German Strategic Culture Revisited

Book excerpt: On the background of the heated debates on the extension of the Bundeswehr's spatial and functional remit since the mid-1990s, the EU member-states' readiness to agree on the 2003 European Security Strategy appears puzzling, as this document sets the normative and ideational framework for a new kind of robust military engagement on a global scale. Employing epistemological ideas of the concept of strategic culture on basis of a constructivist ontology, this book explores the causal mechanisms sufficient for the origin and adaptation of a pacifist turned "normal" German strategic culture.