E-Books →The Responsibility to Defend Rethinking Germany's Strategic Culture

Bastian Giegerich and Maximilian Terhalle argue that Germany's current strategic culture is inadequate. It informs a security policy that fails to meet contemporary strategic challenges, thereby endangering Berlin's European allies, the Western order and Germany itself. They contend that:
- Germany should embrace its historic responsibility to defend Western liberal values and the Western order that upholds them.
- Rather than rejecting the use of military force, Germany should wed its commitment to liberal values to an understanding of the role of power - including military power - in international affairs.
The authors show why Germany should seek to foster a strategic culture that would be compatible with those of other leading Western nations and allow Germans to perceive the world through a strategic lens. In doing so, they also outline possible elements of a new security policy.