Germany: "New" security strategy - a constant state of war
01 July 2007
On 2 July 2007 Chancellor, Angela Merkel (CDU), presented her government coalition's interior security programme. One paragraph of the 94 page-long party programme calls for the abolition of the separation of external security (military) and internal security (policing), thereby paving the way for the deployment of armed forces internally. Interior Minister, Wolfgang Schõuble (CDU), trumped this demand with the announcement that he wants to change the constitution to allow for the targeted killing of terrorists and introduce emergency and war provisions as regular features of the rule of law. He is convinced that "the differentiation between international law at times of peace and international law in times of war no longer fits with the new threats", as Schõuble put it at the fourth
Handelsblatt Conference "Security Policy and the Defence Industry" on 3 July. The Conference brought together "leading figures" from politics, the armed forces, trade associations and industry "to create an event that is rich in substance, where the views being exchanged are able to transcend conventional boundaries".
The CDU's party programme was published on 7 May this year, but the "new" security strategy it contained was promoted by chancellor Merkel on 2 July, in the immediate aftermath of the failed bomb attacks in London and Glasgow which triggered renewed security debates across the EU. The relevant paragraph indicating the fundamental policy shift towards deploying Germany's armed forces internally as well as pushing for the normalisation of emergency provisions curtailing "out-dated" democratic liberties, appears on page 76 of the document. Point 288 in the section on "Freedom and security in a constitutional state" outlines the shift as follows:
Through these new challenges [i.e. international terrorism and organised crime], interior security has gained a global dimension. Instruments and organs of internal and external security have to be interlocked. In a national security strategy, cooperation between the Federal State, Regional States and local authorities has to be improved. Part of such a plan, for the strengthening of Homeland Security, is the Federal Army. In special threat scenarios, [the army's] deployment inland has to be [made] possible. The armed forces should be able to apply its special abilities in dealing with terrorist threats and with catastrophes within defined remits, complementing the Federal and Regional police forces.
Note the use of the term "Homeland Security" (Heimatschutz), which was introduced in the CDU's "security plan" in a position paper on 31 March, entitled
National Defence and Homeland Security as part of the general security concept. At the presentation of the party programme, Merkel claimed one had to "think in totally new frameworks" as terrorism is threatening "our way of life". "Only if we also apply this new way of thinking, freedom and security will remain in balance in face of this new threat", she said. The demand to do away with the separation of war law and the rule of law was made at the same time by Jörg Zierke, the president of the German Crime Police Authority (
Bundeskriminalamt), on the occasion of the tenth European Police Congress in February this year: "The separation of internal and external security is obsolete", Zierke declared.
Social Democratic party whip Kurt Beck on the other hand urged that "we should not protect freedom to death". Schõuble's proposals to enshrine in law the possibility of shooting dead "terrorists" or allowing for their detention in Germany in Guantanamo-type gulags, especially if they "cannot be deported", received much criticism. Schõuble has repeatedly called for unrestricted police and secret service powers but the proposal for targeted killings has led to demands for his resignation by the Left Party (
Die Linke) and also the Green Party's chair, Claudia Roth. She said in a televised interview that "T