Front Matter
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Acknowledgments
The editors are grateful for the assistance of Jack Fornasiero and Elizabeth Hotary. Additionally, the editors would like to thank Lori Janning and her team at the US Army War College Press.
Foreword
The Zeitenwende marks a major turning point in German security policy. Fundamental shifts in Germany’s energy-security strategy, policies on security cooperation, conventional military strength, approach toward Russia, and more have unfolded since February 2022. In many respects, these changes remain works in progress. Nonetheless, the decisions and actions triggered in Berlin by Russia’s devastating expansion of its war against Ukraine already appear transformative in many ways.
The changes in German security policy have had broad-based and wide-ranging implications. In particular, because German-American relations lie at the heart of the broader transatlantic relationship, when Germany promulgates a dramatic shift in strategy or policy, the implications stretch far beyond Berlin and indeed across the Atlantic. Hence, the Zeitenwende matters greatly for American policymakers as well as those across the rest of NATO and those in the EU.
Will the changes brought about by the Zeitenwende endure and be far-reaching enough to strengthen German and European deterrence and defense? The answer remains unclear. Nonetheless, assessing whether and how the Zeitenwende has met expectations and what this all means for American policymakers is particularly timely and important. The recent election in the United States and the election in Germany mean significant change in the German-American relationship may be on the horizon. Building on the successes of the Zeitenwende and identifying, correcting, or mitigating its shortcomings could provide a road map of sorts to aid Berlin and Washington in navigating the way ahead. For this reason, the US Army War College is pleased to partner with Johns Hopkins University’s American-German Institute to publish this collection of insightful, forward-looking essays.
Dr. C. Anthony Pfaff
Director, Strategic Studies Institute
and US Army War College Press
Summary
The scholarly essays of this edited volume analyze Germany’s Zeitenwende, a fundamental shift in security policy prompted by Russia’s brutal reinvasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Key themes addressed by the array of authors from Europe and North America include national security, defense capabilities, energy policy, industrial strategy, and international relations, particularly Germany’s relationships with Russia, China, the United States, NATO, and the EU. Regarding Germany’s strategic approach, the inaugural German National Security Strategy appears overly broad, offering a wish list rather than a focused strategy. Although it addresses various priorities, such as democracy, climate action, and NATO alignment, the strategy lacks a coherent approach to trade-offs and specific threats.
At the level of defense policy, the Zeitenwende changes included a renewed commitment to increased defense spending, reinforced by a €100 billion modernization fund. But delays in equipment procurement and persistent shortcomings in operational readiness continue to frustrate German efforts to meet NATO commitments and maintain the flow of materiel to Ukraine. Structural issues, including bureaucratic inefficiencies and an underfunded long-term defense budget, raise concerns about sustainability. Many of these same challenges afflict Germany’s relationship with its defense industry. Although defense spending and materiel exports have surged, regulatory and value-driven political constraints persist.
Regarding energy security, the invasion of Ukraine exposed the vulnerabilities created by Germany’s dependence on Russian gas. Rapidly implemented initiatives to diversify energy sources, develop liquified natural gas infrastructure, and double down on renewables have helped lessen the shock of cutting Russian gas. But Germany remains challenged in balancing energy security, affordability, and sustainability. The energy crisis underscored the need for structural reforms to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and increase resilience.
Looking abroad, in some ways the Zeitenwende has redefined Germany’s international relationships. Regarding Russia, Berlin has essentially turned its back on decades of Ostpolitik, prioritizing instead its relations with Ukraine, despite the aforementioned challenges this change has created in energy security as well as other sectors of the German economy. Farther east, German perceptions of China were already beginning to shift before February 2022. But despite China’s role in enabling Russia’s war effort and Beijing’s economic coercion, Germany’s approach to China continues to emphasize derisking as a way of reducing dependencies while still maintaining robust economic ties and cooperation in key areas like climate change.
