Working Paper n.º 28
The Continuous Recovery of Power: Germany as a European Great Power in the post-Cold War World
04 | 06 | 2007
Patricia Daehnhardt, IPRI-UNL

Abstract: The end of the Cold War produced changes in the international distribution of power and in the structure of the international system, catapulting unified Germany into the potential position of becoming a European great power. How has Germany responded to these new expectations in the Euro-Atlantic constitutional order and to the gradual recovery of traditional elements of great power politics? This article argues that while Germany has always had a complex relationship with the concept of power, it has, since the 1950s, managed to acquire normative power, a different but effective sort of power within the Euro-Atlantic constitutional order. Because this normative power is seen as legitimate, the path towards Germany asserting itself as a European great power is substantially facilitated.

1. Introduction

The end of the Cold War led to changes in the international distribution of power and in the structure of the international system.[1] The consequent double retraction from Europe of both post-Soviet Russia, and, after 11 September 2001, partially also of the United States, have put Germany, seventeen years after its unification, in a new position of power. An undefined new system falling between global unipolarity with American preponderance and multipolarity among regional great powers succeeded bipolarity with its Euro-Atlantic core and superpower rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union.[2]

The unification of Germany exemplified this change in the distribution of power in the European order all too well. However, the precondition for Germany to unify was to maintain the institutional continuity it was firmly embedded in since the 1950s. As such, after 1990 institutional commitments with NATO and the European Community were not only maintained, but reinforced to assure that unified Germany remained committed to them, and to a multilateralist diplomacy. This happened at two levels. First, European integration was taken one step further through the creation of the European Union with the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in 1991; this was an institutional guarantee especially for France to contain a strengthened Germany. Secondly, besides furthering integration, the 1990s was the decade which paved the way for institutional enlargement towards Eastern Europe. This meant to replicate the successes of integration and project stability towards former Warsaw Pact countries. Thus institutional continuity in Germany foreign policy was the precondition for German unification, consolidated in an ever expanding European Union and NATO.

This emphasis on continuity in the face of structural change also meant to anticipate the increase of Germany’s new position within the European order, re-emerging as a potential European great power, upon which new expectations and new responsibilities fell. But, in the dual post-Cold War and post-9/11 world, what determines what constitutes a great power? How did the transformation of Germany’s position and power in the Euro-Atlantic order occur in the last decade and a half and how have Germany’s political leaders responded to this challenge?

To answer these questions, the paper will proceed as follows. In the first section, I look at concurrent schools of thought on German foreign policy after unification. In the second section, I analyse Germany’s relationship with power during the Cold War, a path from dependence to strength. To understand this evolution I introduce the concept of normative power. The third section then explores the changes which have occurred in Germany’s normative power after unification, towards the adoption of more traditional power attributes. Finally, I explore the differences between the governments of Helmut Kohl and Gerhard Schröder with regard to the use of German power and Germany’s position as a European great power.

2. Schools of Thought on German Foreign Policy: Neorealism, Liberal Institutionalism and Constructivism

There are three different theoretical approaches for analysing Germany’s foreign policy after 1990. First, there is the neo-realist theory, according to which states are driven by considerations of power and national interest. These are essentially determined by the structure of the international system, which constrains state actions. Neorealist authors predicted in the early 1990s that Germany would increase its power capabilities and become a nuclear power because of structural constraints; any other outcome would amount to a structural anomaly.[3] Neorealists also argued that European integration had outlived its purpose, and rivalries between European nation-states would once again come up.[4] Thus change in Germany’s power position was the main argument for neorealist theory.

This approach was well suited to explain the Federal Republic’s foreign policy during the Cold War, arguing that changes in Bonn’s positions were a reflex of systemic changes in superpower relations. But at the end of the Cold War neorealism had a hard time coming up with a plausible explanation not only for the peaceful end of the bipolar system, and the absence of a hegemonic war, but with justifying the negotiated unification of Germany, and the continuity of multilateralism and institutional commitments, as opposed to increasing unilateralism and retreat from institutionalism and integration.[5] Neorealism could also not explain why, in the aftermath of victory, former alliances did not dissolve. After 9/11, however, neorealist authors felt once again vindicated by their explanations a decade earlier.

