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Love and Power in the German-American Security Relationship

Tim Griebel

Doctoral Candidate Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU)

Department of Political Science Kochstraße 4, 91054 Erlangen, Germany

tim.griebel@fau.de Abstract1 This paper deals with the causes of the dynamic change between German-American cooperation in the case of Afghanistan and conflict in the case of Iraq. It argues from a mainly theoretical perspective inspired by critical realism that the German-American security relationship is driven by the dialectic interplay of agential, structural, ideational and material factors and two connected dilemmas which emerge from it: On the agential side, humans are confronted with the dilemma of existential loneliness out of which the pursuit of both friendly love and power emerge. But because love between friends is based on shared ideas, differing ideas result in frustrated love and the drive for power. On the structural side, humans face the dilemma that different ideas emerge from differences in materially based social positions. In combination, these two dilemmas lead to crisis-tendencies which cause conflict when they are not counteracted by reflective agents wishing to cooperate.

Paper prepared for presentation at the ECPR Graduate Student Conference 2014, 03 July – 05 July 2014, Innsbruck, Austria

                                                                                                               1 I want to thank the Hanns Seidel Foundation (HSS) for its financial support that provided the material base for writing this paper. Many thanks also to Roland Sturm, Heinrich Pehle, Alexander Niedermeier and especially to Kristina Chmelar who all helped to build the ideas that emerged from this material base. They are of course not responsible for the errors I have committed.

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1. Introduction

Briefly after the events of September 11th 2001, US-President George W. Bush use of the

phrase “war on terror” offered an interpretation for the incidents that provided the discursive

frame for the two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. As an act of German solidarity, German

soldiers took part in the military conflict under American leadership in Afghanistan. Yet, the

German-American cooperation should not last for long. Although it did not brake down

completely (Dettke, 2009:166ff., Hedstück and Hellmann, 2003:5, Maull, 2008:140), in the

case of Iraq, German foreign policy for the first time since the end of the Second World War

was directed against a major strategic interest of the United States (Falke, 2005:144). The

case of Iraq showed that “even a relationship built on fifty years of close cooperation,

extensive personal networks and solid economic interests, could deteriorate so quickly and so

sharply in a matter of months” (Szabo, 2004:42) The question is, how this dynamic change

can be explained.

This question may sound outmoded over ten years after the events took place but it touches

broader issues that are still relevant today. First of all, it is closely connected to the

mechanisms underlying transatlantic relations as a whole because of Germany´s central role

in it, that culminated in US-President George Bush Senior’s offer of an American-German

“partnership in leadership” in May 1989. The importance of the American-German dyad in

political terms is reflected by the attention both “state-organized societies” (Eder, 1980)2

receive(d) in the field of International Relations (IR). “Since 1990, no other country (the US

aside) has received as much attention from mainstream IR theory as far as its foreign policy is

concerned than Germany.“ (Hellmann, 2009a:258) For that reason, the German-American

dyad may still offer rich cases to give new stimulus for the discussion about the determinants

of both cooperation and conflict in IR. To detect those, it is necessary to climb on an even

more abstract level and address three fundamental issues that have haunted social theory ever

since: the ontological questions about the relationship between agents and structures as wells

as between ideas and matter (Hay, 2009) and the epistemological question concerning the

possibility of a scientific IR (Kurki and Wight, 2007). Whether implicitly or explicitly, every

study in IR touches those issues because “[i]n science, Nike notwithstanding, there is no ‘just

                                                                                                               2 This formulation is used here to indicate that states should not be understood as actors but as structures. For different opinions on that see for example Wight (2004) and Wendt (2004). When I nevertheless use terms like “Germany“ or the “United States“, these should be understood as short-term expressions for the respective state-organized society. Within these societies the respective governments, and especially the heads of government, play a central role in the “two-level” (language)game of international security (Bosold and Oppermann, 2006, Putnam, 1988).

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doing it.‘“ (Elman and Elman, 2002:232) Therefore, it is better to think about meta-theory

right from the start and in a systematic manner.

Here it is argued that poststructuralist discourse theory (PDT) or “critical constructivism”

provides a welcomed gateway against the structural bias of the mainstream theories of IR but

that its move to a “logic of contingency” throws the baby out with the water because it looses

the vocabulary to explain stability in social life. This lack is due to the transfer of the logic of

language to the logic of the social as a whole and the corresponding neglect of the active role

of different materialities in both stabilizing and destabilizing social arrangements. While

acknowledging the central role of intersubjective ideas transmitted by language, this paper

argues from the perspective of critical realism that the social should not be equated with

language and that both the form and the force of language practices can only be understood

against the background of the dialectic of agential, structural, ideational and material factors

and the dilemmas which it gives rise.

It is argued that the German-American security relationship is driven by two connected

dilemmas. On the agential side, humans are confronted with the dilemma of existential

loneliness out of which the pursuit of both friendly love and power emerge. But because love

between friends is based on shared ideas, differing ideas result in frustrated love and the drive

for power. Which of these drives takes lead is not predetermined but can only be understood

within historical security structures, understood as an amalgam of ideas, material resources

and institutions. For the historical security structure characterizing the German-American

security relationship a structural dilemma can be detected that acts upon the natural human

dilemma of existential loneliness. The large gap in terms of material resources causes both

frictions within security institutions such as NATO and differing ideas about the order of

international politics. But because friendly love is based on common ideas about order, the

asymmetrical dependence in the realm of material resources threatens the friendship by trend.

In combination, these two dilemmas lead to crisis-tendencies that cause conflict when

reflective agents wishing to cooperate do not counteract them.

After addressing the shortcomings of PDT in chapter 2, chapter 3 reconstructs the agential

and structural factors driving both form and force of language practices from the perspective

of critical realism. Although the main focus of this paper is on the development of a new

theoretical framework, Chapter 4 tries at least to illustrate some of the main empirical

manifestations of the argument.

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2. Poststructuralist Discourse Theory as a Self-Dissolving Dissolvent3

Because the American-German dyad is part of the broader transatlantic security architecture,

it is worth taking a short look at the diagnoses of the mainstream theories in IR, i.e. structural

realism, conventional constructivism and liberalism, 4 about the shape and future of

transatlantic security relations. Here, according to Hellmann (2008), we can detect a structural

bias in each of these theories that make it hard to explain dynamic events. Whether the

positive prognosis of “predestined stability” of transatlantic ties, which is offered by

conventional constructivists or liberalists, or the negative forecast of “inevitable decline” of

cooperation between democracies in the transatlantic region offered by structural realists, both

arguments resemble theories looking at slow moving causal processes like global warming.

Accordingly, mainstream theories have a hard time to understand the tornado-like parts of

social life.

But Hellmann’s discussion unfortunately neglects poststructuralist or critical constructivist

research5 that is well suited to do just that. By bringing the insights of the “cultural” or

“linguistic turn”6 and the “logic of contingency” (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001:3) into IR, this

kind of research argues that the essence of political phenomena, i.e. their “identity”, is not

determined by (material) structures but as contingent as the “discourses” that are constituting

them. Although the terms “discourse” or “discourse analysis” have been used in different

ways, in IR a text-based understanding of discourse is dominant that sees discourse as a

system of meaning that constitutes social reality and that can be analyzed by looking at texts

(Milliken, 1999).

