Hägar the Horrible: soldier's code of honor

In an old issue of German Armed Forces weekly newspaper, I could read this funny cartoon of Hägar the Horrible:

Lucky Eddie: "Hägar, the guys would like to change our motto from: "Victory or Death", to "Victory, or, if things don't happen that well to us, let us disappear" (with the meaning of taking the French leave).

Europe, Desperatly Looking for a Strong German Military Leadership

Quite provoking, isn't it? Despite the title, I do not believe that any political leader or chief of defence will dare express such a statement. However ''the times they are a changin'! "and the German military leadership could constitute the next political challenge for European Defence.

The appropriate size of future Bundeswehr.

There have been several press articles on the future format of German Armed Forces. In any case, manning will be trimmed again and make out of Bundeswehr the smallest one among the main countries. However one factor should be taken into account to moderate the mere figures.

In accordance with its fundamental law, the civilian part of Ministry of Defence is rather large and many tasks, which are traditionally devoted to the military in other European countries, belong to the civilian side of the ministry, in German the ‘Bundeswehr- und verteidigungsverwaltung’.

The figures made available in German media are the following ones:

-Army: 47.000 men,

-Air Force: 19.000 men,

-Navy: 9.000 men,

-Medical service: 11.000 men,

-Joint services: 26.000 men.

(source: Stern.de of 22. June 2010)

These figures do not mean that much, the most interesting will consist in the number of combat units that will remain, including their support and service support. As well, critical to observe will be the capability to commit effectively troops. For the time being, all the possible troops are declared to NATO. At least theoretically. However, when SACEUR needs reinforcements, or when the EU Council wants to launch an operation, reality is much more painful. Therefore, I would not criticize German figures until one can discriminate what they really mean.

For this reason, Mr v. Guttenberg words make sense when he declares to the Spiegel on 14th June: ‘It cannot be, with 252,000 soldiers, that we have already reached the limits of our abilities when only 8,000 soldiers are deployed at the same time’, which means that the Germans do not have their money worth.

So let us see how many soldiers the Bundeswehr will declare ready for deployment once the reform will start implementation. Thanks the support of the defence civilian services, it could work, but Germany will then have to fix what assets will be mutualised, with whom, and mainly with what conditions.

European Army really seems ton be on the move through the mutualisation of military assets.

Recent publications have shown that some European countries are looking for new paths in order to more involve their armed forces in their budgetary saving policy. Really fascinating thing is that bold initiatives are on preparation, without any real conceptual work being performed beforehand, but under the pressure of the current budgetary crisis. More precisely this new orientation is not the result of a need expressed by the Armed Forces but a pure political will, intending to fully involve the military in the struggle for balanced budgets.

When looking after a promoter of optimisation in defence spending, one can look towards the European Defence Agency, which already and clearly demonstrated some years ago that the 200 billion Euros spent yearly for Defence do not generate the efficiency that it should, because of the numerous redundancies, while some other domains are left apart by our nations, despite vows for a better future.

Now the politics have seized the initiative and decided to search for mutualisation or at least of some of the military assets, in order to have the armed forces contribute to the budgetary balance of their respective nations and limit the costly redundancies.

After the statements of Mr von Guttenberg, the German Minister of Defence (already published on this blog), came a statement of Mr Morin, the French Minister of Defence, during a hearing at the Defence committee of the Assemblée Nationale, while shortly after the public relations of the ministry issued a press release dealing again with this issue.

On 7^th July, Mr Morin declared: “My British counterpart and I have decided to launch a quite ambitious operation. The new British government wishes that we analyse very thoroughly what competences and assets that each country should keep as an asset to exert full sovereignty, those which can be mutualised and those for which interdependence can be envisaged.”

Some days later, the French Ministry of Defence released that both French and German Ministers agreed to think over the possible pooling and mutualisation of assets between both countries.

