Just a few days ago, German defense minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg presented five different reform proposals to restructure the country’s armed forces. Declining defense budgets coupled with increasing expeditionary demands on Bundeswehr forces around the world underline the case for fundamental reform of an institution which, in the minister’s own words, is “still breathing the air of the Cold War.” In essence, the proposed reforms center on two core issues: First, at the quantitative level, how many active soldiers should the Bundeswehr have in the future? And second, at the qualitative level, what should be the armed forces’ composition in terms of professional soldiers, volunteer personnel, as well as drafted conscripts?
Today, the Bundeswehr has about 247,000 active duty soldiers – 187,000 are either professional soldiers or “temporary” volunteers (the former are life-long members of the armed forces while the latter serve only between two and 15 years); the remaining 60,000 troops are conscripts who usually serve nine months. Minister zu Guttenberg’s preferred reform proposal (“model 4”) would cut the Bundeswehr’s overall strength to 165,000 soldiers, including 7,500 “volunteers” who would serve between 6 and 23 months. Importantly, zu Guttenberg would also like to suspend the draft, which was introduced in 1956 and later enshrined in Germany’s Basic Law, by mid-2011.
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