Hereby the title “Writing Security” of David Campbell’s (1998) book about US foreign policy

becomes the guiding idea for the analysis of international relations. On that quite soft (post-)

foundation the security identities of the US (Campbell, 1998, Hodges, 2011, Jackson, 2005,

Nabers, 2009), Germany (Baumann, 2006, Hellmann, et al., 2008, Nonhoff and Stengel, 2014,

Roos, 2010, Schwab-Trapp, 2007, Stahl, 2008) and between these state-organized societies

                                                                                                               3 This headline was chosen in reference to Theodor Adorno (1974:245). 4 Evidence for the intellectual hegemony of these paradigms can be found in the surveys conducted by Daniel Maliniak, Amy Oakes, Susan Peterson and Michael Tierney, for both the US (Maliniak et al., 2011) and the broader IR academic community (Maliniak et al., 2011), although it has to be noted that the surveys unfortunately do not differentiate between conventional and critical constructivism. 5 For the distinction between conventional and critical constructivism that is based on the question to what extent Critical Theory´s distance to positivism is maintained (critical constructivism) or not (conventional constructivism) see Hopf (1998). 6 Bachmann-Medick is talking about “cultural turns“ whereas the “linguistic turn“ can be seen as the “Mega-Turn“ that every other cultural turn has to deal with (Bachmann-Medick, 2010:33). Its certainly no coincidence that Hellmann, maybe frustrated by the shortcomings of the mainstream theories in IR, has turned toward linguistic arguments in recent years (Hellmann et al., 2013, Hellmann et al., 2008).

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seem essentially to be linguistic and contingent constructions that come into existence through

texts. Concerning the question about the causes of cooperation and conflict in the American-

German dyad this leads to the thesis that common meaning giving will lead to cooperation

whereas differences in linguistic practices will lead to conflict (Bjola and Kornprobst, 2007,

Nabers, 2005, 2006).

The theory of meaning that lies behind the discursive approach is only based on the

contingent play between signifiers (words) and signifieds (concepts), the referents of language

practices do not play an independent and active role in meaning giving. They are “dead”

(Sayer, 2000:35-36). Although this view should not be equated with a pure idealism, it is

nevertheless connected to a “idealistic tendency” (Porpora, 1993:227) because “[t]he material

world exists only insofar as it becomes an object of interpretation within collective meaning

structures.” (Reckwitz, 2002:202, italics in the original).7 Here, critical constructivists are

even more radical than their conventional siblings insofar as they have even lost the idea of a

“rump materialism”. By radicalizing the conventional constructivist slogan “ideas all the way

down (until you get to biology and natural resources)” (Wendt, 1995:74) to “contingency

goes ‘all the way down’” (Glynos and Howarth, 2007:32) they highlight the tornado-like

nature of social life. But this argument that becomes possible through the transfer of the logic

of language to the logic of the social as a whole (Howarth, 2010:312, Laclau, 2005:68) comes

at a price: “The theory seems to deny [the] specificity of different modalitities [sic!] of

materiality, when it subsumes their mode of signification to the structure of language—and

leaves it to that.” (Chouliaraki, 2002:109, fn 5, italics in the original) By doing that

International Relations become Intertextual Relations (Der Derian and Shapiro, 1989).

International order, respectively international identity, “amounts to knowledge shared among

states – intersubjective knowledge – (Bially Mattern, 2005:6) and foreign policy identities are

turned into the “scripting of identities” (Campbell, 1998:x). For that reason it becomes so easy

to highlight the contingency of identity constructions. Accordingly, a discourse analysis

examining “text in context“ (van Dijk, 1997:7) understands “context“, respectively

“structure“ (Hay, 2002:94), in the sense of con-text (Nabers, 2009:199) and therefore in an

tendentially idealistic way (Kurki and Sinclair, 2010).

This idealistic tendency can not only be found on the ontological but also on the

epistemological level, where it goes hand in hand with far reaching normative consequences.                                                                                                                7 The phrase “interpretation within collective meaning structures” already reveals two strands of discursive approaches that can be arranged on the agent-structure continuum. In this sense, two extreme poles of constructivist discourse analysts can be detected: “(1) ‘reconstructive’ discourse analysts who consider the social world as constructed by the actors, and (2) ‘deconstructive’ discourse analysts who consider the actors as discursive effects.” (Angermüller, 2011:130)

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Knowledge, according to the theory of meaning underlying PDT, is nothing more than

acknowledgement (Hellmann, 2009b:641)8 based on human conventions. This leads to a

strange logic that can be summarized in the statement that “there is no truth beyond whatever

anyone defines as the truth – and that’s the truth.” (Sayer, 2000:49) 9 But with this

epistemological position as a (post-) foundation, every criticism of social practices such as

torture or genital mutilation – no matter how radical it is intended to be – loses its grip (Sayer,

2007:251). In the words of Theodor Adorno (1974:245), such a “negative philosophy,

dissolving everything, dissolves even the dissolvent“. 10 What is lacking on both the

ontological as well as the epistemological level is the idea that being in the world and

knowledge about the world is much more shaped by material referents than a discursive

approach that looks just for contingent meaning giving is willing to acknowledge (Bührmann

and Schneider, 2008:133-34). This approach misses the insight that „it is not only people who

attach meanings to things; things also attach meanings to people.” (Pouliot, 2010:298) For

that reason, McCarthy concluded that “[i]t is on the terrain of non-human objects that the

most pressing questions about contingency are asked of idealist scholarship.“ (McCarthy,

2011:1229)

Although it cannot be the goal of this article to review the multiple answers that newer

theories of culture have given to these questions, Pouliot’s statement already shows that

material structures are now on the culturalist agenda. Whether directly under the heading of

the “new material turn” (West, 2011) or more indirectly under the name “practice turn”

(Adler and Pouliot, 2011), this “new round” of the approaches interested in materiality

(Reckwitz, 2012:106) replaces David Campbell’s dictum “Writing Security” with that of

“Performing Security” (Bialasiewicz et al., 2007) so that a refreshed view on “Security that

Matters” (Aradau, 2010) is possible.

While material structures are the main focus of these approaches, culturalist theories have

already cared about material human bodies for quite a long time. It is here where we can see

that even poststructuralist theories are not as anti-essentialist as a solely text-based approach

suggests. Sure, on this level poststructuralist approaches announce the “Death of the Subject”

in the sense that no autonomous reflexive subject with an essential identity beyond discursive

constructions and the practices of identification exists (Epstein, 2011). But discursive

approaches linked to Lacanian psychoanalysis also claim that the force of identity                                                                                                                8 Although Hellmann is no poststructuralist, his preferred meta-theory of pragmatism in many important respects resembles poststructuralism. See footnote 10. 9 This epistemological position is self-contradictory in so far as it denies the possibility of a Archimedean point of reference for knowledge claims while presenting itself as just such a position (Monteiro and Ruby, 2009:34). 10 This kind of interpretation of the logic of contingency can already be found in Morton (2005:443).

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constructions can to a great part be explained by non-discursive bodily affective drives and

that identity constructions, therefore, are not reducible to the form of language practices

(Solomon, 2012a). Here, we can already see at least a “flirt with a certain essentialism“

(Stavrakakis, 2007:77).