From Washington’s perspective, the apparent duality of Berlin’s approach to China undermines the sense the Zeitenwende carries implications beyond Europe. Nonetheless, the United States has clearly welcomed the changes brought about so far by the reexamination of German security policy, even though Washington remains concerned about the Zeitenwende’s durability and effectiveness even within just a European context. At a broader, institutional level, Germany’s role in NATO and the EU has grown post-Zeitenwende, with increased spending and commitments to collective defense. Yet, Germany faces pressure to meet the requirements of new NATO operations plans and expand its contributions to collective defense amid persistent questions about Berlin’s will and ability to sustain this role.
Executive Summary
Germany’s sea change in its defense and security policy—known as the Zeitenwende—was triggered by the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which laid bare the fragility of the post–Cold War order and Germany’s exposure. The invasion shook German security and key pillars of Germany’s economic model, as a country that is naturally resource poor and deeply dependent on the free movement of people, goods, and capital in Europe.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sparked the Zeitenwende, but the shift was made necessary by three failures of contemporary German politics since the 1990 reunification. Thirty years of underinvestment in Germany’s national and collective defense left the country’s armed forces and defense industry unprepared for a massive effort to support Ukraine militarily and prospectively to defend the territory of the NATO alliance and of the EU. Second, German leaders of all stripes built their strategy on overly optimistic assumptions the arc of European politics bent inexorably toward the rule of law, the peaceful settlement of disputes, and the ultimate primacy of economic interconnectedness and prosperity. Finally, German decisionmakers steeped in a view economic and trade ties were inherently stabilizing did not apprehend the ways in which German trade and partnership with Russia became an asymmetric dependency rather than a restraint on Moscow’s ambition to reestablish dominance over its neighbors and roll back decades of European progress.
Just as the erosion of Germany’s defense capabilities and security position took place over decades, so too will the rebuilding of the country’s defense and the restoration of European security take many years of concerted political, economic, and industrial effort. The Zeitenwende is arguably the opening move in this process, the outcome of which has enormous significance for Europe as well as for the United States. This multiauthor study seeks to understand how far Germany has advanced since 2022 toward achieving the goals set out by Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the German government. It further seeks to assess whether those targets are sufficient to arrest the deteriorating security environment Germany confronts, and what the implications of Berlin’s efforts will be for the United States, with its global security commitments.
The picture presented by the authors of this compilation is mixed. Germany has achieved significant successes, perhaps the most prominent being the elimination of imports of Russian oil, natural gas, and coal and the reorientation of supply to reliable partners. The turbulence in energy markets has hit Germany hard, with high energy prices contributing to economic stagnation, but the decisive steps by the government to open up new supplies, along with the acceleration of the energy transition to renewables, has ended the hydrocarbon dependency on Russia, with no foreseeable prospect for reversal.
Germany likewise has shown strength and resolve in becoming Europe’s largest provider of military and other support to Ukraine—second only to the United States globally. This accomplishment is remarkable. Although it may be tempered by the ambiguous messaging about Germany’s objective in supplying Ukraine—Chancellor Scholz speaks of preventing a Russian victory rather than enabling a Ukrainian one—Europe’s support to Kyiv would be inconceivable without the commitment Berlin has demonstrated.
In the medium and longer terms, the concerns increase about Germany meeting the goals it has set for itself. The Bundeswehr appears unlikely to meet its target of expanding to 203,000 personnel, and the armed forces would struggle even within those parameters to meet the growing NATO requirements under the new force model. This challenge goes hand in hand with a budget dilemma that looms in 2027, when the off-budget €100 billion special defense fund Scholz created in 2022 for major procurements will be depleted. Germany’s leaders will face a choice between creating a follow- on fund (likely of a greater size) to continue recapitalizing the Bundeswehr, or dramatically expanding the medium-term commitments in the regular defense budget—something governments have been unwilling to do going back to 2014 and the first Russian invasion of Ukraine. Until Germany’s leadership puts the resource commitments on a trajectory that enables procurement, operations and maintenance, and personnel planning to meet national and NATO requirements, the country will struggle to make progress and will be plagued by uncertainty (which will, in turn, undermine Germany’s influence and credibility with its allies and with its EU partners).
