PRESS

cil—the first time it did not vote with France or the
United States in that body—and subsequently refused
to let its airborne surveillance capability (AWACS)
contribute to NATO’s Unified Protector mission. 17
AWACS is a typical multinational capability, the
very embodiment of the pooled and shared arrangements
of “smart defense” that Germany keeps advocating
in both the EU and NATO councils. Given
such an example, it is not surprising that pooling-andsharing
arrangements are making little progress these
days. This is not just a problem for Germany’s and
the EU’s credibility as effective actors in international
security, but also for the “new orientation” that is
designed with a view to deeper European defense integration.
The whole concept of “breadth rather than
depth,” for instance, will prove hollow without sufficient
cooperation with others, especially in Europe.
CONCLUSION
Assessing Germany’s hard power is a treacherous
undertaking. There are two main reasons for this: first,
in the midst of far-reaching Bundeswehr reform, all
hard facts—from the eventual size of the force to actual
capabilities—are uncertain and in flux. Minister
de Maizière aims to complete his new orientation in
2017; until then, many of the numbers discussed here
are goals or data whose programs are works in progress.
While certain trends are discernible, their extrapolation
is by no means reliable. After all, the Merkel
government has undertaken several surprising reversals
on defense issues already—for example, the sudden
suspension of conscription or the unexplained
retraction of the announced €8.3 billion in defense
budget cuts.
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