italy, according to a double system of counting votes in the Council of the European Union giving only to Germany the possibility by the control of the minority of deadlock to recover an authentic right of veto. Preservation and accentuation of the superiority of representation comes to add to it in the new size of an European Parliament subjected to extension necessities : 99 representatives against 72 for each of the another quoted three "big" countries. And as it is not now any more question of feeling inferior, the chancellor required during his speech of Berlin the definitive abandonment of an intergovernmental European construction for a real union of which he fixed himself, to the intergovernmental conference of 2004, the care of establishing a founded constitution. Now, it is this institutional order led by the new intra-European balance of power, which modified geostrategic consequences of the Atlanticist politics of Berlin. Divided and without big international scale eleven years ago, the reunited Germany is not only imposed by its economic and monetary power as by the institutional model of integrated Europe (union and Euro) but also it is rediscovered as separate actor in the game of the European military-politics from its situation in the center of the continent.

On the French side, it is surprising to notice that after all it is finally that, it is the public, official demand of the German ascendancy which provoked first hesitations, even first stakes in the point. Now, the process of European federalization institutions in Germany profit led concomitantly to the faithful application by Berlin of American objectives in Europe through NATO which had begun there is some time without ever provoking a French reaction as the one that we observe at present in a more and more perceptible way. What happened ? With the fall of the Berlin wall, a mechanics rise in power put itself shake it besides the Rhine. Following to a political reunification which Germany made practically without consultation of its European allies endorsing a rough application of the parity 1 Dmark of the East = 1 Dmark of the West, that France for example would put years to support, the treaty of Maastricht of February 7, 1992 accelerated the process of political union in which Germany as continental power took obviously advantage, allowing to redeploy its influence on the Central Europe. At the same time, Bonn favored the development of the regionalistic politics of which Landers was anyway the most powerful of regional entities and imposed a walking rigorous to the monetary union by the contradiction of the convergence criteria which owe everything to the monetarist orthodoxy of Federal Bank. The completion of the Germanist orientation of new Europe, the events of the Balkans were almost systematically administered in the sense of German requirements.

Now, it is on the occasion of the balkanic crisis that Germany made brutally irruption in the determination of the European strategies of defense. The dismemberment of Yugoslavia, which does not stop producing its effects in the Balkans but also on the scale of the continental Europe and of the world, widely has for origin Germany. It is a certain Klaus Kinkel, the formerly responsible for Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND - services Secrets of West - German), which prepared actively from the 80s the extreme wing of the Croatian, separatism, minority, to act violently. To radicalize favorable positions to the explosion rather than to look for negotiating one softening of the Yugoslav federal rules, diplomatic solution still possible in 1990, such was the purpose, which tried to reach Kinkel who will become foreign secretary of Helmut Kohl. During this time, Hans Dietrich Gensher, Minister of foreign affairs, got ready to accept by his European partners, nevertheless reluctant, the recognition of Slovenian, Croatian and Bosnian independence (twelve had already refused it on June 23, 1991 if the break away of these provinces was one-sided and did not respect the conditions of the Yugoslav federal constitution). One-sided recognition will fall effectively on December 23, 1991, without consultation of the European partners and according to the principle of the self-determination of the ethnic groups and based on the German principle of the right of the blood. Bonn, finally, conscientiously armed, a long time before first fights, Slovenian extremists as well as Croatian with antiaircraft machines and antitanks then tanks and grenades; the whole for more than 320 million dollars. Over two years according to Jane Defense Weekly. Germany could so punish Serbia not to have been a "historic ally" during the two last wars, which had chosen during the second, the antinazi camp and successful by a resistance incensed to slow down the progress of Wehrmacht forces on the East front, what provoked in effect, the heavy nazi defeat. Bonn, soon Berlin, could so punish the Serbs by the destruction "of the last link of the system of Versailles":
-By separating them from their allies of always, France and Great Britain,
-By means of the standardization of a common foreign policy specific to
The European Union,
-By creating almost - Slovenian and Croatian Landers (Slovenian industry, by
example, is dependent about 40 % of German capital and the penetration is much superior if they add Austrian investments to it),
-Then by trying later to reduce Serbia to its smallest possible statement, that of the Congress of Berlin of 1878, by one supplementary amputation of Krajina, Voïvodine, Sandjak, of Montenegro and Kosovo. The current extension of confusions in Macedonia has not to amaze. As remind A. Chauprade, "from Serbian drop to Serbian drop, German and Turkish geopolitics mark points. Americans can certainly congratulate to see two allies, Germany and Turkey, to progress their interests in the zone to Moscow detriment. Germany is strong on the West due to the European construction, in central Europe since the reunification, in the Baltic States since these left the USSR without ever integrating the CIS. Today, United States is strong in the Balkan peninsula.

To give to itself the means of its politics, Germany knew how to conquer the necessary responsibilities. It is a German diplomat who holds in Brussels the direction of the team in charged with the negotiations of membership, which imposes on the candidates of central and oriental Europe to pass under the German caudine Forks. They are moreover the candidates supported by Germany, which were a part of the first wave of countries concerned by NATO extension. It is Berlin which had the strategic post of the civil administrator - added in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It is the adviser of the chancellor Schröder who piloted the "Stability pact for the Balkans" of G8. It is general Klaus Reinhard who commanded NATO forces in Kosovo. It is the Mark that the UNO chose as the exclusive and official currency of Kosovo under protectorate.

