Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of ...

96 Thomas Berger
to stress the importance of multilateralism. Indeed, without a multilateral
framework it would have constitutionally been impossible for the Federal
Republic to act militarily. The chief reason given by the Schröder government
for the dispatch of the Bundeswehr to Kosovo was Bündnistreue –
the need for Germany to fulfill its obligations to the Atlantic alliance.
Moreover, in keeping with its anti-military traditions, Germany was at
the forefront of the movement within the alliance seeking a diplomatic
solution. 52 At the same time the Federal Republic pressured the United
States and its Western allies to hold off on launching a ground campaign,
reportedly going so far as to threaten to use its authority inside NATO to
veto such an operation. 53
There were good reasons for Schröder’s eagerness for the war to end
quickly and with a minimum of violence. Much as the model of political
culture described earlier predicts, tremendous domestic political tensions
developed in response to Germany’s assumption of a larger military role.
First and foremost these tensions manifested themselves inside the coalition
government as foreign minister Joschka Fischer desperately struggled
to retain control over his fractious Green party, many of whose members
were desperately unhappy with what they viewed as an immoral militarisation
of German foreign policy. The launching of a NATO ground campaign
was widely believed to be the point at which the Green party would
either leave the coalition or face a split within its own ranks. In either
case the Schröder government would have fallen. 54 Public opinion data
also indicated that support for the war would evaporate if ground forces
were sent in to attack the Serbian army in Kosovo. 55 In sum, Kosovo
may have represented a watershed event in the development of German
foreign policy. It did not, however, signify a transformation of the Federal
Republic into a ‘normal nation’, if normalcy is taken to mean the same
sort of relatively unfettered approach to the use of military power as a
tool of foreign policy exhibited by other European powers such as France
or the United Kingdom. 56
Ironically, as the structural parameters of German foreign-policymaking
have expanded to allow for a greater measure of initiative than
Germany has enjoyed at any point in the preceding forty odd years, the
52 See Die Welt, 19 May 1999.
53 See The New York Times, 20 May 1999, A1, A14. Whether the Federal Republic in fact
would have risked such a rupture with its allies remains open to question.
54 See news item, Tagesspiegel, 21 April 1999, also ibid., Bernd Ulrich, ‘Die Grünen und
der Krieg’.
55 Renate Köcher, ‘Das Kosvo spaltet Deutschland Ost und West’, Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung, 16 June 1999, 5.
56 For an elaboration of this argument, see Thomas Berger, ‘A Perfectly Normal Abnormality:
German Foreign Policy after Kosovo’, International Relations of the Asia–Pacific
(2002).