This sentence is really meaningful, as this is close to a cut and paste of Mr Guttenberg’s statement on German Defence review, who explains in his ‘Tagesbefehl’ (order of the day) to Bundeswehr he that he will look for savings through a better task repartition within the Alliance.

On point must be made clear: at the moment you mutualise or even pool some assets, you are bound to your partner, who will have to clearly state whether he supports you in the operation you are planning for or if you should simply leave it by lack of support. At the moment our nations will have recognized that they can no more afford to own the full scope of capacities and assets to operate in autonomy, the European Army will be. May be not on the format of the traditional forces we know with the same uniform and the same patches, but it will be, with those non-visible and strong links which have already led to the European Union as it is today.

Bundeswehr: Germany to review carefully its founding principles.

As the German government has decided to review largely its defence organization, even stating that some more communality of capacities should be looked for with its European partners, let us have a look at what German Defence forces could look like in a near future. As a consequence of the planned reform, the future structure of Bundeswehr, its size and recruitment system, will lead to a careful review of some of its founding principles, which are, among others, the defence of home country, the citizen in uniform, and the code of conduct or ethic rules, the latest being a concept impossible to translate, named in German “innere Führung”.

As the results of the study order by the Minister of Defence, Mr von Guttenberg will be made available to the public in autumn we still have time ahead of us to scrutinize some points of this reform. The official documents are rather scarce. But the German press broadcasts interesting news, which give a good insight of the fierce debate between the different political parties.

To sum up, what I consider as the founding principles of the modern German Defence Forces are:

-Conscription,

-Home Defence,

-Innere Führung, or code of conduct. As this concept is almost impossible to translate with accuracy, I will keep it in German.

-Strong parliamentary control

Those principles have been established from the very beginning of Bundeswehr, in the 50s, in order to build up armed forces which guarantee that they could never be used against democracy and peace, as a reaction to the former Prussian militarism accused of being at the origin of the previous world wars. These they are completely intricate: German Defence forces would recur to conscription in order to focus on Home Defence and to make out of the soldiers “citizens in uniform”, support by educational programs based on Innere Führung.

As from the legal point of view, Bundeswehr has been built up from scratch, the whole legal body and all manuals are conceived in that direction, included the different paragraphs of the German Constitution. The paragraph 87a deals with the Defence forces; the civilian part of the ministry being dealt with in para 87b. I will outline one sentence, one at the top of para 87a: “the Federation sets up Armed forces for defence”.

Furthermore on 12^th July 1994, the Constitutional Court authorized the Federal Government to commit troops abroad, but with a major restriction: the Bundestag should approve any commitment of troops abroad prior to the operation. The only exception being the emergency case, when life of German citizens is directly threatened. In such a situation, the Government is entitled first to act and subsequently inform the Parliament.

Both points are the expression of an intrinsic rejection of the expeditionary warfare, which is the privilege of nations having a strong executive power, like the USA, the UK or France. In the current articles on the future reform of Bundeswehr, politicians from all sides reject a professional army, arguing that this would create a force in the hands of the government, thus weakening the parliament and developing temptation to make use of for Bundeswehr for other purpose than defence of the country, or support to the alliances to which Germany is part. This approach is far from representing only a minority of the population, included in the Defence forces. A few years ago, Germany refused firmly to support France in the operation EUFOR in Chad and Central Africa. The main reason for that refusal to support an ally is linked to both German constitution and Constitutional Court decision.

Some pragmatic people would suggest changing the German constitution. I sincerely do not think this to be possible. Historically, Germany has been authorized to build up its forces at the prerequisite that they are maintained under strict democratic control. Control by the parliament is the way hence chosen. This model is so anchored in German political cultural that a support neither by the population nor by the military can be reached for the time being.

