Endeavors to Restructure the Bundeswehr: The Reform of the German Armed Forces 1990-2003

摘要

Since the fall of the Berlin wall in 1889, the Bundeswehr has faced, and mastered, a series of singular situations: unexpected reunification of East and West Germany; the imperative to absorb the East German People's Army (NVA); and the calls for German out-of-area deployments in crisis areas. Yet, despite successfully responding to all of these challenges, the Bundeswehr has still to master another formidable obstacle: reforming itself. The gradual expansion of the role of the German armed forces (the Bundeswehr) to include a wider set of security tasks in the 1990s necessitated a fundamental realignment of Germany's military structures and capacities. At the forefront of this project, at least in the early 1990s, was the need to modernize the Bundeswehr, to create a deployment capability based upon rapid reaction for low-intensity peacekeeping. Over time, but especially after the Kosovo war of 1999 in which Germany played a full combat role, and as efforts intensified at the EU level to create an effective military dimension (ESDP), expectations and pressures for swifter and more far-reaching reforms arose. By the end of the decade Germany's allies and partners had become very eager to see a greater commitment from Berlin to modernize the Bundeswehr and to increase defense spending. Further stimulus for change was subsequently provided by the events of 11 September 2001 and America's war on terrorism, events that served to finally explode the long-standing assumption in German security thinking that national and alliance territorial defense remained at the heart of the Bundeswehr's rationale.