The End of Militarism: Civil-Military Relations in the Federal Republic of Germany

TY - THES

T1 - The End of Militarism

T2 - Civil-Military Relations in the Federal Republic of Germany

AU - Afsah, Ebrahim

PY - 2008

Y1 - 2008

N2 - This study examines how the structurally imposed need for rearmament has set in motion a continuous internal engagement with the origins of militarism, leading to deep ideational and institutional changes aimed at overcoming the historical legacy and adapting the military to the new domestic and international realities. This has required a careful examination of military tradition and institutional structures to end the dualism that historically existed between the army and society. It is the story of a delusional institution recovering its sanity, explaining why it stopped after 1945 to believe in obscure ideas of racial and national supremacy; to engage in propagandising these ideas to society at large; and to interfere with civilian policy making. The emergence of exemplary civil-military relations in a pluralistic democracy was the result of a long political process of normative evaluation and institutional balancing, as such it cannot be reduced to wise foundational choices but necessitates the continuous domestic engagement and debate between different societal interests. The emphasis on the domestic political nature of the process is significantly more complex than structural examinations that deduce national change from systemic variables. Analytically multifaceted and thus more demanding, the emphasis on political processes and domestic agency has important policy implications. By underlining the indeterminacy of social change and rejecting a linear model of institutional progress, this study cautions against over-ambitious predictive claims and the ability to impose social and institutional engineering in a post-conflict setting.

AB - This study examines how the structurally imposed need for rearmament has set in motion a continuous internal engagement with the origins of militarism, leading to deep ideational and institutional changes aimed at overcoming the historical legacy and adapting the military to the new domestic and international realities. This has required a careful examination of military tradition and institutional structures to end the dualism that historically existed between the army and society. It is the story of a delusional institution recovering its sanity, explaining why it stopped after 1945 to believe in obscure ideas of racial and national supremacy; to engage in propagandising these ideas to society at large; and to interfere with civilian policy making. The emergence of exemplary civil-military relations in a pluralistic democracy was the result of a long political process of normative evaluation and institutional balancing, as such it cannot be reduced to wise foundational choices but necessitates the continuous domestic engagement and debate between different societal interests. The emphasis on the domestic political nature of the process is significantly more complex than structural examinations that deduce national change from systemic variables. Analytically multifaceted and thus more demanding, the emphasis on political processes and domestic agency has important policy implications. By underlining the indeterminacy of social change and rejecting a linear model of institutional progress, this study cautions against over-ambitious predictive claims and the ability to impose social and institutional engineering in a post-conflict setting.

M3 - Doctoral thesis

BT - The End of Militarism

ER -