Jumping Over Its Shadow Germany and the Future of European Defense

This report is the second in a series on thefuture of European defence following thepublication in April of a study on France. 1 It wasinformed by more than 40 in-depth interviewswith present and past German, European andNATO policymakers, members of parliament, serving and retired military officers, strategists, diplomats and defence industry executives. The interviews were conducted in personor by telephone between May and July2017, before the German general electionon 24 September 2017. While a handful ofserving officials were willing to be quoted byname, numerous policymakers, soldiers anddiplomats who gave generously of their timeand insights cannot be identified because ofthe sensitivity of their roles. I am particularly grateful to the Federal Ministry of Defence, the German representations to NATO and theEU, and the NATO press service for their helpand support. In addition, I drew on the programmes and speeches of the main candidates in the 2017Bundestag elections and their parties, media interviews with some senior figures who were1 Crunch Time - France and the Future of European Defence - Friends of Europe, April 2017(frnds.eu/frenchsecurity)not available for interview, the defence whitepaper produced by the German government in2016, the regular reports of the parliamentary commissioner for the armed forces, andspecialised reports by the ministries of economyand defence and the German internal securityagency covering arms exports, the availabilityof equipment to the Bundeswehr and cybersecurity and espionage against Germany, aswell as the proceedings of a conference onFranco-German defence cooperation held inMarch 2017 in Berlin by Friends of Europe andthe Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. In parallel, Friends of Europe conducted amultiple-choice survey of senior security anddefence experts in government, business andinternational organisations, NGOs and themedia. The findings of the survey are appendedto this report (see Annex B).I would like to express special thanks to twoelder statesmen of the German diplomatic andinternational security establishment, Joachim Bitterlich and Wolfgang Ischinger, who openedtheir doors, archives and contacts booksENGermany and the future of European defence 11generously to me. Hans-Peter Bartels, theparliamentary commissioner for the armedforces, was most helpful. Many people in thethink-tank community and the media sharedvaluable information, analysis and perspectives, of whom only a handful are named in thebody of the text. My thanks to Sophia Besch, Judy Dempsey, Janis Emmanouilidis, BastianGiegerich, Francois Heisbourg, Josef Joffe, Karl-Heinz Kamp, Daniel Keohane, John Kornblum, Barbara Kunz, Almut Moeller, Christian Moelling, Jana Puglierin, Daniela Schwarzer, Alison Smale, Constanze Stelzenmueller, Jan Techau, Nathalie Tocci, Thomas Valasek and Stefanie Weiss. At Friends of Europe, I am grateful to Geert Cami, Co-Founder and Managing Director, foroffering me the opportunity to write this study;to Skaiste Masalaityte, Programme Assistant, for her precious research assistance, conductand analysis of the stakeholder survey andsupport in arranging many of the interviews; toPauline Massart, who was Deputy Director forSecurity & Geopolitics when I began workingon the report and gave me precious stimulation;to Dharmendra Kanani, for encouraging meto focus more on the EU policy context; andto Giles Merritt, Founder and Chairman, forchallenging me to dig deeper, and for sharinghis many contacts. Joachim Bitterlich, Jamie Shea, PaulineMassart and Constanze Stelzenmueller kindlyagreed to review the first draft and contributedhelpful suggestions. Needless to say, the viewsexpressed here, and any errors, are mine andnot theirs. Finally, I wish to thank my former Reuterscolleagues in Germany, Andreas Rinke, Sabine Siebold and Noah Barkin, for sharinggenerously their deep knowledge of Chancellor Merkel's world view, German defence andsecurity policy, the Bundeswehr and thedefence industry.