Then, the discrepancy between the German rigid constitutional framework and the expeditionary culture of its neighbours will make extremely difficult for this country to find major partners ready to mutualise capacities. The only countries ready to go forward with them would be countries for which the army is firstly used for national defence and not overseas adventures. France and the UK would not take the risk to bind their hands to please German savings plan. May be they would accept to share secondary assets, but in any case, would they renounce to those who create the conditions for contingency planning.

Germany: the first steps towards a European Army.

The German federal ministry of Defence has made available on its website several key documents, which can help for a better understanding of what the future Bundeswehr will look like in the next years.

Of course, this new development is not initiated by a open-minded approach linked to the previous German statements aiming at setting up in a far future a European army. By the way, one comment: Germany, well known all over the world for its capability to create consensus (at least inside its borders), has reached a consensus on this topic. All political parties aiming to seat sooner or later at the government’s table support the objective of a European army.

Indeed the main reason for which the Federal Republic of Germany is accelerating its will to create the embryo of a European Army is to be found in the documents available on the ministerial Website. Those documents are:
Tagesbefehl des Bundesministers der Verteidigung (here)
Leitlinien zur Ausplanung der neuen Bundeswehr (here)

As usual, for those who cannot read German yet, I will develop my post on the basis of both documents.

Well, the reasons which have lead the German government to this defence review are the following ones:
-Adapt Bundewehr to the operations and the reduced budgets. Indeed we meet here the direct impact of Afghanistan and the financial crisis on the German Defence model. I mean that due the History, the Bundeswehr could not renounce in its organization to the “Landesverteidigung” (defence of national territory), as this is the cornerstone of the alliance between the Army and the Nation. However, the reality of Afghanistan forces Germany to review the principles of Bundeswehr as the expeditionary warfare will dominate the next years.
-The financial crisis is driving the events and the decisions. At the time the Euro was introduced, Germany was extremely reluctant and finally joined at its conditions. The seat of the European Central Bank being in Frankfurt was the sign of its strong will to dominate the Euro-zone. However the governance model of the Euro failed with Greece. Focussed on social stability through economical development, Germany could not accept jeopardize its social pact. Strong and painful decisions are necessary, among which a drastic reduction of the defence budgets.

In this framework, Germany is preparing a complete review of its defence system, including the first steps towards a German Army. Most important points are:
-In the future the only German national operations will be: evacuation of non-combatants, release of hostages and rescue German citizens. In fact, this is not new. I already met this concept in the early 2000s.
-Quite new is that Germany is ready to renounce to some capacities. In the guidance to the committee in charge of studying the structure reform, the Bundeswehr will have to find cooperation cooperation in education, logistics and structures for daily business and commitments, without creating political constraints or mutual obstacles. As well it will evaluate what tasks could be performed in common, abandoned to the allies, or taken over on behalf of the allies.
This is the core issue: one of Europe’s main countries seems ready to renounce to some elements of sovereignty as abandoning some capacities could mean a loss in autonomy of decision.

Isn’t it the first step towards a European Army?

Non proliferation treaty: the German ambiguity

Regarding the building up of a unified European Defence, which scares some Anglo-Saxon people, everything is all right. We are still very far from removing the US nuclear umbrella and lifting the ambiguities.

Today, let us have a look at German policy.

Lately Guido Westerwelle, German Minister of Foreign Affairs expressed his satisfaction for seeing some European joining German stance on the ban of Nuclear Weapons from the European soil. Of course, getting partners in such an essential issue for our security is definitely positive. However, those partners are Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg and Norway. I would have preferred Germany to discuss a stance with partners of the same level, which are France and the UK in the first row and then Poland, Italy and Spain.

On 26^th March 2009, Mrs Angela Merkel expressed herself in favour of the total ban of the weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, at that time she expressed the opinion of a vast majority of Germans who have grown up in the belief that being a nice guy was enough to avoid war. Let us remember the huge demonstrations against the Euromissiles and the intense debate when Joschka Fischer, the then Green minister of Foreign Affairs, expressed his support to the NATO Air campaign in Kosovo.

