‘Of Dragons and Snakes’: Contemporary German Security Policy

Abstract

We have slain a large dragon, but we now live in a jungle filled with a bewildering variety of poisonous snakes (Mueller, 1994, p. 536).

The demise of the Cold War and the subsequent reunification of Germany has fundamentally and irrevocably changed the nature of European security. For forty years Europe was riven in two by an Iron Curtain that ran through the heart of Germany and Berlin. Then in 1989–90 this bipolar structure unravelled with breathtaking speed as communist regimes imploded and the Soviet Union disengaged from Central and Eastern Europe. All the European states were profoundly affected by this Zeitenwende (era of change), and none more so than Germany. For four decades the Federal Republic constituted the front line in a global struggle between two nuclear-armed alliance systems, but today finds itself at the heart of a Europe without antagonistic blocs or deep-seated ideological divides. Indeed, for the first time in the history of the Teutonic peoples, Germany is at peace with its neighbours and no longer has any clear and identifiable enemy.