In conclusion, it is nothing new to think about the active role of materiality even for

discursive approaches. In the following, I will try to give this discussion about the relationship

between discourse and materiality on the agential as well as on the structural side new

impetus with the help of insights offered by critical realism.11 It is the latter perspective that

allows a “flirt with a certain essentialism“ even for discursive approaches without committing

adultery. It is therefore no coincidence that we can already find bridges between this approach

and cultural theories such as Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus (Wight, 2006:49f.), Bruno

Latour’s Actor-Network-Theory (Elder-Vass, 2008) or the discourse theory of Michel

Foucault (Bührmann and Schneider, 2013, Frauley, 2007:25, fn 7, Hardy, 2011).12 Critical

realism is advanced here because it offers a depth ontology and corresponding goal of

“explanatory critique” (Bhaskar, 1998:xvii-xix) that makes it possible to keep the insights of

the linguistic turn without the risk of reducing social theory to a self-dissolving dissolvent.13

                                                                                                               11 It is this meta-theoretical foundation that differentiates the theoretical framework developed here from other prominent approach like neoclassical realism (Glenn, 2009) or analytical eclecticism (Sil and Katzenstein, 2010) that have tried to combine ideational and material factors. Although the framework developed here is an eclectic one, insofar as it combines different arguments from different research traditions, this combination should be understood as a synthesis rather than an eclectic stringing together. One problem with pragmatic orientated analyses in the spirit of analytical eclecticism is that the resulting theory combinations remain rather vague about the relationship between different causal mechanism (Meyer and Strickmann, 2011:69). This can be seen clearly in the analysis of transatlantic relations after 9/11 offered by Sørensen (2008). Another problem is that pragmatists conscribe, just as critical constructivists, to a consensus theory of knowledge (Friedrichs and Kratchowil, 2009:706) which results in the problems describes above and rather cynical arguments about suffering in international relations. Because of this common epistemological ground it comes as no surprise that Martin Nonhoff (2011) has tried to bring pragmatist approaches and discourse analyses together. There are also some important similarities between the framework developed here and neoclassical realism. But the main difference is that neoclassical realist research, in line with a positivist worldview, tries to combine different causal factors in a way that is comparable to a regression analysis. Here, causality is understood as the sum of independent causal factors which makes it hard to recognize their dialectic interplay (Fordham, 2009:253, Tang, 2009:801f.). For an neoclassical realist analysis which tries nevertheless to integrate discourse theoretical arguments see Sterling-Folker and Shinko (2005) or Hadfield-Amkhan (2010). 12 For an overview of these and other bridges see Frauley and Pearce (2007). 13 For a critical view on this combination see Al-Almoudi and Willmot (2011).

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3. “Emergent Powers Materialism” – Contingency without Disintegration

3.1. Critical Realism – Some Basics

Roy Bhaskar’s (1989) critical realism that provides the basis for the further argumentation is

characterized by three central statements: “ontological realism (that there is a reality indepen-

dent of the mind(s) that would wish to come to know it); epistemological relativism (that all

beliefs are socially produced); and judgemental rationalism (that despite epistemological

relativism, it is still possible, in principle, to choose between competing theories).” (Wight,

2006:26)14 On the ontological level, critical realism is based on a “depth ontology” that has

two main features. First, social reality is understood as an open system that is stratified

between the levels of the real, the actual and the empirical (Elder-Vass, 2008:458).15

Because social reality can, therefore, neither be reduced to the actualization nor the empirical

observation of real causal tendencies, causality is understood here differently than in

positivist terms. Causality, here, is not coupled with the goal to find “law-like regularities” to

be able to make predictions but has instead to be understood in the sense of causal

mechanisms that have the tendency to lead to certain events under certain conditions.

Therefore, causal mechanisms may be activated under certain conditions and they may also be

observed empirically but their reality is not dependent on actualization and even less on

empirical observation because in open systems counter-tendencies may always lead to their

suppression.16 Accordingly, although empirical analyses remain an important part of every

kind of research (Wight, 2006:35), knowledge is not reducible to empirical observation in

open systems: “This is an explicit rejection of the Empiricist approach which states that only

what can be demonstrated through experimentation is ‘knowledge’ – i.e. realism argues there

are mechanisms that can be postulated as being in effect, even if they cannot (at a particular

given point in time) be empirically proven.” (Hardy, 2011:81). This conception of causality

has already been used to make sense of Marx’ claim about the falling rate of profit (Collier,

1998:277) but it would also make sense for Waltz’ (1979:117) balance of power theory.

These two examples of materialist theories already point to the second facet of critical

realism’s depth ontology: the idea that there is an emergent relationship between material                                                                                                                14 For uses of different parts of critical (respectively scientific) realism in International Relations and (if we want to keep that difference) International Political Economy see for example the collection edited by Joseph and Wight (2010) as well as the individual contributions offered by Wendt (1999), Patomäki (2002, 2003), Porpora (2011a, 2013), Yalvaç (2012) and Fiaz (2014). For critical realism in general see for example Danermark et. al. (2002), Collier (1994), Archer et. al. (1998) and Sayer (1992). 15 For the concept of stratification see Collier (1994:107-34). 16 For this conception of causality see Porpora (2011b), Kurki (2006) and Bennett (2013).

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being and ideas (Elder-Vass, 2008:462) that allows for a non-deterministic materialism.

“Emergence may be defined as the relationship between two terms such that one

diachronically, or perhaps synchronically, arises out of the other, but is capable of reacting

back on the first and is in any event causally and taxonomically irreducible to it, as society is

to nature or mind to matter.” (Bhaskar, 1994:73) According to an “emergent powers

materialism” (Bhaskar, 1997:143) ideas emerge from material being but are not reducible to

and feedback on the latter. Language within this meta-theoretical framework can be seen as

an emergent phenomenon par excellence: “[L]anguages are emergent products of the

engagement of human practice with the material world; they cannot be reduced to any of their

constituents […]; they both have a partial independence or autonomy from both human beings

[…] and from the material world […]; and finally, language is itself a practice, capable of

enabling people to act upon and modify the world […], as well as to act upon themselves and

others”. (Carter and Sealey, 2004:118, italics tg, Fairclough et al., 2002) Accordingly,

meaning is not reducible to the level of signifiers and signifieds. We also have to take

referents within in a “semiotic triangle” (Bhaskar, 1993:222-23, Nellhaus, 1998) into account.

These referents and the emergent or dialectical17 relationship between matter and ideas exists,

as Carter and Seeley’s statement already indicates, on both the level of human agents as well

as on the level of social structures, whereas there exists also an emergent relation between

agents and structures (Archer, 2000:465). In the following, I want to describe this complex

dialectic by looking first at the structural level and then at level of the human agent before I

want to combine these two levels into a “rich totality of many determinations and relations”

(Marx, 1973:100) that makes a new view on being and identity (as well as the study of texts)

in international relations possible.

3.2. Social Structures – More than Leaves in the Wind18

On the structural level, the emergent relationship between matter and ideas means that social

relations’ materializations are indeed to are great extent the result of cultural meaning systems

but that they are not reducible to them. First, specific material objects have specific

properties, so that not everything can be constructed with every thing. Second, once created

materializations feed back on meaning systems. Human consciousness and intersubjective

knowledge expressed by language have an important impact on social being from the

                                                                                                               17 “By ‘dialectical’” I, as Porpora (1993:212, fn 1), “do not mean anything particularly obscure but only a process, much like a dialogue, in which various elements affect each other in an ongoing way over time.” 18 This subtitle was chosen in reference to Sayer (1997:462).

