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Role Expectations And State Socialization: Germany's Rediscovery Of The Use Of Force 1990–1995, Thorsten Spehn

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation engages the question of why German political elites accepted the use of force during the 1990s and started to commit the country's armed forces to multilateral peacekeeping missions. Previous governments of the Federal Republic had opposed foreign deployment of the military and Germany was characterized by a unique strategic culture in which the efficacy of military force was widely regarded as negative. The rediscovery of the use of force constituted a significant reorientation of German security policy with potentially profound implications for international relations.

I use social role theory to explain Germany's security policy reorientation. I argue that …