Anglo-German Relations in Security and Defence: Taking Stock

By Edward Foster and Peter Schmidt
18 Jun 2004

This Whitehall Paper grew out of the proceedings of a joint conference held at Ebenhausen in summer 1996.

This paper is essentially about Germany and the UK. The intergovernmental clashes over monetary union or beef exports provide an ever-present backdrop to what follows, but the focus is on defence and security matters. This is an area in which, German policy-makers never cease to remind others, their country has the greatest stake of any, and in which the British consider that they excel, either by the quality of their diplomacy or manu militaris.

Given that the post-war Federal Republic, like India before it, became peace-time home of much of the British Army and RAF, security and defence cooperation might have been the seed-bed for the kind of civic partnership that was carefully nurtured with France, but most British service personnel remain unimaginatively monoglot, and military marriages have a dismal break-up rate. Between defence professionals, the generally businesslike teamwork has had to weather the friction caused by civil and political restrictions on military training, and attempts to bring about bilateral armaments cooperation have been unattended by success. As the pieces in the complex of European security continue to move, it is worth considering what prospects exist for revitalising and broadening the link.

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