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perspective of critical realism but the latter is not reducible to them. Just the dialectic

interplay of language practices and the material subjects and objects makes both the form and

force of language understandable. Both are, contra the critical constructivist view from which

language is a self-referential system, not reducible to the structure of language.

This is also true for power in general. Power, indeed, has an intersubjective facet and can

therefore only be understood in relational terms but this does not mean that material

conditions in the form of resources do not play an important and active part in social life.

Therefore, David Baldwin (2013:277), by using the metaphor of card games, is right to

criticize a (quantitative) resource-based account of power for only seeing the cards the players

in international relations hold in their hands without asking which game is played. But in spite

of this critique, the cards still matter nevertheless (Fels, 2012:10). What is needed is an

understanding of power that is neither deterministic nor completely contingent. Here I agree

with Nicholas Onuf (1989:64): “Resources are nothing until mobilized through rules, rules are

nothing until matched to resources to effectuate rule”.

Especially conventional constructivists may have no problem to acknowledge the passive,

enabling and constraining powers of matter but they have a hard time to subscribe to their

active and motivating powers, especially when it comes to empirical research. But emergent

material relations generate their own logics, dependencies, contradictions and dilemmas that

not only cannot be reduced to linguistic social constructions but also feedback on these

constructions. “Although emergently material social relations are generated by cultural

constitutive rules, those relations independently affect the ways in which situated actors think

and act. […] Thus, if we ask why the rules are what they are, we must examine the material

relations generated by the current or past rules.” (Porpora, 1993:213) Now, here I argue that

this emergent relationship between matter and ideas is coagulated within institutions that are

themselves feeding back on this relation (Cox, 1981:136). In the realm of international

security, configurations of material resources, ideas and “security institutions” (Duffield,

2006) form “historical security structures”.19 This understanding of structure offers one

important jigsaw piece to “reclaim” (Moya, 2000) the concept of identity from a critical-

realist perspective and to explain cooperation and conflict in the American-German security

relationship. Its identity is not reducible to ideas but is to a great extent shaped by material

                                                                                                               19 This term was chosen in reference to Robert Cox’ (1981) concept of “historical structures“ in the realm of the International Political Economy (IPE). For a translation of Cox’ ideas into security studies see already Klein (1988) as well as Kempin and Mawdsley (2013). For an attempt to use Cox’ concept of historical structures for transatlantic relations after 9/11 see Sørensen (2008). For a critical note on the latter see footnote 10. For arguments for a combination of critical realism with Coxian ideas see Patomäki (2003), for a critical view see Joseph (2008:118).

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and institutional settings. The American-German security relationship, therefore, has to be

understood as a specific historical security structure. An analysis that only looks at texts and is

only searching for (inter-)subjective ideas to explain its dynamics is therefore insufficient.20

Social structure is more than our ideas about it and is not as free-floating as leaves in the

wind. The logic of contingency just goes too far in claiming that “there is no logical

connection whatsoever between positions in the relations of production [or the relations of

protection] and the mentality of the producers.” (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001:84-85.)21

It is the conception of emergence and the understanding of causality of critical realism that

allows not only to reestablish such a connection without following back on crude material

determinism but also to talk about “objective interests.” Accordingly, it becomes possible to

talk not only about the constraining and enabling features of emergent material relations

within historical security structures but also about their motivating force (Porpora, 2011a:47,

Porpora, 2001:264-65.). But although material social relations inhere powers, dilemmas and

contradictions that cause events only by trend, human beings can counteract these tendencies

nevertheless. So “[t]here is a dialectical relation between subjective and objective interests.

Objective interests must always be related to a particular subjectivity occupying a particular

position in a given conjuncture” (Jessop, 2008:30). But although actors play a central role in

social analysis, it is the look at the things that go on behind the backs of human agents that

should not be missing from a critical realist perspective (Akçalı, 2011:1728, Jessop,

2010:338, Sánchez, 2006:35).

We can see here an emergent relationship not only between ideas, matter and institutions but

also between agents and structures that can be grasped with Bob Jessop’s strategic relational

approach: “Structures are thereby treated analytically as strategically-selective in their form,

content, and operation; and actions are likewise treated as structurally-constrained, more or

less context-sensitive, and structuring.” (Jessop, 2005:48) What we need to add to Jessop’s

approach is the idea that actions are not just structurally-constrained, respectively -enabled,

                                                                                                               20 This is not so because these were of no importance but because such an one-dimensional view, according to Sánchez, usually remains stuck on the level of “positionality”, i.e., the “reflexivity, understanding of, or subjective relation with regard to social location” (Sánchez, 2006:38). It has to been noted that Sánchez thereby neglects structure-centered discourse approaches (see footnote 6). Nevertheless his general critique remains valid. Text-based approaches reduce structure to (inter-)subjective meaning structures. 21 For a critical evaluation of this statement see also Bieler and Morton (2008) as well as McCarthy (2011). Not only critical but also conventional constructivists overemphasis the intersubjective dimension of security relations when they define these as a “beliefs about the world (e.g., the nature of security), norms about social relationships (e.g., the appropriateness of the use of force), and identities about self and other (e.g., enemy, rival, citizen, or friend).” (Frederking, 2003:365)

  12  

but also structurally-motivated.22 But there is also an agential side of human motivation we

have to consider to understand identity constructions and cooperation and conflict between

Germany and the United States.

3.3. “Why Things Matter to People”23 – The Natural Drives of Human Beings

The considerations made so far are incomplete because they only look at the structural level.

What is missing here, is the idea that not only emergent material social relations constrain,

enable and motivate human beings but also the human body. Douglas Porpora (2011a:47), for

example, is therefore only partially right in claiming that capitalists have an objective interest

to maximize their profit because they stand in zero-sum relationship with their competitors

and that a neglect of this objective interest would be for their peril. Here, something is

implicitly assumed without being discussed explicitly: a view of human nature beyond social

structures that explains why people try to avoid harm at all.

Porpora’s conception is representative for a trend in critical realism to neglect the role of the

human subject compared to social structures.24 This caution to talk about human nature is

explainable by the high “ideological stakes” (Bell, 2012:654) that are at play in the discussion

about human nature. Because this term assumes a constant, it invites to – even if it is used in

ideal-typical ways – stereotypical thinking that can have far reaching political consequences.

But because every social theory is based on a conception of human nature, there is no way out

of this discussion (Lebow, 2012:646). Therefore, it is worthwhile to lay one’s own conception

of human nature open for critical consideration (Sayer, 2011:20 and 98). The social theory

developed here is based on a view of human nature that understands humans as lacking beings

that strive to cover this lack and satisfy their needs. “It is not only that, as critical realism

rightly claims, social systems are open, but that actions and practices are shaped by human

incompleteness, lack, pre-maturity, which drive actions toward completion and maturity.”

