Angela Merkel has long refused to update German defense policy for today’s challenges. Your successor will not be able to avoid the challenge forever
When the German Christian Democrats elect their new party leader on January 16, the end of the Merkel era will begin. Regardless of whether Armin Laschet, Friedrich Merz or Norbert Röttgen take the chair, he will have a great chance of replacing Angela Merkel in office after the parliamentary elections in September. Anyone who takes over as Chancellor has big shoes to fill. In her now almost 16 years in office, Merkel has decisively influenced German politics and emerged as Europe’s strongest and most powerful leader. After Donald Trump’s election in 2016, she was even hailed by some as the leader of the free world. Many now worry about who will hold Europeans together and guide them through the next crises once Merkel is gone. We will miss her very much in Germany.
There is one political area where her legacy is less impressive: German security and defense. Here the Chancellor remained particularly absent over the years. « Hard security » was never Merkel’s business – she was always a bit far removed from the German armed forces, the Bundeswehr, rarely spoke out on security and defense issues, and remained skeptical of the usefulness of military interventions. During her reign with the Free Democrats from 2009 to 2013, she supported the rule of thumb of then Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle “culture of restraint” – or at least offered no alternative. In 2011 Germany refrained from participating in the Europe-led military intervention in Libya. The Allies considered this a failure to stand with them, but Merkel stood behind the decision. Where she approved new military interventions against the Islamic state group and in Mali, she did so mainly out of solidarity with the alliance.
At the same time, Merkel is not a pacifist. She has always supported Germany’s commitment to NATO and supported the development of a European defense union. But it has never dared to position itself outside the cumbersome security policy status quo in Germany – and it has never bothered to explain or even enforce unpopular measures. As in other policy areas, it only imposed as much on the German public as it was willing to tolerate, without complaining much. She never gave orders by force.
One of the few security policy initiatives that came directly from the firm was the so-called « Enhancement Initiative » – the « Enable and Enhance Initiative ». Later defined as the “Merkel Doctrine” by the magazine Der Spiegel, its aim was to train and equip trustworthy partners in global trouble spots who were ready to work for regional security themselves. However, the focus on logistical support, training and arms exports often earned Germans criticism that they would abandon other allies to do the dirty work like actually fighting terrorists while Germany remained comfortably far from the front lines.
Merkel never seemed very interested in the very strategic debate that think tanks and journalists would repeatedly call for. During her tenure, she left it above all to others – the Federal President, the Defense Ministers and the Chairman of the Bundestag’s Foreign Affairs Committee – to speak out loudly for Germany’s growing weight in the world to include a more effective German and European defense policy that is capable of acting . She herself has rarely used her political capital to get this message across and to convince the general public that Germany needs to show more security and military commitment internationally. On the rare occasions where Merkel made major public statements about Europe’s growing defense needs – such as comments she made during her campaign in Munich in 2017 that the continent should take more responsibility for its own future – she explained never tell the German public what this could mean or how much it would cost.Merkel’s strange absence from the debates irritated Germany’s European partners very much. French President Emmanuel Macron is probably still wondering why he had to get along with Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer in the debate about strategic autonomy over the past few months – and whether the minister’s views were ever supported by the Chancellor or not.
However, there was no lack of ideas from their own ranks. Leading foreign and security policy experts of the CDU, including both the current defense minister and her immediate predecessor, have made a number of proposals, from the expansion of the Federal Security Council to a national security strategy to an annual fundamental debate on security and defense policy in parliament . Behind the scenes, it was rumored that all of this was « not wanted » by the firm.
Merkel is probably only known whether her reservation in this policy area is that she is deeply uncomfortable with these issues, or whether she is with her intuition for the mood of the German public knew that she carried the risk of driving potential voters away.
Of course Merkel never had the support of her coalition partners for a more determined and robust German security and defense policy. On the contrary, in the last few years of the grand coalition it has been shown that the so-called “Munich Consensus” (the idea that Germany must take on more international responsibility, also militarily) does not exist. In fact, there is still no common understanding in Germany of what the assumption of “more responsibility” should mean in concrete terms for German security and defense policy ambitions. Since the beginning of the legislative period, there have been massive party-political clashes between conservatives and social democrats when the SPD decided to recall its tradition as Germany’s true « peace party ». The grand coalition is so divided on many issues that no clear course can be identified, be it arms exports, armed drones, mandates for the use of the Bundeswehr, the successor to the outdated tornado fighter-bombers and – related to this – Germany’s participation in nuclear weapons NATO . Instead of taking new steps, the government continues to make difficult decisions.
Germany can no longer afford to wander around without a clear political compass – as if crises would stop at the borders of the republic.
The new CDU- Party leaders and maybe soon also the chancellor have to provide more guidance than Merkel ever offered. This is not about adopting the same strategic culture as France or the UK, or embarking on “military adventures”. Germany has a different political legacy and must find its own way to respond to the changed security environment. But Germany can no longer afford to wander around without a clear political compass – as if crises would stop at the borders of the republic. Germany’s European partners and allies understand that many debates are more difficult here than elsewhere. What they cannot cope with, however, is the constant uncertainty about German positions. The next party leader must clearly state what role he sees for Germany as a security and defense policy actor in the future. So far, these issues have not played a major role for the candidates for the CDU party chairmanship. In the upcoming federal election campaign, however, the German public should know where the top candidates of the parties for security and defense policy stand. The pressure of international events will continue to increase, as will the expectations of the European and transatlantic partners that Germany should become more involved. Many in Germany are looking forward to the end of the current coalition and are placing their hopes in an alliance between the CDU / CSU and the Greens after the federal elections in September. While issues such as nuclear weapon sharing, arms exports and foreign missions are probably no less controversial, the current paralysis must not continue.
The European Council on External Relations does not take collective positions. ECFR publications represent the views of individual authors only.
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