Word: bundeswehr
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...newspaper praised the Defense Minister for his honesty, but posed the question: "What does war mean?" War is a tricky subject in Germany. According to the Defense Ministry, German soldiers are forbidden to engage in a "war of aggression" under the German constitution. Each foreign mission that includes the Bundeswehr - the German parliamentary army - is thus governed by a Bundestag mandate. In the case of Afghanistan, "proportional" military force can be used but German soldiers must adhere to NATO's rules of engagement. (See the top 10 news stories...
...switched office last month following Germany's elections, initially claimed that only "Taliban terrorists" had been killed. But on Sept. 7 he conceded that there may have been some civilian casualties. (The number of civilians killed is now estimated to be up to 40.) According to Bild, however, the Bundeswehr (as Germany's Federal Defense Force is called) leadership and the ministry had known of civilian victims early on. Those reports were withheld from prosecutors, and also, apparently, from Jung's successor as defense minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. (See pictures of the battle in Afghanistan's Kunar Province...
...That's easier said than done. The legacy of Germany's Nazi past has led to military limits being written into the country's constitution. Germany was demilitarized after World War II ended in 1945, and the process of remilitarization has only developed over time. The Bundeswehr was formed in 1955, when West Germany joined NATO, but the constitution held that the role of Germany's armed forces would be strictly defensive. Initially, the German army's main job was to work with its NATO allies to prevent any attack that might come from Warsaw Pact members...
...Since the 1990s, after reunification, German forces have become more involved in military missions abroad, but there are caveats. The German parliament has to give the green light for any foreign deployment, which it usually does only after long debate. There are currently 247,000 soldiers enrolled in the Bundeswehr and German troops are now serving all over the world, in places such as Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia and Lebanon...
...some say the Bundeswehr, which is a conscript army, is too bureaucratic and ill-equipped to deal with the modern-day challenges of combat. "Germany's armed forces are often overstretched. There are too many bases in Germany, too many personnel and the equipment is often old-fashioned," says Riecke of the German Council on Foreign Relations. "There is long-overdue reform under way to make the Bundeswehr leaner. It should be easier to deploy forces quickly abroad," he adds, referring to far-reaching plans to modernize the army's equipment and scale back troop numbers...