(Sayer, 2007:249) 25 Here, two ideal-typical human needs form the cornerstone of the

                                                                                                               22 The theoretical approach developed here has more similarities with the position Jessop took up before he incorporated the logic of the “cultural turn“ within his thinking (Jessop and Sum, 2006:166). 23 This subtitle was chosen in reference to Sayer (2011). 24 For a summery of notable exceptions of this trend – that can also be detected in Bhaskar’s writing (Nellhaus, 2004:112) – see O’Mahoney (2011). 25 Koivisto (2012) has already used Sayer’s “qualified ethical naturalism” to study normative state power. The existential lack, highlighted by Sayer, is also central for poststructuralist discourse theory that is influenced by psychoanalysis in the tradition of Jacque Lacan (O'Mahoney, 2012:730f.). The further question about the compatibility of critical realism and Lacanian psychoanalysis will not be addressed here. For an affirmative view from a practical and theoretical perspective, respectively, see Bryant and Mellard (1991:12); for a negative evaluation see Sayer (2011:140). But not only critical constructivists care about basic human drives. These can play a central role from a conventional constructivist perspective as well. See for example Lebow (2008).

  13  

theoretical considerations about the American-German security relationship: 1) the need for

physical security that is concerned with objective physical survival;26 2) the need for a stabile

and intersubjectively produced sense of identity that is generally called “ontological

security.”27 These two needs stand in a dialectic relationship in the sense of an “emergent

powers materialism.” Security has an objective as well as an intersubjective dimension and

although neither of them can be reduced to the other, a great part of the dynamic of social life

is based on its intersubjective facet.28

This relationship can be described by using the vocabulary of Hans Morgenthau, who also

talks about the need for physical self-preservation and the need for social self-assertion

(Rösch, 2013:352, Schuett, 2007:59ff.). Interestingly, the animus dominandi, i.e. the drive for

power, that is automatically associated with Morgenthau is not just concerned with physical

security (Solomon, 2012b:208). As Morgenthau (1946:165) noted himself, “[the animus

dominandi] concerns itself not with the individual’s survival but with his position among his

fellows once his survival has been secured.“ Exactly by making physical survival the basis of

the animus dominandi without reducing it to it, the never ending dynamic of social life

becomes clear. “This de-coupling of desire from survival unleashes the floodgates for desire“

(Solomon, 2012b:208).

But crucially, the lust for power, for Morgenthau, is only one facet of the striving for a stable

sense of self. He calls the second “love”, understood “as the reunion of two souls and bodies

which belong together or, in the Platonic mythology, once were united“ (Morgenthau,

1962:247). Here we can find the root of the dilemma of existential loneliness that man “is

born alone but is not content to remain alone, and is imperfect but carries within himself the

unattainable vision of perfection” (Mollov, 2002:51). Love here is not understood as romantic

or sexual love but as friendly love29 that is based on a common understanding of the world as

well as the rules that should govern it. Friendship thereby generates ontological security

(Berenskoetter, 2007:670, Berenskoetter and Giegerich, 2010:418-23).

Now love and power are closely connected (Solomon, 2012b:203) and, therefore, it is wrong

to assume a dichotomy of Mars and Venus (Kagan, 2004) according to which members of one

state-organized society strive for power and the members of another strive for love. Both

needs can be found in every society. “THE LUST for power is, as it were, the twin of                                                                                                                26 For a discussion of human needs that only considers this dimension from the perspective of critical realism see Assiter and Noonan (2007). 27 The usual understanding of ontological security in IR reduces ontological security to the knowledge about being. See for example Steele (2005:526). 28 For a similar argument see Sayer (2006:460). 29 See also Archer (2011) who puts love and friendship in the center of her thinking about the human condition. It has to be noted that that there exists no clear cut border between friendly and erotic love (Laurence, 1993).

  14  

despairing love. Power becomes a substitute for love. What man cannot achieve for any

length of time through love he tries to achieve through power: to fulfill himself, to make

himself whole by overcoming his loneliness, his isolation.” (Morgenthau, 1962:248, italics in

the original) This has already been acknowledged by IR scholars focusing on the level of

language, where humans try to satisfy their need for ontological security by using

“representation force“ (Bially Mattern, 2005) if they do not accomplish a stable sense of self

through friendly love.

The dilemma here is that love is always to some extent a frustrated love because it can never

result in a complete union of human beings. Humans always remain incomplete and their

desire for completeness can never come to an end. In the extreme, the drive for power, as a

reaction to frustrated love, turns to hate. “That fruitless search for love through power leads in

the most passionate of the seekers of power from a despair, impotent in the fullness of power,

to a hate, destructive of the objects of their successful power and frustrated love.”

(Morgenthau, 1962:250) This hate is usually expressed in form of antagonistic language

constructions between a good Self and an evil Other.30 Love and power as well as hate,

therefore, always belong together. “If the pursuit of love is the search for an (ultimately

illusory) whole subject, then ‘a type of hate’ is always simultaneously produced alongside

frustrated love. And hence, it is always found alongside power.” (Solomon, 2012b:215) That

is also the reason why cooperation in international relations is not the same as harmony and

always already bears the potential of conflict in it. “Cooperation is contrasted with discord;

but it is also distinguished from harmony. Cooperation as compared to harmony, requires

active attempts to adjust policies to meet the demands of others. That is, not only does it

depend on shared interests, but it emerges from a pattern of discord or potential discord.

Without discord, there would be no cooperation, only harmony.” (Keohane, 1984:12)

But the drive for power is not only the result of frustrated love but also necessary to keep

loving subjects together. “An irreducible element of power is requisite to make a stable

relationship of love, which without it would be nothing more than a succession of precarious

exaltations. Thus without power love cannot persist; but through power it is corrupted and

threatened with destruction.” (Morgenthau, 1962:249) Therefore, power has not only a dark

but also a positive and productive dimension.31 Just like a magnet, its force can either keep

                                                                                                               30 For the concept of antagonism see Torfing (1999:120-31) 31 For this productive dimension see Barnett and Duvall (2005:55-57).

  15  

things together but also tore them apart.32 This dialect relationship can also be described by

using Hans Morgenthau’s vocabulary of Pouvoir and Puissance: “Morgenthau understood

pouvoir as the ability to dominate others (as seen in the animus dominandi). For Morgenthau,

in times of nation-states, this was the prevailing form of power in human interaction, which is

why it is termed empirical power here, whereas puissance signified the intention to willfully

[sic!] act together to create a life-world in consideration of a common good (normative

power)” (Rösch, 2013:351, italics in the orignal).

The essential drives of human beings, summarized in figure 1, provide a second major jigsaw

peace to answer the questions about the shape of the American-German security relationship

and the causes of cooperation and conflict within it. It is not only due to structural

consideration that identity as well as the form and force of language to express it are more

than the self-referential play of signifiers and signifieds but also because of the drive for a

stable sense of self that is resident in the human body.33 Identity is therefore the never-ending

pulsation between a bodily inside and the outside world. “More precisely, the very tensions

between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ are mediated through affective pulsations of the struggle

over the desire for a sense of wholeness and the deployment of power necessary to maintain a

stable sense of self.” (Solomon, 2012b:210) But even if friendly love is the primary goal of

human identifications in the pursuit of a stable sense of self, negative identity constructions

between enemies serve this goal as well (Mitzen, 2006:353-61). It is therefore possible to

differentiate between two ideal types of identity constellations: a) between friends resulting in

a security community; b) between enemies resulting in a security dilemma (Wendt, 1995:73).

