SECURITY : A GERMAN MILITARY OVERHAUL / THE FINANCIAL TIMES ( HIGHLY RECOMMENDED READING )

Security: A German military overhaul

By Quentin Peel and James Blitz

Published: January 31 2011 21:07

Dust not settled: Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, centre, German defence minister, at a Bundeswehr camp last August in Kunduz, Afghanistan

Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, Germany’s dashing young defence minister, is the most popular politician in the country.
But lately he has discovered why his ministry is regarded as a graveyard for political ambitions.


For the past fortnight he has been pilloried in press and parliament for his crisis management of the armed forces, after two accidental deaths in the Bundeswehr and allegations that his ministry has been routinely opening personal letters from soldiers serving in Afghanistan. There have been calls for his resignation.

The criticism could scarcely have come at a more difficult moment. Mr zu Guttenberg is on the point of announcing controversial reforms intended to convert a cumbersome, conscript-based military into a fully professional service. The changes are awaited throughout the Nato alliance as a vital component in Europe’s future contribution to global security.

Hitherto it seemed Mr zu Guttenberg could do no wrong. Articulate, aristocratic and telegenic, the 39-year-old rising star of German politics is the darling of the populist media, such as the daily Bild Zeitung and glossy society magazines. Unlike his more cautious colleagues in the centre-right government, not least Angela Merkel, the chancellor, he is impetuous and outspoken. He dares to call German soldiers “heroes” and use the word “war” – normally taboo in Berlin – to describe what they are fighting in Afghanistan.


He has also achieved what no previous German defence minister managed: to suspend conscription. Ever since the Bundeswehr was created in 1956 – in the face of huge popular protest against a feared remilitarisation of German society – national service has been seen as a guarantee that it remains an army of “citizens in uniform”. But the system has been a roadblock to military modernisation.


“Getting rid of conscription is a revolution,” says Hilmar Linnenkamp, a former top German defence official and deputy head of the European Defence Agency. “It is a huge achievement. We are more than halfway towards a really big change in the military.”


But now Mr zu Guttenberg faces the crunch. His plans have come under fire on two fronts. Cabinet colleagues led by Wolfgang Schäuble, finance minister, insist he must deliver big budget savings – €8.4bn ($11.5bn) in total – promised as part of the government’s austerity programme. The military establishment fears that such drastic cuts will undermine the reform process.


“If he wants to save €8.4bn by 2014, the Bundeswehr will be destroyed,” says General Klaus Naumann, the respected former inspector-general of the armed forces.


How Mr zu Guttenberg resolves that dilemma will be the key both to the effectiveness of the reforms and to his own political future. Although a member of the conservative Christian Social Union, the small Bavaria-based sister party of Ms Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, he is popularly seen as a potential future chancellor.


This weekend he will have a chance to shine before a more sympathetic audience than the Bundestag, when leading luminaries of the European and American defence establishments attend the annual Munich security conference. Germany’s military transformation is being closely watched by defence chiefs in the US and the European Union. Its forces are seen as the last redoubt of an old-fashioned focus on national defence, with a huge bureaucracy to support a minimal capacity to send troops on foreign missions. For years, Washington has been putting pressure on all EU states to modernise their forces. Now the US is pressing home the argument, warning that its own focus is increasingly on Asian security challenges.


Reform of the Bundeswehr has been debated for decades but the political establishment has always proved resistant to change, says Constanze Stelzenmüller, senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin. The reason lies deep in Germany’s postwar history.


“People forget that when the Bundeswehr was created in the 1950s, millions protested angrily in the streets,” she says. “Many had just fought and lost a war, and very few people wanted to go back to this.”


The response was to create a force based on universal conscription, answerable to parliament and controlled by a large civilian bureaucracy. It was bound to the Nato alliance from the start but its focus was national. “They decided to make it in such a form that it would never be a ‘state within a state’,” says Ms Stelzenmüller. “Garrisons were spread across the republic, so that every Bürgermeister [mayor] had a stake in preventing change. It worked like a dream.”


On the tactical front, the Bundeswehr invested heavily in tanks and armoured brigades. “Their role was to absorb the first wave of Russian tanks advancing across Europe, and halt them, in order to give the US time to come to the rescue,” says Tomas Valasek, of the
Centre for European Reform in London.


“Germany has been saddled with the burden of the past in this regard, and it is right to change it.”


The direction of change was set by the findings of a reform commission in October, headed by Frank-Jürgen Weise, head of the federal labour office, who is also a colonel in the military reserve. While praising the contribution of the Bundeswehr to Germany’s post-second world war social cohesion, he was scathing about inefficiency in the system.


