Abstract
Germany has reacted with great reluctance to the U.S. push for missile defenses. In Germany, neither changing the title from “national missile defense” (NMD) to “missile defense” nor including the promise to shelter allies under a prospective defensive umbrella arouses much enthusiasm. There are a number of reasons for this reaction.
The German government does not consider the threat that “rogue states” will get their hands on weapons of mass destruction and missiles as nonexistent, but it considers the problem a risk rather than a threat. And, given political circumstances, it regards that risk as unlikely and remote, despite growing technological capabilities around the world. Germany believes that political dialogues with both Iran and North Korea, and possibly with Libya, offer better prospects for the resolution of potential conflicts. (In the most difficult case, that of Iraq, it has no clear view on how to treat the problem.)
Germany is committed to creating a viable global missile control regime. It strongly supports the Missile Technology Control Regime's “Code of Conduct” and it participates in the U.N. Expert Group on Missiles, which was recently created by the U.N. General Assembly.
By and large, the German government does not believe that the leaders of “countries of concern” are totally irrational. It sees those countries' desire for weapons of mass destruction as a desire to achieve a last-resort deterrent to protect core values, such as survival of the state and preservation of the regime. It believes it unlikely that any Western country would push one of these states to the brink–threatening to destroy the state or its leadership, thus escalating a conflict to a level in which weapons of mass destruction would be used.
Germany is interested, however, in tactical missile defenses that might protect troops on the battlefield, because Germany now regards out-of-area deployments under an international mandate to be a regular mission of its armed forces. Its military planners are naturally concerned about the possibility that German troops might find themselves in environments in which weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles could conceivably be used.
But missile defenses in terms of homeland defense are seen as much less urgent–not least because there is little confidence in the reliability of current technology.
Germany is not hostile to technological development, but it is more skeptical about technology than the United States. The strength of the Green movement–the Green Party is part of the current governing coalition–testifies to this cultural difference. Consequently, Germany expresses much more skepticism as to technical feasibility. And doubts about feasibility, in turn, make the German government more nervous about possible costs.
Nevertheless, the chancellor has expressed the desire not to be left behind in industrial terms if and when the program progresses to the next stage. But the experience in collaborating with the United States on the development of the MEADS system–a mid-range anti-ballistic missile system, which has been downgraded and deprior-itized by both the Pentagon and Congress–has been very disappointing and has dampened German enthusiasm for becoming involved in industrial collaboration.
The German government has traditionally taken an interest in a broad range of industrial development and R&D policy in the civilian sector, unlike the U.S. government, which focuses mainly on defense. Germany has no interest in shifting the bulk of its support for the technology base to defense.
The cost of missile defense is also seen as too high. And this opinion is held within the military itself, which is undergoing a difficult transition in which the armed forces are supposed to be fundamentally reformed. Budgetary constraints are making it extremely difficult to fulfill procurement needs for the restructuring process. Adding the funds required for NMD on top of these needs would cripple the defense budget for the foreseeable future.
In the United States, the conservative quest for invulnerability appears to be connected to a traditional self-image as the “City on the Hill,” a “New Jerusalem,” or “God's own country.” NMD is considered necessary and feasible because folks want it, not the other way around.
The millennium-long German experience–given its geographic position–is that vulnerability is the human and political condition. There is virtually no faith in the possibility of achieving invulnerability by militarytechnical means. The country's security–in contrast to its insecurity over the past century–has been built on cooperative institutions. The ideology of invulnerability does not arise in German debates.
For Germany, nonproliferation, arms control, and disarmament are part and parcel of security policy. There is a clear preference for negotiated and binding agreements that are verifiable, transparent, and irreversible. This relates to a more general interest in strengthening and enhancing international law and multilateralism. In the German mind, both epitomize international order and serve the German national interest in stability, security, peace, and economic welfare. Germany invests considerable diplomatic and political currency in expanding international cooperation.
Although the German government has refrained from uttering acerbic criticism of the U.S. missile defense program, it has declared on several occasions that it has “serious questions” about the U.S. position, as it said during consultations with the delegation led by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz to Berlin in May. In addition, the government has repeatedly emphasized the need to reach agreement with Russia and to take Chinese concerns into account. This is meant as a warning against unilateral withdrawal from the ABM Treaty. Germany has asked the United States to come up with a concept that embeds a changed offense-defense relation within a broader arms control regime. A joint declaration by President Jacques Chirac and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder at the spring French-German summit pointed strongly in that direction.
Given Germany's strong commitment to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Biological Weapons Convention, the Ottawa landmine agreement, its efforts to achieve efficient norms and rules regulating the proliferation of small arms, its strong support for the International Criminal Court, and its leading role, together with the European partners, in strengthening the Kyoto Protocol, it sees the U.S. attitude toward the ABM Treaty as an alarming symptom of unfettered and damaging unilateralism. The relationship with the United States is too important for a public confrontation, but feelings in Berlin are stronger than can be concluded from public statements so far.
The relative reluctance to confront the Bush administration openly has attracted some criticism from parts of the governing parties as too mild and too subdued. Within the rank and file of the Greens and the Social Democrats, the attachment to arms control and disarmament is so strong, and annoyance with the U.S. policy so intense, that many deputies wish their government to be more vocal. Interestingly enough, in contrast to the situation in Britain, the more conservative opposition has not seized the opportunity to accuse the government of risking its friendship with the United States by not jumping on the bandwagon of missile defense. The sour experience politicians in the ranks of the Christian Democrats had with President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) prevents them from embracing missile defense enthusiastically. Their skepticism is nearly as great as that of the parties in power, and it should be emphasized that there is a solid nonpartisan consensus that multilateralism, international law, and arms control are indispensable instruments of German security policy.
The German public has little interest in this issue. Unemployment and the introduction of the euro are much more salient issues. In general, however, the German public nurtures a preference for cooperative security; in addition, the public in this frontline state of the Cold War feels much more secure today than it has at any previous time in modern German history. As a consequence, the U.S. debate about ever-present dangers is viewed–by those members of the public who care–with some disbelief. A few conservative journalists and security experts express understanding for the American stance, but theirs are clearly minority voices in the debate.
In the end, Germans would like the problem to go away, like SDI, without a major transatlantic conflict. Some rest their hopes on NMD's technical failures–hoping that the U.S. public, or Congress, after the power shift in the Senate, will decide that there have been too many failed tests.
It is also hoped that European influence may help shift the administration's policy back to the center. However, the German government knows how difficult it would be to shape a common European stance, given how eager the British government is to avoid hurting the “special relationship,” and the readiness of the Italian and Spanish governments to enhance their political status by embracing President Bush's pet project.
But Germany would prefer a future with more, not fewer, arms control and nonproliferation regimes, not a confusing, unpredictable, and unreliable mixture of unilateral armament and arms reduction measures that leaves everyone guessing where international security is headed.