The Bundeswehr’s operations in Afghanistan are but one—-albeit, the most glaring—-example of the errors and structural inadequacies that result from Germany’s current crisis of security policy. As historian Klaus Naumann asserts in this timely and succinct analysis, the German military’s overseas missions are plagued by fundamental problems: exaggerated expectations, a lack of coherent strategic goals, short-term mandates that are blind to regional realities, deficits in planning and coordination, inadequate material and financial means, and manifest incongruities in the relationship between the military and civil elements of each mission.

»Mission without a Goal« elucidates the systemic origins of these grave shortcomings. Germany’s political class has failed to come to terms with the transition from a policy of “defense” to one aimed at achieving “security”, because it continues to cling to the sediments of the Bonn Republic. All too often, Germany’s political decision-makers have responded to the challenge of the Bundeswehr’s new role in international security politics by simply becoming bogged down in the details of each out-of-area mission.

But it is not only the country’s political elite that is ill-prepared for the task of responding to these new constellations and the necessities of global preventive security strategies. The military elite has also failed to learn its political lessons and remains suspended in its own mode of professional self-restraint. Taken together, these two developments have contributed to creating a widening gap between the military, the political system, and German civil society—-a gap that has expanded further, as Germany’s citizens have increasingly distanced themselves from assuming any part of the responsibility for fulfilling the country’s military obligations.

Drawing on years of his own empirical research on the more then fifty-year history of the Bundeswehr, Klaus Naumann offers not only a factual and highly-readable survey of what has gone wrong with security policies in recent years. He also outlines how Germany’s security elites might rise to today’s challenges by re-aligning political and military structures. Moreover, he presents convincing arguments for a renewal of citizens’ obligations to make their contribution to meeting these challenges.