By Deiniol Brown
Dr Marina Henke is professor of international relations and director of the Centre for International Security at the Hertie School, Berlin. Before teaching at the Hertie School, Dr Henke was an associate professor at Northwestern University, and a postdoctoral research associate at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Dr Henke’s research focuses on defence policy, security and grand strategy, with her 2019 book on coalition-building ‘Constructing Allied Cooperation’ winning the International Studies Association 2020 Best Diplomacy Book award. In this interview we discussed Dr Henke’s work on Germany’s security and defence policies, the nature of national defence strategies, and the current state of European security in a turbulent international environment.
Looking at your recent writing on Germany’s national security strategy, can you explain your criticisms and why the strategy’s approach needs to change?
I have done a lot of research throughout my career on what ‘good strategy’ means in government, looking at strategies all the way from ancient Rome to today. In 2023 Germany produced its first ever ‘National Security Strategy’ as a response to the Ukraine war. The new government that came to power in 2022 recognised the need to write a more comprehensive strategy for Germany.
A good strategic document needs at least four key elements. The first is a set of up to three very concrete strategic goals to achieve within a specific period. The second element is an analysis of the threats and challenges to achieving those goals, and this needs to be clear and concise, not a list of any threat you can think of. You also need to identify the root causes and underlying dynamics of these threats. The third element focuses on thinking of the means and measures of how to overcome these threats. Finally, you need a unit within your government that constantly monitors the implementation and updating of this document in order to account for unforeseen changes. We can see in the turbulent world we live in today that these documents need to be living and ever-changing.
When I looked at the German document, it fell short on every step. The document itself is more of a long list of goals Germany wants to achieve, including everything from fighting hunger and climate change to military strategy. The list of threats is also too expansive, with things such as social inequality and criminal gangs alongside China, Russia and a host of other issues. This led to a list of strategic recommendations being produced which really weren’t feasible because of the vast amount of goals and threats. If you want to achieve something you need to set very clear, concrete goals to work towards, and there needs to be a clear understanding of what stands in your way and how to overcome it.
Coming back to your statement that strategies need to be ‘living documents’, the UK’s recent Strategic Defence Review has taken some criticism for it potentially trying to answer the security questions of 2022 rather than 2025. How can governments improve their approach to ensure they look to the future rather than the past?
First of all, as I mentioned before, you need to have a unit in your government, either under the intelligence services, ministry of defence or executive branch, that constantly tracks the progress of the document in the real world so there is internal analysis of the relevance of the document. This unit needs to be professional and bureaucratic, not political. The US, at least before Trump’s second term, was very good at this process, with the Office of Net Assessment looking at the future of defence, although it was abolished by Pete Hegseth. In Germany, we don’t have this unit yet, which is absolutely critical to avoid the risk of continually fighting the wars of the past.
Looking again at Germany, how central is Germany’s role in European defence and how has it developed since the Ukraine War and how does it need to develop to meet the current security threats?
Until February 2022, roughly eighty percent of the political and economic elites in Germany saw war in Europe as a thing of the past, and completely discounted the chance of a Russian invasion, adopting a geoeconomic mindset that if there are trading relations with Russia then war will not break out. They assumed that Russian revisionist ideology and dreams of empire would never trump economic rationality. Germany still committed to this viewpoint literally until the day of the invasion. Regardless of the motivations behind Putin’s war, his motivations are stronger than the economic imperatives of peace. Germany’s faith in the economic imperatives of peace is really ironic considering that eighty-five years ago, Germany itself was driven by ideology and ignored economic interests.
Because of Germany’s conviction in economics, Germany was no longer investing in its military. In 1990, the year after the wall came down, Germany had the largest army in Western Europe, and defence spending was roughly 3.5% of its GDP, so it’s not true to think that Germany has been a pacifist state since the Second World War. But ever since then, its defence spending has dropped significantly and its military became very weak. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, however, trigger a reversal of this trend. Since February 2022, Germany’s role in defence began to change with a famous speech that the German chancellor Scholz gave about ‘Zeitenwende’, signalling Germany’s changing defence stance. Despite this, Germany did not immediately deliver. The US especially led the coalition and response to the Russian invasion, and Germany participated but was not central. However, Trump’s election has changed everything again, as his reticence for supporting western Europe and his leanings towards Russia change the logic of security in Europe again. In the first week of May, the new German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, announced a spending package of 600 billion euros, which is a tenfold increase on their spending in 2022. You also see the tone in Berlin changing, and the urgency increasing around rebuilding the German military, in cooperation with the NATO-Europe umbrella.
