Collective Memory, Ontological Security, and German Foreign Policy

On February 27, 2022, a few days after Russia’s attack on Ukraine, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced a plan for a massive increase in Germany’s military spending, in an emotional speech in the Bundestag. Germany’s decision to create a special fund of €100 billion to be spent on military procurement, and to invest more than two percent of its gross domestic product in defence expenditure, has immediately generated a heated debate. The question how would this plan fit within the existing broader (Euro-Atlantic) security schemes, and shape the European Union’s common security and defence policy, has important implications. This was a difficult policy decision, considering the fact that for many decades, ‘pacifism’ has shaped Germany’s identity, and foreign policy. Chancellor Scholz framed the decision as a “major national undertaking” to protect “freedom” and “democracy” and an effort to sustain physical, “long-term security in Europe”. The decision to increase military spending at such unprecedented levels, however, provides a significant challenge to Germany’s autobiographical identity narratives, and its self-image as a ‘peaceable nation’. This policy change which was demanded by Germany’s physical security needs, however, contradicts, and possibly undermines, its ontological security. This paper aims to study the recent change in Germany’s foreign policy through the lenses of Ontological Security Theory. More specifically, we study German political discourse on Russia-Ukraine war and the imperative for a radical (foreign and security) policy change by placing an emphasis on strategic narratives. For this aim, we undertake a systematic, qualitative narrative analysis, and pay an explicit attention to memory politics, memory-framing, and politics of collective remembrance. Following Maurice Halbwachs, this study contends that each nation has a collective memory, and that collective memory is selective. Collective memory relates to states’ autobiographical identity narratives which shapes the contours of state behaviour, and thus plays a critical role in determining possibilities of foreign and security policy change. This research is based on two sets of empirical data. The first consists of semi-structured interviews with German politicians, bureaucrats, academics and intellectuals about Germany’s responses to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and recent decision to increase the country’s military spending. Empirical material for this study also includes a survey of German political discourse, which mainly consists of minutes of the German Parliament, as well as statements and speeches of Chancellor Olaf Schulz, members of the federal government, and other politicians. This research confirms the prevalence of collective memory and mnemonic politics in Germany’s autobiographical identity narratives. German political discourse on Russia-Ukraine war is full of selectively mobilised historical narratives about the Second World War, European integration as a project for reconciliation and peace, the Cold War, and reunification of Germany. The study also suggests that strategic narratives about the Self, and a variety of Others -- including not only Russia, but also Germany’s own past as a temporal Other -- also prevail, and perform several discursive functions, such as policy legitimation.