In Germany the contours of the debate on foreign policy centred on continuity versus change. Authors such as Arnulf Baring, Christian Hacke, Gregor Schöllgen and Hans Peter Schwarz considered that the concepts of national interests and power should be reintroduced into Germany’s political discourse.[6] Through the pursuit of a more assertive foreign policy, Germany would recover its status as a great power, as Europe’s central power, and accept international responsibilities proportional to its regained power.[7] Normalisation of German foreign policy was seen by these authors as recapturing traditional great power instruments. While the Western anchor was not questioned, federal notions of Europe were rejected while institutional enlargement towards Eastern Europe was supported for stability reasons. Widening European institutions was thus clearly favoured over institutional deepening.[8]

The second theoretical approach is liberal institutionalism. In foreign policy terms, the old Federal Republic was a ‘liberal’ Republic, and within Germany itself the liberal approach. prevailed.[9] It questions the determining power of the international structure on state actions, and starts from the premise that Germany has willingly pursued a strategy of self-binding based on multilateralism and European integration. This strong embeddedness in international institutions in turn has influenced the definition of state interests. For this school of thought institutional membership was driven by economic, security and political interests which the Federal Republic saw best advanced within NATO and the European Economic Community, pursuing a reflexive multilateralism through its European policy.[10] This led to a significant degree of Europeanisation of German politics, leading some authors to argue that ‘the Europeanisation of the German state makes the search for the national, as opposed to the European interest a fruitless task. The national and the European interest have become fused to a degree which makes their separate consideration increasingly impossible.’[11] Because of limitations of sovereignty Germany’s foreign policy was conducive to being interpreted through this liberal institutionalist approach.[12]

Finally, there is the constructivist approach to understanding Germany’s post-unified foreign policy. According to this new theoretical approach within the discipline of International Relations, reality is socially constructed, and states interact not only in a materialist world, but also an ideational world.[13] Ideational, non-material elements such as identities and norms are also constitutive of state action. Because reality is socially constructed, structures are a reflection of and created through discursive practices and habituation processes. In constructivism, institutions develop a logic of their own, existing as a normative framework for a state's actions which shapes a state's political behaviour. State interests and identities are not a priori given, and are mutually constitutive of each other, coexisting in a state of anarchy shaped by states themselves.[14] As John Ruggie put it, ‘constructivists hold the view that the building blocks of international reality are ideational as well as material; that ideational factors have normative as well as instrumental dimensions; that they express not only individual but also collective intentionality; and that the meaning and significance of ideational factors are not independent of time and place.’[15]

This argument found a fertile ground in Germany and in analysis on Germany’s post-unified foreign policy.[16] It was particularly suitable to explain what appeared the most remarkable characteristic of German foreign policy after 1990: continuity in the face of international structural change as the dominant feature of unified Germany. This argument was used by most authors within the liberal and constructivist camp, underlying Germany’s embedded multilateralism, ingrained Europeanisation and a culture of antimilitarism.[17]

3. Germany’s Complex Relationship with the Concept Of Power

What these debates show is that all authors deal with the question of German power when they problematize continuity versus change, or the effect of institutionalisation. They do so either by arguing that Germany should recapture vital elements of (national) power, promote a new (European) way of exerting power, or bypass power altogether. This in itself already represents a change, considering that during the Cold War, the concept of power was rarely used with regard to the Federal Republic. ‘Power politics’ was little used by the political elite, more geared towards a low profile foreign policy in the recognition of guilt for National Socialisms’ war time atrocities.[18] This was not only because of Germany’s military and political defeat in 1945 and its territorial division four years later. More significantly, the basis of legitimacy upon which the FRG grew into a trustful political identity was the implicit rejection of traditional power politics. This paved the way for a different dealing with the concept of power, and the use of normative power, to which I will return later.