The identity of the American-German security relationship oscillates between those two

extremes. Although it is reasonable to see it now mostly in terms of positive identifications

(Hampton, 1999), some sort of negative identifications always remains.

figure 1: the drives of human nature

                                                                                                                 32 Adler and Barnett (1998:38-39) also use the metaphor of a magnet when talking about power. But they do only talk about the attracting dimension of power without thinking about its repulsing element. They call the latter “force” and unjustly dichotomize its relation to power (Bially Mattern, 2000:304-05). 33 The affective dimension of identity constructions is also highlighted by poststructuralist approaches guided by psychoanalysis. See for example Stavrakakis and Chrysoloras (2006:148ff.) and Solomon (2012a).

physical security

"ontological security"

love

power

hate

puissance

pouvoir

  16  

Which of the basic human drives prevails is not predetermined. This is not only the case

because of the openness of historical security structures but also because human actors

possess one key skill that was not highlighted yet explicitly but is important to complete the

puzzle of security relationships.34 Humans are able to critically reflect their condition and are

therefore at least partly free to make their own history. Consciousness has therefore of course

an important causal influence on social life. It is worthwhile to cite Roy Bhaskar (1998:601-

02, italics in the original) at length here: “To comprehend human agency as a causally and taxonomically irreducible mode of matter is not to posit a distinct substance ‘mind’ endowed with reasons for acting apart from the causal network, but to credit intentional embodied agency with distinct (emergent) causal powers from the biological matter out of which agents were formed, on which they are capable of reacting back […]. On such a synchronic emergent causal powers materialism, reasons (that are acted on) just are causes. Against dualism, we can say that it is in virtue of our complex biological constitution that human agents have the powers we do; while denying, against reductionism, that a power can be reduced to its material basis or condition of possibility any more than the acceleration of a car is the same as its engine.”35

By integrating human reflexivity, consciousness and intentionality in such a way, it not only

becomes clear why the social is an open and contingent system but also why freedom and

contingency are not unlimited. Only a balanced consideration of freedom and necessity is able

to guide social practices and a sustainable critique of them. “So freedom must be ‘in-gear’

rather than ‘out-of-gear’ freedom; it is not a matter of disengaging ourselves from the world

so that it gets no grip upon us – for by the same token, we would get no grip on it.“ (Collier,

1994:192-93)

4. Concluding Remarks with Brief Empirical Illustrations

The overall picture shows clearly that a textual discourse analysis might be an interesting

entry point to look at the dynamics in security relationships but that it has to be consolidated

with an critical realist ontology. To understand human meaning giving in a comprehensive

manner, we cannot stop at the (inter-)subjective level of reality. Even a textual analysis has to

take the “rich totality of many determinations and relations” (Marx, 1973:100) that are

summarized in figure 2 into account. In this paper I argued that human beings are confronted

with the dilemma of existential loneliness that results in the dialectic between love, power and

hate. Which of these drives prevails is not pre-determined but a result of the freedom and

reflexivity of human beings situated within historical security structures.

                                                                                                               34 This ability is necessarily connected to the already mentioned postulates of “judgmental rationalism.” 35 See also Nellhaus (2004).

  17  

ID

EAS

M

ATT

ER

ACTOR

HISTORICAL SECURITY STRUCTURE

Figure 2: rich totality of many determinations and relations in the formation of security identities

Of course the question arises why just five layers of security identities are considered to be

essential and not six, eight or even 100. It is true that this illustrations by no means captures

every strata of reality. But “[i]t is one thing to ask how many strata constitute reality – a

question that not even Bhaskar has sought an answer. It is, however, quite another to ask and

decide how many strata are needed in social theorizing. […] I do not deny that other levels

could be added to this […] model (or even levels within levels). Yet for the purpose at hand

[…] the […] levels serve us well.” (Carolan, 2005:410). Although it is not the aim of this

paper to defend this latter thesis in detail,36 I nevertheless want to briefly illustrate the main

points of the argument with empirical examples. In judging these, it should be remembered

that from the perspective of critical realism, the empirical is only one level of the social world

and that real causal mechanism can be in effect even if they cannot be proven empirically.

With these caveats in mind, a structural dilemma can be detected for the security structure

characterizing the German-American security relationship that cannot be reduced to

discursive constructions. This dilemma goes back to the immense asymmetry in material

relations. It is shaping both the institutional and ideational relations between the two state-

organized societies, what must be underexposed through a social constructivist lens. “[T]he                                                                                                                36 This would also require a methodological discussion about how to interpret texts and how to use different kind of data in this undertaking by means of a method triangulation. Because critical realism conceives reasons as causes and thereby suspends the dichotomy of explanation (Erklären) and understanding (Verstehen), it is well suited as a foundation of methodological pluralism and triangulation that also overrides the dichotomy between quantitative and qualitative methods. There is no obstacle, for example, for using quantitative data and methods from the perspective of critical realism (Olsen and Morgan, 2005) as long as they are seen “[a]s evidentiary rather than explanatory” (Porpora, 2001:262) tools.

Consciousness / Subjective Knowledge Intersubjective Knowledge

Human Nature Material Relations

Identity  

Security Institutions

Text

  18  

tensions between the United States and the EU [respectively Germany, tg] also have an

important material dimension encapsulated in the debate over burden-sharing. […] Shifts in

the relative distribution of capabilities within the alliance have led to a sense of

disappointment on the part of the United States with European contributions and perceptions

on the part of Europeans of not being taken seriously in matters of high political importance.”

(Meyer and Strickmann, 2011:74) In accordance with the central role of material resources

discussed above, the material relations between the United States and Germany can be

grasped on the level of the empirical by looking at the material distributions of the quantities

of material capabilities, as can be seen in figures 3-6. But also the quality of these capabilities

is of great importance, whereas technological developments play a central role (Deudney,

2000b:2f.). This qualitative dimension, in reference to Marx’s idea of the forces of

production, can be called negatively the “forces of destruction“ (Deudney, 2000a:88f.) or

positively the “forces of protection.“

A look at the differences in quantitative terms based on the National Material Capabilities

data set (v.4.0) offered by the Correlates of War Project (2010, Singer, 1972) shows that the

end of the Cold War did not end the hierarchical relationship between Germany and the

United States and that the Germany’s gain in autonomy in material terms after 1989/90 was

not overwhelming and only temporary.37 That is true from a systemic perspective Composite

Index of National Capability (CINC) (figure 3) but especially from a dyadic perspective

(figure 4).38 The latter view is also supported by data for military expenditure, as data from

the COW-dataset as well as from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

Military Expenditure Database (SIPRI, 2013) show (figure 5). After the end of bipolarity and

in the timeframe of interest here, the United States can be describes as the sole superpower

according to the simple logic 2-1=1 (Wohlforth, 1999:10), whereas Germany can only be

describes as a middle power with limited resources (Otte and Greve, 2000:7). The huge

difference in terms of quantitative capabilities is based on different budget priorities of the

two state-organized societies. A look the SIPRI-data shows that the United States, compared

to Germany, spends much more money for security and defense as a share of GDP (figure 5).

                                                                                                               37 For a similar conclusion albeit on the basis of different data see Baumann, Rittberger und Wagener (2001:63) as well as Otte und Greve (2000:60). 38 The CINC, “the most widely used measure of national power in the field of international relations“ (Kim, 2010:406), combines data for total population, urban population, iron and steel production, energy consumption, military personnel, and military expenditure. This “measure is generally computed by summing all observations on each of the 6 capability components for a given year, converting each state's absolute component to a share of the international system, and then averaging across the 6 components.” To calculate relative power in a dyadic perspective, I used the same logic to calculate the relative power of the United States within the American-German dyad. In both calculations the numbers can range from 0 to 1, whereas 0 indicates no power and 1 absolute power.

