This archive report was first published on 23 July 2019.
Published on July 23, 2019, a time when Germany's military doctrine was still reeling from the consequences of World War II.
Henry Kissinger once described Willy Brandt as a 'political romanticist,' but the former German Chancellor's idealism was not out of line with mainstream German politics. In 1993, Chancellor Helmut Kohl declared that German soldiers should never intervene in nations where the Wehrmacht had wreaked havoc.
However, the conflict in the Balkans put Kohl's doctrine to the test. A year later, the German Constitutional Court approved 'out of area' operations by the country's armed forces, but only as part of NATO, United Nations, or European Union missions.
Since then, Germany has deployed troops a handful of times, mostly in peacekeeping roles. Despite increasing its military budget, the country has also ended its mandatory service requirement and reduced the number of active-duty service members under Chancellor Angela Merkel.
For Americans, these caveats may be difficult to understand. Historically, many in the United States have viewed war as a force for good, at least in the right hands. In Germany, however, war is seen as a sign of failure, a reminder of the country's dark past and the atrocities committed during World War II.
The memory of war is deeply ingrained in German culture, and the country's leaders are often faced with the moral dilemma of whether to engage in military action. In 1999, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer faced opposition from his own party when he argued in favor of using German arms during the Balkan wars. A fellow party member even threw a balloon filled with red paint at his head, symbolizing the strong pacifist sentiment in Germany.
Even the Allied invasion of 1944, which liberated Nazi Germany, was not exempt from the pacifist dogma. In 2014, the chairwoman of the Protestant church in Germany, Margot Kässmann, refused to justify the war, stating, 'It certainly was a war with a good intention, but it's hard for me to justify war. There is only a just peace.'