After 1990, for many authors, particularly in the realm of a liberal understanding of International Relations, linking the concepts of ‘power politics’ or ‘great power’ to post-war German politics still represents a paradox. This has to do with various reasons. First, Germany traditionally had a complex relationship with the concept of power. Historically it either had too much of it, as during the two world wars, and the years preceding them, or it had too little of it, as in the first half of the seventeenth century, or during the period of the Weimar years.[19] These cyclical asymmetries of German power have constituted the so called German question.[20] In a nutshell, it highlights Germany’s erratic development between ‘obsession with power’ and ‘oblivion of power’, as Hans Peter Schwarz critically noted. Germany had passed from an ‘obsession with power’ during the National Socialist period and the Second World War to an ‘oblivion of power’ during the Cold War years of the Federal Republic.[21]

A second reason why Germany has a complex relationship with power is the lateness of its own constitution as a nation state.[22] If it has, traditionally, been within the nation-state that political power best flourishes, then Germany’s first unification as a nation state in 1871 was late in comparison to other European states. This lack of power habit in part also explains the difficult handling of power by the Germans themselves.

3.1. The Federal Republic and the Concept Of Power

Until 1949, and except for the Bismarck years, Germany had not revealed a normal relationship with the concept of power. Even during the Cold War, the power that the Federal Republic of Germany managed to acquire was either considered insufficient, leading authors in the (neo)realist vein to speak of the ‘oblivion of power’, and in the liberal institutionalist vein to refer to the ‘taming of German power’ through institutional membership.[23] Others spoke of the Federal Republic as a post-national or post-sovereign state, that had renounced elements of state sovereignty, and was founded on principles of ‘constitutional patriotism’, rejecting nationalism as the basis for a nation’s self-understanding.[24] German politicians often refrained from using the expression ‘power politics’ (‘Machtpolitik’), preferring instead the expression ‘politics of responsibility’ (‘Verantwortungspolitik’), as a sign of Germany’s disenchantment with power.[25]

What effects did this produce on Germany’s standing in the international power ranking? What determines, in the dual post-Cold War and post-9/11 world what is to constitute a great power? The Bertelsmann Foundation recently presented the results of a global survey on World Powers in the 21st Century.[26] Enquired on the most important qualities of a world power, respondents in Germany considered political stability the most important element (64%), followed by strong educational system/research and development sector (54%), economic power and potential for growth the most important quality (49%), innovativeness and adaptability (41%), social and cultural model that other societies seek to emulate (24%), potential for leadership in setting the international agenda and providing security (23%), and wealth of natural resources (24%). Finally, only 7% considered military power as the most important quality for a country to be considered a world power, revealing what a subordinate role military power plays for respondents from Germany.[27]

Even though such a survey is hardly representative of Germany as a whole or of the decisions taken by its political elite, it is important to note that while not being averse to the notion of great power, the characteristics linked to a great power in the twenty-first century oppose traditional elements of a great power, such as its military might, or the possession of natural resources. Rather it shows that Germans cherish most what their country’s history has lacked for so long: the political stability necessary to create the conditions for power assertiveness in the first place.

3.2. Germany’s Normative Power

It would be wrong, however, to study Germany’s position during the Cold War as having lacked power. As a founding member of the European Community participating in the definition of institutional norms and rules the Federal Republic developed the practice of norm conforming behaviour, the assumed predictability of which translated gradually into a particular form of power, namely normative power. At the time of German unification, normative power was already a substantive element of foreign policy; since normative power has implications on the policies of states, it is an effective form of power. Considering how multifaceted power is, it was, apart from economic and institutional power perhaps the only other form of power predominant in German diplomacy.