Germany itself is absolutely critical for European security, looking at its size, population and position on the continent, you can’t defend Europe without cooperation from Germany. If Germany was not collaborating, or was even supporting Russia, it would compromise all of Europe’s security. In this current moment, Germany is fully on board with European defence and security and has majorly bolstered its commitments which is what is needed to ensure security.
There has been a lot of talk of European strategic autonomy this year, how feasible is this, and can European countries decouple from US military support?
In one of my recent publications I listed three potential approaches for German defence policy; transatlantic renewal, i.e more integration with the US, European strategic autonomy, and minimal defence capability. If we think of these three postures as a triangle, and the German defence policies are swirling around within the triangle trying to find a middle ground. Until the election of Trump, the majority of the German political elite were in the transatlantic renewal camp, wanting to integrate with American security capabilities and following America’s lead on decoupling from China.
Since Trump, there has been a move towards European strategic autonomy, but most people recognise its not completely feasible for the time being because we rely on the US for too many areas. For example, intelligence and command and control systems such as satellites and signal intelligence are run by the US, which are essential for using weapons like precision-guided missiles. If the US withheld access to these systems, Europe would struggle to operate effectively.
Despite not being able to fully decouple, European states including Germany have recognised the necessity to seek greater strategic autonomy, and its benefits. Importantly, when Germany spends 600 billion euros on defence, they want to maximise the amount of that money spent in Germany on German workers and companies. Secondly is the reason of trust; if Germany is reliant on American equipment, they are liable to be tracked and controlled to an extent by the US, so it would be difficult to operate without American support. This is the case for a lot of advanced equipment like F35 planes, drones and long-range missiles. Therefore, it makes both political-strategic and economic sense to pursue greater strategic autonomy in this context.
Now looking at your article ‘The Populist Challenge to European Defence’, since the Ukraine War, have you seen a more coherent populist position develop in Europe regarding defence?
What’s interesting about these populist parties in Europe is that they all quite like the security forces, whether that be the military, the police or paramilitary forces. However, when it comes to what they should be used for, populists diverge in their views. So, for example in Poland you have conservative populists who are very anti-Russia, whereas you have populists in France much more friendly to Russia.
The big question is what would happen if these populist parties get control of national governments. There is the potential for them to collaborate on these big defence rises because they all support the security forces, and want to use them for combatting things like immigration. What’s interesting is that if we look at the populist regimes of the 30s and 40s in Europe, they all had expansionary views; wanting to use their military to increase the country’s size and power. Whereas, the current populist movements want to instead protect their own ‘nationality’ and block themselves from the outside world. Therefore, it’s unlikely these parties would cooperate with others in the context of foreign military ventures.
In your book ‘Constructing Allied Cooperation’ you write about the importance of ‘pivotal states’ for building coalitions. Do you think Europe, in its current context, has a ‘pivotal state’ that it could build a coalition around?
It’s true that there has been no one coalition leader, but you do have a coalition ‘core’ developing around Merz, Macron and Starmer as the principal leaders who could build a coalition and negotiate the participation of other states like Spain or Italy. There are also many countries interested in joining voluntarily, such as the Scandinavian and Baltic states. In the particular moment where a coalition seems necessary, I think there was enough leadership to construct a coalition. The big questions that remain, however, are what goal would this coalition have, what would be its strategy? What would they want to achieve? Defend Ukraine? Defend NATO territory?
Fundamentally, coalitions need these leaders like Merz and Starmer, and there are many occasions when these central figures don’t exist. Prior to the election of Keir Starmer, the UK was much less enthusiastic in cooperating with the Europeans due to the Brexit issue, and the US was still the central state leading the support for Ukraine. So, the fact that this European political coalition has risen so quickly is fortunate for uniting European security strategy. Let’s hope the momentum continues and that European leaders continue to take Ukraine seriously.
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