The mutation of the military size for a new strategy.

The "Bundestag" took care of officializing, in October 16, 1998, a situation actually that had noticed all the observers in the Balkans, namely the license for the first time since the end of the second war world, of an engagement , even offensive, of the German army outside its borders, what will confirm a decision of the Court of Karlsruhe authorizing outside engagements within the framework of the alliances contracted by Germany. Also there were confirmed Bundeswehr exterior militaries operations outside NATO zone, namely for UNO Missions. So, after the economic and political superiority in Europe, Germany forges a military capacity, which it wants to adapt to its new status of European power. Volker Rühe, German Minister of the Defense in 1995, affirmed: " war became again a political mean. In future, we should be capable to resolve conflicts also by military means". In a long article entitled " Who are our enemies? " in Welt am Sonntag from February 4, 2001, the vice-admiral Ulrich Weisser, the former leader of the economic planning of the ministry of the Defense exposes as to it the necessity for the German Army, towards risks multiplicity, to be able to operate a projection of its forces in operations of "prevention of conflicts". Now, the area of envisaged action is strangely spread because the officer evokes a triangle strategic formed from the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Middle East being able to widen even to the African continent.

U. Weisser is not afraid to affirm that, succeeding to the objectives purely defensive of the cold war, German military strategy has mainly to take into account the threats at "the exterior NATO borders", as if NATO was a State, and as if the "crises which can be propagated and to take epidemic proportions have to be stopped in the region where they begun"; and to evoke confusedly Persian Gulf where Bundesnachrichtendienst estimates that in 2005 the latest, the region will be bristled with missiles carrying warhead of massive destruction, the Turkish border zone heavy of threats, the close and the Middle East, the Mediterranean Sea and the Maghreb. A conclusion is necessary that Bundeswehr has to acquire a tactical mobility and a strategic capacity of fast display. Now this corresponds obviously perfect to the "new strategic concept" of the Alliance adopted the 23 and 24 April, 1999 in Washington during the fiftieth NATO anniversary and according to which, namely, "the preservation of the security and the stability of the euro-Atlantic region assumes an original importance. An important objective of the Alliance and its forces consists in pushing aside risks, facing quickly potential crises, the armed allied forces could be called to lead answer operations to the crises "becoming so according to P. M.'s word of Gorce this "permanent instrument of intervention in crises and conflicts".

Germany, main ally of the Americans in Europe (and which is a part of the four countries of NATO with the United States, France and United Kingdom finance 84 % of military expenditures, including, pensions of the 19 States members of NATO) is also the first beneficiary of the extension de facto of the domain of NATO intervention, namely because its generals exercise high commands. To justify new evolutions, Berlin explains that with the end of the cold war the term of international tensions did not disappear nor the end of their tragic nature and that crises are now multiforms and obey to another logic than to that of blocks. The new size of Bundeswehr is supposed to give "capacity to Federal Republic of Germany to practice inside the Alliance and inside the European Union, the influence which she esteems to be at her level : a status of European power. It is a mainly a question of acquiring the capacity : "to conduct large-scale inter-armed operations with a maximum of 50 000 people during one year, or two operations in average engaging 10 000 people each one during several years and at the same time being able to take actions of weak intensity as well as the subsidy of means of appropriate spatial information."

The National military service is maintained as well as the strong budget of the defense and the effectives knew only a limited reduction while one is crossed by the concept of "territorial military defense" with heavy ground forces to that of "internal widened security" privileging a fast projection of forces with a lighter and specialized armaments. Finally, within the German responsibles of the Defense and of Foreign affairs develops the debate on the autonomy of the ministry of defense in definition of military necessities (budgets, effectives, concepts) in front of challenge of the "necessity to dispose of an autonomous capacity of management crisis and prevention". It is moreover in this frame that it is necessary to understand the article of L. Rülhe, steering the section "economic planning - exposed" in the division NATO "political Business" the in Brussels, in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of November 6, 2000 and according to which Germany to lead military operations in the UNO frame should be able to require from it four conditions that are: one clear mission; an international and unique structure of command ; one device of forces being convenient to the mission; and especially "in the frame of its political mandate, this command has to dispose with an operating freedom without that the political authorities be able to interfere in the conduct of the operations or the command of the troops."
German security is clearly redefined in a transnational scale and German internal security was "step by step extend to the Union under the shape of a widened internal security, then in the PECOS with which Germany concluded numerous bilateral agreements of police cooperation". General Lefevre and A. Levasseur quotes a comparative study of the Center of studies on conflicts and the Center of Research for the Schools of Coëtquidan St Cyr (French military academy) according to which, for Germany the emergence of one widened internal security is bound to the need which it feels "to promote the its police model within the European Union". Strategic orientations always determine, cleanly the evolutions the military options of States. Since the participation in the conflict of Kosovo, Germany indicated clearly in Europe and in rest of the world that she wish to realize the equivalence of its size of defense with what it think of being the status of "European power of world size". Berlin, with the support of London and Hague, sees European structure of defense to be born strictly bound to the NATO contrary to France, which would finally like to perceive a vague desire

of properly European autonomy. But it is exactly because it exists an organic interweaving between the embryo of European defense and NATO that the Germans were able to pull the maximum of political profits of it, diplomatic, military and strategic. To theirs allies, mainly French, to pronounce on the aptness of this ambition with imperceptible and vague outlines.