What is normative power? Normative power can be defined as the capacity of the power holder to exert, through a norm conforming behaviour, influence over others which confer respect and recognise legitimacy to the one projecting power. Ian Manners defined normative power as ‘the ability to shape or change what passes for normal in international relations, and which will (…) have utilitarian, social, moral, and narrative dimensions to it.’[28] According to Manners, ‘the ability to define what passes for ‘normal’ in world politics is, ultimately, the greatest power of all.’[29]

Germany’s normative power flourished on the basis of two essential characteristics during the Cold War. First, German foreign policy after 1945 became highly institutionalized. International institutions acted as an important source of Germany’s normative power. As G. John Ikenberry has suggested, they functioned as ‘binding institutions’, institutionalising limits on state behaviour which ‘can make the exercise of power more restrained and routinized, but they can also make that power more durable, systematic, and legitimate.’[30] These binding institutions within the Euro-Atlantic area granted the Federal Republic an increasingly wider margin of political manoeuvrability while allowing other powers to maintain an indirect control over Germany. Finally, they provided the basic institutional setting for a smooth transition towards a unified German state in the centre of Europe.

Secondly, the most effective platform for Germany to institutionalisation its normative power was through European integration. As Jeffrey Anderson and John Goodman suggested, ‘in the eyes of German political elites, institutional memberships were not merely instruments of policy, but also normative frameworks for policy-making’.[31] That this remained so had to do with a question of choice by German policy-makers since ‘the Federal Republic was not institutionally bound to remain an enthusiastic supporter of deeper integration.’[32] This normative setting reinforced Germany’s post-45 multilateralist identity and institutional commitments: Germany’s international identity as a reflexive multilateralist was constructed through its European policy.’[33] Institutional congruence with the European Community paved the way for Germany to regain power, at the same time as it was shaping the contours of the European integration process in an active manner. Paradoxically, this was a method of ‘sovereignty gain’ through ‘sovereignty renouncing’.[34] Germany pursued this form of power often unintentionally, ‘indirectly and in a diffuse manner’.[35] In other words, its normative power developed through its commitment to European institutions.

While initially Germany’s normative power was ‘an unconscious by-product of German behaviour and practice’, as Adrian Hyde-Price suggests, the possibility to shape European institutions was an intangible source of power which German policy-makers began making use of intentionally.[36] That the European Central Bank was moulded according to the institutional lines of the Bundesbank was no unintended consequence but the result of Germany’s active use of its economic and normative power.

In the case of Germany’s highly institutionalised form of foreign policy-making, its normative power developed well in the wider international constitutional order.[37] The Euro-Atlantic area is the most achieved form of a constitutional order which aims to be durable, legitimate, consensual and non-coercive. Germany’s normative power has contributed to the construction of this constitutional order, which explains why after unification policy-makers chose continuity and a strategy of institutional enlargement over policy change and the weakening of this normative power.

4. Changes in Germany’s Foreign Policy

After unification the nature of normative power in German foreign policy began slowly to change. For despite of the permanence of a rhetoric of continuity, German policy-makers embarked on substantive changes in policy decisions. This occurred foremost at the level of Germany’s security policy. Firmly upholding multilateral commitments within NATO, it was the German Constitutional Court which in July 1994 ruled that Bundeswehr soldiers could participate in multilateral ‘out-of-area’ combat missions. That this substantial change was not ultimately decided by the politicians themselves, but had to be legitimated by a judicial entity attests at the complexities German political parties went through to see their country recover more traditional power attributes. To ensure the democratic legitimacy of such military missions, however, the federal government would have to seek approval by the German parliament by simple majority before deploying armed troops.[38] This ruling was representative of the wider foreign policy paradigm of a normative power: acceptance of more interventionist policies, but only to the extent that they were framed by multilateralism.

The Kosovo war in the Spring of 1999 marked another watershed change in German foreign policy, not so much in terms of the military operation but because from there on the Schröder government, and particularly the as Chancellor himself, saw the transition to adulthood in foreign policy. For the first time since the Second World War, Germany fought offensively, alongside its NATO allies, against Serbian forces in the province of Kosovo, in an operation not sanctioned by the United Nations. In the process, the Social Democrat and Green coalition government, which had come to power only six months earlier, loosened the norm ‘never again war’, which had functioned as a constrain on German foreign policy, and adopted the norm ‘never again Auschwitz’, arguing that the use of military force was not only legitimate but sometimes necessary humanitarian purposes.[39] While Germany engaged in military fighting it paved the way for political post-conflict initiatives, such as the Stability Pact for the Balkans, initiated by the German EU presidency in June 1999. For foreign minister Joschka Fischer, the success of the stability pact was also ‘a question of the political reliability of Germany and Europe’s foreign policy.’[40]