  19  

figure 3: material power of (West-)Germany and the United States in the international system

based on the COW-Data

figure 4: relative US material power in the American-German dyad based on the COW-Data

figure 5: military power of Germany and the United States in a dyadic perspective based on COW-

data (2010) and on SIPRI Military Expenditure Database (2013)

figure 6: US and German military expenditure as a share of GDP based on SIPRI Military

Expenditure Database (2013)

0  0,05  0,1  0,15  0,2  

1985  

1986  

1987  

1988  

1989  

1990  

1991  

1992  

1993  

1994  

1995  

1996  

1997  

1998  

1999  

2000  

2001  

2002  

2003  

2004  

2005  

2006  

2007  

Year  

CINC-­‐US  

CINC-­‐WestD  

CINC-­‐D  

0,76  0,77  0,78  0,79  0,8  0,81  

Year  

0,82  0,84  0,86  0,88  0,90  0,92  0,94  0,96  

ratio  of  U.S.  and  German  military  spending  (SIPRI)  

ratio  of  U.S.  and  German  military  spending  (COW)  

0,0  

2,0  

4,0  

6,0  

Percentage  

Year  

U.S.  military  expendire  as  a  share  of  GDP  

German  military  expendire  as  a  share  of  GDP  

  20  

But the “capability gap“ between the United States and Germany has not only a quantitative

but also a qualitative dimension. Beneath the mere quantities we can detect completely

different qualities in terms of power projection. An important factor here is the so-called

“Revolution in Military Affairs“ (RMA)39 (Cralley et al., 2000:S-1). The RMA has been the

driving factor behind the transformation of US military forces but has only recently gained

ground in Germany’s security policy (Franke, 2012:355). In contrast to the United States,

Germany since the end of the Cold War has not only reduced its military spending in absolute

terms. The greatest part of the reduction concerned investment in Research and Development

(R&D). “The Bundeswehr’s lack of resources […] is not the main problem with regard to the

transformation process, but rather it is the way the disposable money is spent.” (Franke,

2012:364). For Germany, at least in the time frame of interest here, we can still detect the

influence of the Cold War. “Cold War requirements produced complementary but quite

different force structures and capabilities within NATO. […] This division of labour dictated

alternative investments decisions in terms of nation R&D and procurement expenditures”

(Sperling, 2004:464), as can be seen in figure 7 for example for the year 1998. It is in the

realm of R&D, where the core of America’s hegemony in terms of material power projection

can be detected (Ikenberry et al., 2009:7f.)

  figure 7: composition of defense spending for 1998; based on Cralley; Dyke und Pagedas (2000:8)

                                                                                                               39 The RMA has three essential features: „First, expeditionary forces characterized by joint command structures. Second, a shift from weapons platforms to knowledge-empowered networked forces capable of exercising agility and precision in the application of attritional force (Network- Centric Warfare, NCW). Effects Based Operations (EBO) have taken centre-stage in conceptual development on NCW and formed, until 2006, the third key feature of US transformation.” (Dyson, 2011:245) The “backbone” of Network-Centric-Warfare (NCW) are C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Information, Surveillance, Reconnaissance) capabilities (James, 2006:229, Fn 4).

12   5   11   13  

38   56   41  27  

25  14  

19  

19  

25   25   29  41  

0%  

10%  

20%  

30%  

40%  

50%  

60%  

70%  

80%  

90%  

100%  

U.K.   Germany   France   U.S.  

Other  

Procurement  

Personal  

R&D  

  21  

The American hegemony in terms of quantitative and qualitative material capabilities is

reproduced on the intuitional level in NATO, that is “[t]he core of the Atlantic political order“

(Ikenberry, 2008:9) Here we can see a clear German dependence even after the end of the

Cold War. It is true that Germany after its unification gradually increased the number of its

military forces deployed abroad and thereby became “an exporter of security abroad, whereas

previously it had been an importer of security from the United States” (Zimmermann,

2005:129). But the argument that Germany therefore now has the same functions as the

United States in the realm of international security would go much too far. Although

Germany now functions as a security exporter, “[i]n the first years of the early twenty-first

century, Germany was still dependent on friends and allies that could deploy heavy force,

which in effect meant NATO forces, and in turn, de facto, the United States.” (Lungu,

2004:268) And the deployment of heavy force has to be seen within the parameters of the

transformation of the US military according to the RMA. Although the discussion about a gap

in terms of military capabilities and military spending has to be seen in the broader discussion

of burden-sharing that is as old as NATO itself (James, 2006:223), the RMA gives this

discussion a new dimension. “What’s new is that the US may now simply be pulling away,

due to a combination of strategic reorientation, accelerating leads in military technology,

sheer spending on defense, and transformational concepts. What’s new is not a capability gap

but a looming ‘transformation gap’ – a potential breach in strategic orientation, spending

priorities, conceptual and operational planning and training.” (Hamilton, 2004:7)

The effect of differences in material capabilities could already be detected in Operation Allied

Force in 1999, where the dilemma resulting from the capability gap came to the fore. “[T]he

substantial disparity in military capabilities has led to an American preference for relying on

ad hoc ‘coalitions of the willing’ that are prepared to operate under US control, rather than

work in the political-military framework of NATO. In NATO it would be constrained by the

need to forge consensus despite the fact that the alliance provides no substantive military

value-added.“ (Terriff, 2004:425). The dilemma here is that cooperation in the situation of a

large capability gap can lead to alienation between two partners. “If the U.S. chooses to

continue its practice of coalition operations, it faces the risk of further political alienation

from its closest allies and coalition partners as a result of the visible disparity of capabilities

displayed in such operations as Allied Force.” (Cralley, et al., 2000:S-2f.) But if the US

operates through coalitions of the willing, the friendship to its European allies suffers as well.

In sum, we can see clear tendencies of structural tensions on the material and institutional

level. These go hand in hand with differences in intersubjective knowledge structures on both

  22  

sides of the Atlantic, both in terms of perception of the threats the two societies face and the

means that should be deployed to deal with them. Whereas German discourse about terrorism

between 9/11 and the beginning of the Iraq war was mostly based on the idea of a “struggle”

(Kampf) against the “crime” of terrorism, American articulations went much further and used

the term “war”. And whereas German discourse favored a comprehensive approach within the

United Nations and NATO, the US pursued a mostly military approach combined with a

“multilateralism a la carte” within coalitions of the willing (Bjola and Kornprobst, 2007,

Katzenstein, 2003:732f., Nabers, 2006). We, therefore, see also signs of tensions between the

two societies on the ideational level. These different views go back much further than an

analysis based on the contingent articulations surrounding 9/11 would suggest and are not

reducible to intersubjective knowledge structures. They stand in an emergent relationship to

material resources and institutional settings.