“There is definitely no need for so many different and competing command units in the Bundeswehr,” he said. “In my view only half the people we have in leading positions right now are required to do a proper job.”


He called for maximum flexibility and deployability, with numbers cut from 250,000 to 180,000. Deployable forces should double to 14,000. Civilian defence personnel should be halved to 50,000 and the defence ministry itself should be also be cut from 3,000 to 1,500, he proposed, amid a move of its headquarters from Bonn to Berlin. The inspector-general would cease to be a glorified civil servant in uniform, becoming the “chief of defence” and in effect top commander.


Mr zu Guttenberg appeared to agree. “Cosmetic measures alone will no longer get the job done,” he said. “As far as I can tell, the direction is pretty much spot-on.”


Ms Stelzenmüller sees the cuts in bureaucracy as essential. “The civilian part of the German military urgently needs downsizing and reforming,” she says. “But opposition will come from the civilian apparatus, which is bloated and reform-averse. If anything, the Bundeswehr itself is eager to implement the structural reforms that they have always wanted. Now they have permission to do so.”


Yet other defence analysts are fearful that when Mr zu Guttenberg produces his final proposals, they will not be radical enough. For a start, he appears to have conceded that numbers will be 185,000 – only 5,000 fewer than the number of professionals already in uniform once the conscripts are gone – rather than the 163,000 minimum offered by his own inspector-general.


“If we have 185,000, we won’t need to crack down on the structure,” says Christian Mölling, of the Berlin-based German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). “The only real reduction comes from the number of conscripts. It seems all the pressure the minister has generated to get rid of conscription has been used up.”


What really worries the military, however, is Mr zu Guttenberg’s promise to deliver €8.4bn in savings over the three years to 2014 – from a €30bn annual budget – while pushing through the reforms. “If the savings Mr Schäuble wants are enforced, then it will fail before it starts,” says Gen Naumann. “Arms purchases are already committed. The contracts have been signed for Eurofighters and the A400M [military transport aircraft]. I imagine the defence minister will need at least six or eight years to complete the process.”


The same fears are heard in other Nato capitals: that while Germany may be creating a more efficient military, it is not channelling the savings back into defence spending.


Guy Ben Ari, of the Center for International and Strategic Studies in Washington, says a good example was the Bundestag decision last week to sell to third parties 13 of the 53 A400M aircraft on order. “This means that Germany will have less expeditionary capability,” he says. “It is not enough just to professionalise your armed forces. You need to invest in things like heavy airlift, deployable logistics and communications. If you don’t, you end up with a professionalised force that doesn’t actually go anywhere.”


There are also concerns that Mr zu Guttenberg has not linked his reforms to European defence integration. “What’s really lacking in zu Guttenberg’s vision is the European dimension,” says a senior official at Nato headquarters. “German defence reform has thus far been very national in tone.”


“It’s a sign of widespread short-sightedness in all our European defence establishments,” says Christoph Bertram, former director of SWP. “The British talk about cutting forces and Nato doesn’t figure in their planning. Zu Guttenberg may say this encourages European co-operation but they haven’t even consulted their partners. The whole lot are guilty.”


Another concern is whether Germany really has shifted towards a military culture that is more interventionist – and prepared to shed blood.


The military is certainly more prepared to take risks than it was 20 years ago, says Ms Stelzenmüller. In the early 1990s, the idea of sending any troops on combat missions was unthinkable.


Since then, after participation in UN, Nato and EU missions in Cambodia, Somalia, the Balkans, the Horn of Africa and Afghanistan, the vast majority of soldiers, sailors and airmen have mission experience.


“They are getting more like the British and French,” says Mr Linnenkamp. “They have learnt to take their job more seriously, to see it as soldiering. But the idea of calling it ‘the trade of war’ is still taboo.” He does not think scrapping conscription will change the fundamental character of the Bundeswehr, however. “That is more determined by the professional and regular soldiers. Civilised people are in charge. The whole ideology of the officers is really firmly embedded.”


As for Germany’s politicians, they may still be more hesitant than their British and French counterparts about sending their soldiers on missions, says Mr Bertram. “The political reluctance will remain. But the nature of the debate has changed. Politicians know they are sending forces into danger.”


Now everyone is waiting for the final word from Mr zu Guttenberg. “We have an ambitious young man who is quite willing to overcome obstacles,” Mr Bertram adds. “It would be a pity if he fell over the recent scandals. That is unlikely. But I hope he won’t trim his sails either.”

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Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011