Zeitenwende, Europe and Germany’s Culture of Restraint

ABSTRACT

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, German foreign and security policy has been under intense pressure to adapt to a much more threatening geopolitical setting. Notwithstanding the leadership’s decision to embrace change, the crisis has exposed some persistence in Germany’s antecedent ‘civilian power’ paradigm, or culture of restraint. A culturalist analytical approach finds that durable historical and ideational factors in identity formation, the embeddedness of foreign policy in domestic institutions and the close association of European integration with the core tenets of Germany’s identity constrain its capacity to act decisively and without equivocation, even under dramatically changed circumstances summarised in the concept of Zeitenwende.

KEYWORDS:

• German foreign policy
• German security policy
• European Union
• strategic culture

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the German-American Fulbright Commission and colleagues at the Center for International Studies at TU Dresden and at the German Institute for International and Security Studies (SWP) Berlin.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Molly O’Neal

Molly O’Neal has been a Visiting Fulbright Professor and Research Scholar at Zentrum für Internationale Studien, Technical University Dresden, Germany.