A deeper difficulty underlies these challenges: Germany’s inability or unwillingness to recognize necessary trade-offs and prioritize strategically. Germany, for the first time under Olaf Scholz, created a National Security Strategy to guide state action: a step previous chancellors considered unnecessary or perhaps too difficult. Creating the strategy was an important start. But the strategy avoids difficult decisions in favor of an all-of-the-above approach. This approach risks dissipating rather than focusing national effort on the matters that are within Germany’s control or influence. Formulating a National Security Strategy will apparently become a tradition for future governments, and successive iterations will hopefully become more effective efforts at national priority setting in the long-term endeavor to rebuild national security and to make Germany the leader on European security.
This ambition is essential and would be an antidote to an uncertainty embedded in German policymaking about Berlin’s ability to shape events rather than react to them. This tendency is evident in the very origins of the Zeitenwende, which the chancellor described thus: “We are living through a watershed era [Zeitenwende]. And that means that the world afterwards will no longer be the same as the world before.” Germany’s response oscillates between portraying the Zeitenwende as an analytical framework to describe a deteriorating international environment and portraying the Zeitenwende as a program of urgent national action to redress the flaws in German policy and reestablish a favorable situation for German and European interests.
This ambiguity captures the promise of Germany’s security transformation as well as its shortcomings. From a US perspective, the new trajectory of German policy represents an opportunity to reinforce positive trends and to set shared objectives that will result in a sustainable and effective transatlantic security balance. To aid both US and German policymakers in forging a constructive path ahead that builds on the successes of the Zeitenwende while mitigating its shortcomings, the authors of this compilation offer a wide-ranging set of practical recommendations, which include the following.
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At the broadest level, US leaders should encourage German officials to rebuild lost grand-strategic infrastructure, including in terms of personnel training and bureaucratic champions, while German leaders should pursue an updated strategy under the next government.
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American leaders should encourage German officials to leverage Berlin’s example and its political capital as a way of elevating the responses of other European allies in deterrence and defense.
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Washington should continue to push Berlin to live up to its own commitments and strategic goals, to ensure long-term funding for Germany’s defense and deterrence objectives as well as in terms of avoiding the interdependence trap with China.
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German policymakers should develop plans now for taking on greater responsibility for a significant portion of the burdens the United States currently shoulders in Europe, particularly in terms of strategic enablers such as airlift; reconnaissance; air-to-air refueling; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems; and air defense.
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Berlin should speed up approval procedures for defense projects, make defense research and development projects available for civilian funding, and make financing more accessible for small and medium-sized enterprises and start-ups at the national and European levels.
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German leaders, as well as relevant American officials, should commit to an irreversible transition where Germany is independent from Russian fossil fuels and instead relies on stable supplies from the United States and elsewhere.
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Berlin should look to deepen Germany’s economic ties with Ukraine, as part of a strategy aimed at solidifying the long-term shift away from the failed Ostpolitik of decades past.
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With American backing, the next German government should devote the necessary political capital to developing sufficient resources for the Bundeswehr to meet its alliance obligations ahead of schedule.
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Although it may think of other allies like France and the United Kingdom as more able and willing to partner vis-à-vis Chinese aggression, Washington should not lose sight of Germany’s capacity to wield considerable coercive power against Beijing as well.
By pursuing these and other recommendations identified in this compilation, leaders in both Berlin and Washington can ensure the Zeitenwende is both durable and effective, benefiting German, American, and transatlantic security for the foreseeable future.
Thumbnail Photo Credit
David Cohen on Unsplash, Photo of white Greek-design architecture (Reichstag), https://unsplash.com/photos/photo-of-white-greek-design-architecture-R4VXMRFVcE4.