But despite different general strategic orientations before and after 9/11, Germany and the

United States were able to achieve cooperation in the case of Afghanistan. The German

Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, based Germany’s support of the US military engagement in

Afghanistan on Germany’s “unlimited solidarity.” That term is interesting because solidarity,

“understood as an inclination to collective concern and action“ (Honohan, 2008:69), can be

understood as a lexical sign of friendly love. But although the German willingness to send

military forces to Afghanistan can be seen as an act of friendly love, friendship is “less about

solidarity by default and more about mutual learning, which entails sharing concerns,

listening, and the willingness on both sides to adapt.” (Berenskoetter, 2007:672) And the

German Chancellor was also very clear about that: “With every right – we know that – comes

a duty but the reverse is also true: With the alliance obligation that we have accepted

corresponds a right and that right is called information and consultation. We as Germans and

Europeans want to achieve an unlimited solidarity with the USA in all necessary means. I

emphasize: Germany is ready to take risks – also in the realm of the military – but not for

adventures.” (Schröder, 2001b)

The changes in material being that came together with the transformation from an importer to

en exporter of security also changed Germany’s self-consciousness and this had also an effect

on the American-German security relationship. “[T]he key change in German-American

relations (as well as EU-US relations) is the continuing shift from a relationship based on

acceptance of American leadership toward one of collaboration among equal partners.”

(Zimmermann, 2005:129, italics in the original). Accordingly, in Schröder’s articulation we

can see “a desire to not only be part of the West but also to define what ‘the West’ is”

  23  

(Forsberg, 2005:214-15). Here we can also see that love and power are never ever separate

but always come together. A longing for love is always combined with power, both because

love is always to some extent frustrated and because power is necessary to hold loving friends

together.

A sense of frustrated love on the German side was understandable because US Administration

did not reciprocate this German longing for love to achieve a stable sense of self. It did not

accept the offer of a coordinates strike against Afghanistan within NATO (Berenskoetter and

Giegerich, 2010:445). Instead the US pursued ontological security through the drive for

power and even a form of hate by antagonizing the terrorist threat as a source of “evil” and

the war against it as “a monumental struggle of good versus evil“. (Bush, 2001a) Here, evil,

as a strategy of extreme antagonism, “does not really involve conceptualising the Self as

situated in a relationship. Rather, ‘evil’ appears as a narcissist construct of the Self eager to

guard its true identity“ (Berenskoetter, 2007:258-59, fn 57) Every society according to the

binary logic of good and evil had a choice to make: “Either you are with us, or you are with

the terrorists.“ (Bush, 2001b) To guarantee compliance and US-American attractiveness the

US administration used “representational force” (Bially Mattern, 2005a:605-06.).

The German longing for love was answered with the American linguistic “gun.”40 The

problem was not just that the German approach to international security differed from its

American partner but also – or even more – that the US administration made no “active

attempts to adjust policies to meet the demands of others” (Keohane, 1984:12) on which

cooperation is based. Therefore, in the case of Iraq, “[t]he main issue at stake was not whether

or not to attack Iraq, but whether Washington would pay attention to what Berlin said”

(Forsberg, 2005:224). The fact that the United States did not listen, lead to frustrated love in

Germany. As public opinion polls since 2002 show, Germans felt that the United States did

not take the interests of Germany seriously (figure 8). It is therefore no surprise that the

percentage of Germans having favorable views of the United States and the mean feelings

towards the United States dropped in the course of the Iraq conflict (figure 9 and 10).

                                                                                                               40 This term is taken from Bially Mattern (2005b:97).

  24  

figure 8: US considers German Interests; based on PEW Research Global Attitudes Project’s

Global Indicators Database (2013).

figure 8: favorable views of the United States in Germany; based on PEW Research Global

Attitudes Project’s Global Indicators Database (2013) and PEW Research Global Attitudes (2003).41

The narrative gun, however, did not force Germany into a we-feeling with the United States.

“It did not help to fasten the security community. If anything, it made the diplomatic

skirmishes between Germany and the United States even worse.” (Bjola and Kornprobst,

2007:289) And it did not take long until we can find evidence for Germany using a linguistic

gun itself. After the Bush administration incorporated Iraq into the war on terror discourse as

part of an “axis of evil” without due information and consultation in the eyes of the German

administration, Germany pursued power politics – albeit in a weaker form – of its own, trying

to enforce its own narrative structure. Schröder tried to contain American foreign policy

within the institutional structure of the United Nations. He tried to define the Western and

therefore also American identity by arguing that the UN charter is based on a “prohibition of                                                                                                                41 It has to be noted that the percentage of favorable views of “Americans” in Germany, in contrast to the data for the “United States”, are not only higher but also show less fluctuation. The negative development in the timeframe of interest here, therefore, cannot be equated with Anti-Americanism. German public opinion “reflected dissatisfaction with the Bush administration and its policies, not anti-Americanism as such“ (Chiozza, 2009:282, Forsberg, 2005:222, Medick-Krakau, 2008:542). Nevertheless, it has to be remembered that the policies of a particular administration can only be understood within the context of a particular historical security structure.

0  

20  

40  

60  

80  

2002   2003   2004   2005   2007   2009   2010  

Percentage  

Year  

USA  considers  German  Interests  

 USA  does  not  consider  German  interests  

60  45  

25  38   42   37   30   31  

64   63   62  52   53  

0  10  20  30  40  50  60  70  

2002  

2003  

March  2003  

2004  

2005  

2006  

2007  

2008  

2009  

2010  

2011  

2012  

2013  

Percentage  

Year/Month  

Percentage  of  "very  favorable"  and  "somewhat  favorable"  responses  

  25  

the use of force” and that the United States have been “the driving power” behind the

establishment of this principle which essence “is to substitute the power of law for the law of

power” (Schröder, 2003, own translation)” Of course this was no innocent move because

Germany, together with other states such as France and Russia, used the UN to (soft-)balance

American power (Paul, 2005:64-70). Although Schröder made it clear that the American-

German relationship as such was not threatened, he also emphasized that Germany and United

States did not argue just about details in security policies but about the fundamental question

whether “there is only power that decides the things in the world or whether important

questions are decided by the international community.“ (Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung

(02/11/2003) cited in Link, 2004:390, own translation)

Of course, Germany itself wanted to play a greater part within that community according to

its new self-consciousness. But the way the German government tried to use the United

Nations Security Council during the transatlantic conflict over Iraq showed no signs of a

willingness to cooperate. Instead, the attempt to empower only the United Nations to make a

decision on Iraq without being bind by such a possible decision itself, illustrates the drive for

power perfectly. Out of frustrated love, Germany’s foreign policy damaged the relationship to

the United States even further because it answered the “arrogance of power“ of the United

States with an “arrogance of impotence“ (Krell, 2003). Schröder answered US-American

narcissism with its own form of self-love: “The existential questions of the German nations

are answered in Berlin and nowhere else.” (Schröder, 2002a, own translation)

In sum, the dilemma within the historical security structure caused by a great capability gap

also gave rise to frictions on the level of intersubjective ideas. Although the crisis became

evident on the level of intersubjective meaning structures, it can nevertheless not be reduced

to that level. As this article tried to show, cooperation and crisis can only be understood by

looking at the dynamic interplay between the drive for love and power as well as the ability

for critical reflection of human agents within a historical security structure. But although the

crisis cannot be reduced to the level of inter-(subjective) knowledge, it is on this level where

the crisis could have been prevented. With a due consideration of the dilemmas within the

American-German security relationship through critical reflection on both sides of the

Atlantic, self-regarding power politics could have been prevented for the purpose of friendly

love.

  26  

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