Thus a gradual shift has occurred, whereby Germany has strived to maintain elements of its successful normative power policy, combining them increasingly with more traditional power attributes of the realm of power politics. This enlargement of the uses of German power has taken various shapes and occurred in different policy areas, depending on the decisions by policy-makers. Chancellor Kohl pursued a policy of continuity in as many policy domains as possible; in European terms, this meant the continuity of progress towards further European integration, which for the Chancellor remained until 1998 a question of war and peace in Europe. As Kohl repeatedly stated, ‘there is no going back to national power politics.’[41]

Chancellor Schröder, by contrast, started his Chancellorship on the basis of a different self-understanding of Germany’s international role. He tried to reposition foreign policy sources and locate Germany on a higher international standing, aiming for international parity with other powers as entitlement for a self-confident nation. Schröder made assertions of German self-confidence and emancipation towards transforming Germany’s new status as a power with international parity similar to that of other powers.[42] Changes were domestically induced and led to a transformation of Germany’s normative power within existing institutional frameworks. In light of this, the governments’ opposition to the US led war in Iraq was a consequence rather than a catalyst for Germanys’ emancipation from Cold War constraints on German power.

This notwithstanding, the enlargement of the uses of German power is also the outcome of structural changes in the Euro-Atlantic area. To the extent that the member countries of the European Union want to develop a joint European foreign policy and a credible European defense structure, Germany, as one of its main supporters, will have to make continuous adjustments. First, it will have to ensure the necessary resources and means to make this policy viable. Secondly, it will have to contribute to a multilateral European strategic ambition in defining the purpose of such a foreign and defence policy. Ultimately, it will have to recognise that the normative constitutional order in which its own normative power has strived for decades is not consolidated to the same degree outside the Euro-Atlantic area. Therefore, regardless of whether German decision-makers want to increase the use of more traditional attributes of power, the international responsibilities and engagement that come with a CFSP and ESDP, and which ultimately confirm Germany’s status as a European great power, are located in an area where different rules and different power structures exist.

In other words, if we consider that Germany moves within what Robert Cooper has termed the ‘post-modern world’, the normative framework of the constitutional order assures the effectiveness of Germany’s normative power. In this post-modern world, where balancing among states and sovereignty are being superseded by a new security system and new norms of international diplomacy, traditional states remain the fundamental units, even though ´they might have ceased to behave in traditional ways’.[43] Yet in dealing with the modern world, where the classical state system remains intact, or with the pre-modern world, characterised by pre-state, post-imperial chaos, the exclusive use of normative power is of little practical effect, and can, in situations of crises, initially be more of a hindrance than a strength.

5. Conclusion

Germany’s second unification was not brought about by Realpolitik, by a foreign policy based on calculations of power and the national interest, as had happened in 1871 with the first German unification.[44] In contrast, in 1990, Germany had a considerable amount of normative power. That the rise to power need not rely exclusively on a power politics approach is perhaps best revealed when compared with America’s rise to power in international politics: the foundations of that rise lay precisely in America’s founding fathers’ opposition to the European tradition of power politics.

This article has argued that since the 1950s, Germany has managed to acquire normative power, a different but effective sort of power within the Euro-Atlantic constitutional order. Because this normative power has been effective and is seen as legitimate, it will remain a substantial form of German power. The gradual transformation of the nature of that power, combining elements of normative with more traditional attributes of power shows that the two forms of power are not mutually exclusive, and may both be necessary in determining what constitutes a great power. Therefore, the question may not be ‘more Bismarck, less Habermas’, as Christian Hacke recently questioned, but rather ‘how much of each?’.[45] The path towards Germany asserting itself as a European great power is substantially facilitated by maintaining both closely intertwined.