Firstly, France and the UK are among the major European countries and belong to world’s nuclear powers. I really do not think Belgium able to influence France on nuclear weapons. In the second circle, Italy, Poland and Spain are simply the other major European partners, considering that a constant element drives the foreign policy of Poland: security. Whatever can improve the feeling of security is good for Poles, and US nuclear weapons belong to those assets.

I can hardly think that Germany really wants to ban all nuclear weapons from Europe. Indeed, while declaring in this statement from 2009 her commitment for the ban of nuclear weapons, Mrs Merkel reaffirms simultaneously its strong support to the German involvement in the nuclear capability. After some research on the web, I could learn that the Luftwaffe Tornados of Büchel Airbase were equipped to fire the US nuclear weapons. By the way, I could not confirm this information on any official or governmental website. The only and thin piece of information I could get access to are on the Luftwaffe Website and are really elliptic: “keep ready for national defence tasks” (in German language: Verteidigungsfall’). This terminology is used only in cases related to defence to the national territory, in the NATO collective defence framework. Mrs Merkel assesses this nuclear and not so public nuclear role of Germany as a vector of influence of her country in the NATO.

On the other side, France, Germany’s major partner in Europe does not specify that all the WMD should be ban. Of course: this is the main, or the only trump that this country has in its hands when referring to the UN Security Council. Therefore, taking a rather different stance than Germany, France promotes a reduction of the arsenals of the main powers as well as the inclusion of the tactical nuclear weapons in the negotiations. By the way, one should say that French nuclear weapons are not included, in the French concept, within the tactical weapons: they belong to the strategic autonomy (cf French White paper on Defence).

Therefore his German initiative is really to be looked at quietly: in the conclusions of EU council of 29th March 2010, one of the strongest statements is when the EU is “reaffirming the commitment to seeking a safer world for all and to creating the conditions for a world without nuclear weapons”.

Of course dreams cannot be banned. French and UK nuclear deterrence systems will not be dismantled, and that better, as long as a major partner like Germany will not look frankly at the issue and will not be truly coherent.

F.

We shouldn't disregard the German Army!

I am pretty much used going on French blogs dedicated to defence issues. One of the most known of them is named ‘secret defense’ (self explanatory). The author, JD Merchet is talented and has become a reference in the whole French military.

For different reasons, he does not believe so much in European Defence. Some of them are really excellent, and some of them are irritating (at least for somebody like me who believes in European Defence), as JD Merchet wrote in 2009, when publishing ‘European Defence: the great illusion’. I did not buy it yet.

I fully support him when he writes that when it’s dealing with death of soldiers or combats, Europe cannot endorse this responsibility. It is still and for a long time a matter of national sovereignty.

However the comments in this blog are often very nationalistic ones, disregarding our allies. And they are obviously written by French soldiers. One of the frequent targets is the German army, that some reproach not being able to fight adequately and to remain quietly in the North of Afghanistan.

I could read in ‘die Zeit’ that on 15^th April 4 German soldiers had been again killed in Afghanistan, in an ambush. The German Minister of Defence does not hesitate using the word ‘War’ to describe the situation over there. For a country like Germany this word has a really strong meaning, as it recalls the Germans a long time ago that everybody wanted to ban from the German future. Some Germans already intend to deploy heavy artillery, attack helicopters, tanks in Kunduz area. Angela Merkel does not exclude to authorize the Germans to act pre-emptively.

The great strength of the Germans is that they are able, beyond the political parties, and a great sense of responsibility, to discuss sincerely any issue and find a solution. But they do not speak from a withdrawal, and they are even more numerous than the French soldiers in this country.

Therefore, I really think that the best and first step towards European Defence would be to stop holding in contempt our allies and neighbours and in contrary to try learning from them, or to try discussing whether how to make the operation more successful by creating synergy, instead having among the three largest European nations, one in the North, one in the East and the third one in the South.

F.