Where there are uniforms there are burrs

Adolf Hitler and the Wehrmacht ("defence power") devastated Europe. And, when the German army was reconstituted in 1955, was appointed the Bundeswehr ("Federal defence"). More question to be a power! West Germany adopted an army of "citizens in uniform". The debate about the rearming of the Germany of the West and its accession to NATO was fierce. The left opposed. She tried unsuccessfully to thwart Chancellor Adenauer, who, in the aftermath of the war of Korea, did not let the RFA without an army. She feared that the creation of a force changed, to the East German Nationale Volksarmee ("national people's Army"), sealed the division of the country. The Bundeswehr but became the first army to Western Europe, with close to 500,000 soldiers to the outposts of the cold war. Today, it still has 250,000, not to mention the civilian employed 120,000. However, it barely send forces abroad. 8.700 German soldiers are deployed in Bosnia, Kosovo, off the coast of the Lebanon, in Djibouti, Congo and Afghanistan. A handful are present in Georgia, Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea. But the Bundeswehr touch to its limits.

Because it was a territorial army almost without rapid action force. At the end of the cold war, it soon to be redeployed with the new threats. This was, first, to integrate some 20,000 soldiers whist and liquidate the rest of the people's national army. And, given the costs staggering of German reunification, the defence budget has decreased by 10 since 1991. Above all, it seemed inconceivable that the Bundeswehr parties abroad. She participated in 130 humanitarian missions around the world. But the left, the Basic Law (which takes place of Constitution) forbade any armed action "out of area". But the Constitutional Court reversed this interpretation in 1994.

Step by step, the German army extended its range and intensity of its interventions. In 1991, the Navy removed the Persian Gulf. Later, the Bundeswehr is involved in missions in the Balkans and Somalia. And, in 1999, for the first time since 1945, the Germany enters the war, its bombers attacked Yugoslavia. The RFA is played a marginal role, but she lived a revolution of minds. Who would have thought that the Government of the Social Democrat Gerhard Schroeder would leave in war And this without UN mandate... Today, despite its large workforce, the Bundeswehr is overstretched by the growing number of foreign missions. It is therefore urgent to modernize. But Angela Merkel, who imposed a slight increase of the defense budget must be fingering. Public opinion is more truly peaceful it has approved sending troops in Afghanistan and accepted the presence of the German Navy near Israel. But the majority of citizens would return against Chancellor if, as wished by NATO, the German troops left the northern part of the Afghanistan, quiet, to contain the Taliban, at the risk of losses to the South.

The Germans have reconnected with their army, but there is a background of mistrust. Because number of extreme right-wing youth enrolled there. And the images of soldiers desecrating skulls of dead in Afghanistan have shocked the opinion. Where there are uniforms, there are burrs. But the RFA remains traumatized by the National Socialist militarism. The opinion is highly sensitive to the escapades. Number of Ministers of defence of the country have stumbled about of "business" often futile. Indeed, the Bundeswehr is subject to the control of the Bundestag since its inception, and has no true national command. Its ability to act outside the structures of NATO is limited.

The Ministry of defence has just published a white paper on the security policy. It is inconceivable "in network", says the author. NATO, and in the second line the European Union, is the framework that is the Germany, which has no doctrine for missions abroad: "the strategic partnership between NATO and the EU is a pillar on which rests our security policy." The German army does not want to be too German.