Since reunification German security policy has struggled with the question of which foreign policy guidelines it should follow with regard to overseas military interventions. The breaking up of Germany’s former political consensus as a “Zivilmacht”, caused by the increasing overseas military missions, has resulted often in a policy of ‘muddling through’. Policy makers were confronted with a conflict between external expectations and internal requirements, to which they reacted with ad hoc decisions and without a clear, recognizable strategy. This paper therefore identifies conflicting goals within the basic guidelines of German security policy. These include the principles “never alone” and “never again”, which describe the German willingness to demonstrate solidarity with the alliance and the commitment to multilateralism as well as the German culture of military restraint. Furthermore, this paper analyses the occurrence of these conflicting goals and their treatment in decision-making processes in the context of overseas military missions. For this purpose, the German mission in Afghanistan will be used as a case study, as it has been formative for the German security policy with regard to its duration, its intensity and its complexity. Germany’s ten-year lasting engagement there will be divided into several phases of exemplary decision-making processes, which will be researched in the light of the question of which was the guiding force behind the action taken in each case. In addition, the paper considers a link between the basic principles of German security policy and the respective political actors, for example a preference for the guideline “never alone” by the federal government. The final question that will be addressed is, whether Germany needs a new security strategy for the future, both to better meets the changed reality in the field of overseas military missions and possibly to end the two decades old solution of ‘muddling through’.
