The Cultural Gap Between the Military and the Parent Society: The German Case

Abstract

Since more than one decade, the German armed forces are undergoing massive modifications in structure, size and mission, which can be traced back to the transformation of the international security environment and globalisation effects after the end of the Cold War (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt, & Perraton, 1999). As the threat scenarios changed from mutual deterrence to a multitude of risks and dangers, including violent internal conflict, international terrorism and global ecological crisis, the threat perceptions within wider society underwent simultaneous changes. Today, ‘security’ and ‘insecurity’ are terms with totally different connotation than only 20 years ago. Clearly, these alterations also initiated a new era of civil–military relations in Germany after 1990. Besides the rather obvious transnational effects described by the changing security context as well as the trend towards globalisation and to new security regimes, perpetual societal changes within West European societies evenly took place during the last thirty years. These societies are therefore becoming ‘post-traditional societies’ (Giddens, 1994)¹ or – as far as the armed forces are concerned – ‘post-military’ societies (Shaw, 2000). This study aims at examining the current state of civil–military relations and deals with the question of the existence of a civil–military gap in Germany. Therefore, empirical data stemming from an international project will be examined. After a sketch of the patterns of civil–military relations in Germany, a brief description of the methodology of the German part within the Civil–Military-Gap-project is given. Afterwards, some key findings of the project data, concerning a set of questions relating to security, war and peace issues, are presented and discussed.

Citation

Collmer, S. (2005), "The Cultural Gap Between the Military and the Parent Society: The German Case", Caforio, G. and Kümmel, G. (Ed.) Military Missions and their Implications Reconsidered: The Aftermath of September 11th (Contributions to Conflict Management, Peace Economics and Development, Vol. 2), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 115-126. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1572-8323(05)02008-4