Germany Assuming A Greater Military Role On The World Stage

Germans with a Patriot missile battery. Germany has voted to send two Patriot missile batteries and 400 soldiers to Turkey. Tobias Schwarz/Reuters

Germany, for Decades a Pacifist Power, Faces the Need to Play a Military Role -- New York Times

BERLIN — When Chancellor Angela Merkel hosted a recent reception for military families, she greeted parents, wives and children whose loved ones were spending their holidays in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Kosovo and off the Horn of Africa. German deployments overseas, Ms. Merkel said, “will soon encompass the entire globe.”

On that same wintry afternoon, members of Parliament debated whether to add to the nearly 6,000 German troops currently serving abroad by sending up to 400 soldiers to Turkey, where they would operate two Patriot missile batteries to help protect their NATO ally from a potential escalation of the civil war across the border in Syria.

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My Comment: The other former World War II axis power is also starting to assume a greater military role .... but for different reasons.

The Booming German Arms Trade

‘Secret’ Arms Deals Provoke Germans -- International Herald Tribune

LONDON — There is at least one European export sector that continues to find a ready market around the world — weapons.

In the week in which the European Union received the Nobel Prize for Peace in Oslo, protestors in the Norwegian capital were not alone in pointing out the irony that its member states account for a third of global arms exports.

It is an irony that has a particular resonance in Germany right now, where the government’s decisions on a series of weapons deals have created unease among parliamentarians who complain they were kept in the dark.

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My Comment: Billions of Euros and tens of thousands of jobs are at stake (plus national security by keeping your industries busy) .... bottom line .... the Germans are not going to change policy.

Update: More on Germany's "risky" arms exports can be read here.