Table Of ContentNew Security Challenges Series
General Editor: Stuart Croft, Professor of International Security in the Department
of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick, UK, and Director
of the ESRC’s New Security Challenges Programme.
The last decade demonstrated that threats to security vary greatly in their causes
and manifestations, and that they invite interest and demand responses from the
social sciences, civil society and a very broad policy community. In the past, the
avoidance of war was the primary objective, but with the end of the Cold War the
retention of military defence as the centrepiece of international security agenda
became untenable. There has been, therefore, a significant shift in emphasis
away from traditional approaches to security to a new agenda that talks of the
softer side of security, in terms of human security, economic security and envi-
ronmantal security. The topical New Security Challenges Series reflects this pressing
political and research agenda.
Titles include:
Abdul Haqq Baker
EXTREMISTS IN OUR MIDST
Confronting Terror
Robin Cameron
SUBJECTS OF SECURITY
Domestic Effects of Foreign Policy in the War on Terror
Sharyl Cross, Savo Kentera, R. Craig Nation and Radovan Vukadinovic (editors)
SHAPING SOUTH EAST EUROPE’S SECURITY COMMUNITY FOR THE
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Trust, Partnership, Integration
Tom Dyson and Theodore Konstadinides
EUROPEAN DEFENCE COOPERATION IN EU LAW AND IR THEORY
Håkan Edström, Janne Haaland Matlary and Magnus Petersson (editors)
NATO: THE POWER OF PARTNERSHIPS
Håkan Edström and Dennis Gyllensporre
POLITICAL ASPIRATIONS AND PERILS OF SECURITY
Unpacking the Military Strategy of the United Nations
Hakan Edström and Dennis Gyllensporre (editors)
PURSUING STRATEGY
NATO Operations from the Gulf War to Gaddafi
Adrian Gallagher
GENOCIDE AND ITS THREAT TO CONTEMPORARY INTERNATIONAL ORDER
Kevin Gillan, Jenny Pickerill and Frank Webster
ANTI-WAR ACTIVISM
New Media and Protest in the Information Age
James Gow and Ivan Zverzhanovski
SECURITY, DEMOCRACY AND WAR CRIMES
Security Sector Transformation in Serbia
Toni Haastrup
CHARTING TRANSFORMATION THROUGH SECURITY
Contemporary EU-Africa Relations
Ellen Hallams, Luca Ratti and Ben Zyla (editors)
NATO BEYOND 9/11
The Transformation of the Atlantic Alliance
Carolin Hilpert
STRATEGIC CULTURAL CHANGE AND THE CHALLENGE FOR SECURITY POLICY
Germany and the Bundeswehr’s Deployment to Afghanistan
Christopher Hobbs, Matthew Moran and Daniel Salisbury (editors)
OPEN SOURCE INTELLIGENCE IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
New Approaches and Opportunities
Paul Jackson and Peter Albrecht
RECONSTRUCTION SECURITY AFTER CONFLICT
Security Sector Reform in Sierra Leone
Janne Haaland Matlary
EUROPEAN UNION SECURITY DYNAMICS
In the New National Interest
Sebastian Mayer (editor)
NATO’s POST-COLD WAR POLITICS
The Changing Provision of Security
Kevork Oskanian
FEAR, WEAKNESS AND POWER IN THE POST-SOVIET SOUTH CAUCASUS
A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis
Michael Pugh, Neil Cooper and Mandy Turner (editors)
WHOSE PEACE? CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF
PEACEBUILDING
Nathan Roger
IMAGE WARFARE IN THE WAR ON TERROR
Aglaya Snetkov and Stephen Aris
THE REGIONAL DIMENSIONS TO SECURITY
Other Sides of Afghanistan
Ali Tekin and Paul Andrew Williams
GEO-POLITICS OF THE EURO-ASIA ENERGY NEXUS
The European Union, Russia and Turkey
New Security Challenges Series
Series Standing Order ISBN 978–0–230–00216–6 (hardback)
ISBN 978–0–230–00217–3 (paperback)
You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order.
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Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke,
Hampshire RG21 6XS, England
Strategic Cultural Change
and the Challenge for
Security Policy
Germany and the Bundeswehr’s
Deployment to Afghanistan
Carolin Hilpert
© Carolin Hilpert 2014
Foreword © Carlo Masala and Jamie Shea 2014
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-38378-5
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
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in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2014 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
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To those who serve
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Contents
List of Illustrations viii
Foreword ix
Carlo Masala and Jamie Shea
Acknowledgments x iv
List of Abbreviations xvi
Introduction 1
1 On the Cultural Foundations of Warfare 5
2 Setting the Scene: The US War on Terrorism 2 6
3 Alliance Solidarity after 9/11 41
4 Escalation in Afghanistan 82
5 The Stabilization Narrative Explodes 1 06
6 German Forms of Counterinsurgency 1 37
7 Afghanistan’s Legacy? 171
Conclusion 1 86
Annex: Coding Bundestag Speeches 199
Notes 2 10
Selected Bibliography 246
Index 2 51
vii
List of Illustrations
Figures
1.1 Working definition of strategic culture 12
3.1 Argumentation map of Germany 5 2
3.2 IED-attacks in Afghanistan 6 5
3.3 Germany’s defense spending as percentage of GDP 8 1
6.1 Parliamentary voting behavior, ISAF 1 62
6.2 Parliamentary voting behavior, OEF 1 62
Table
6.1 Public opinion on the Bundeswehr’s participation in ISAF 1 60
viii
Foreword
For some decades, strategists looking at Germany from both outside and
inside the country have been asking a common set of questions. Can
the Federal Republic become a ‘normal’ major power willing to deploy
armed forces in pursuit of its national or Alliance interests? Or will the
weight of historical legacy and the strategic culture it has bequeathed
make it impossible for Germany’s leaders and its public to be comfort-
able with the use of armed force for perhaps decades still to come? Given
Germany’s international stature (even though it is not yet a permanent
member of the UN Security Council) and the military and economic
resources it brings to the NATO Alliance – not to speak of its increasingly
dominant and leadership role in the European Union – this question has
been much more than an academic or conceptual one. Germany’s active
participation in NATO and EU missions abroad has been a key factor in
the military effectiveness and political legitimacy of those missions, as
we have seen in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. On the other hand,
German abstention can undermine the credibility of military action,
even if it is not fatal to its ultimate success, as we saw when Germany
abstained from the UN Security Council and subsequently stayed away
from NATO’s intervention in Libya, or when it gave rather minimal and
grudging support to France in Mali.
For these reasons, Germany’s friends, allies and international partners
have for many years already closely scrutinised German security policy
decisions and tried to assess their impact, both short-term and long-
term, on Germany’s strategic culture. Manfred Wörner, Secretary General
of NATO in the 1990s, often doubted that his countrymen would ever
accept the use of armed force outside their national territory and for
purposes other than NATO’s Article 5, collective self-defence. Yet just a
few years later, Germany had interpreted its Basic Law (G rundgesetz ) in
a way that allowed it to join NATO’s air, sea and land operations in the
Balkans, and subsequently deploy a sizeable military force for several
years in the northern provinces of Afghanistan. During this period,
Berlin even accepted participating in combat operations, deploying its
special forces on occasion, and not just undertaking the more classical
peacekeeping operations. These developments convinced many outside
observers that Germany was progressively rejoining the ranks of the
world’s leading military powers. Again, given the centrality of Germany
ix
