Germany, Japan and the Return of Military Power (Part II)
The End of the Post-Cold War Dream
Editor’s Note: This article is the second instalment in a three-part series examining how Germany and Japan—the two former Axis powers that embraced constitutional restraint after World War II—are responding to a rapidly changing global security environment. As geopolitical tensions rise and long-standing assumptions about peace and deterrence are challenged, both nations are reassessing the foundations of their postwar security policies. Click here to read Part I.]
For much of the three decades following the collapse of the Soviet Union, it appeared that one of the great questions of modern politics had finally been settled.
The Cold War was over. Liberal democracy seemed triumphant. Globalisation was transforming economies and societies at a pace never seen before. International institutions were expanding, trade was flourishing, and old political divisions appeared to be dissolving.
To many policymakers in Europe, North America and parts of Asia, the lesson seemed obvious. Economic interdependence, international cooperation and democratic governance had fundamentally altered the logic of international politics. Major wars between advanced industrial nations appeared increasingly unlikely. Markets seemed more important than armies. Trade seemed more powerful than tanks.
No countries embraced this vision more enthusiastically than Germany and Japan.
Both had emerged from World War II as defeated powers. Both had rebuilt themselves under the protection of the United States. Both had become economic giants while keeping military power in the background. Their success appeared to validate a revolutionary idea: that nations could achieve prosperity, security and international influence without relying heavily on military strength.
In Germany, this belief evolved into something close to a national doctrine. Successive governments invested heavily in economic engagement with Russia. The concept became known as Wandel durch Handel—change through trade. The idea was simple and appealing. Countries that traded together would become more interconnected, more predictable and ultimately more peaceful.
The same optimism shaped attitudes toward China. As commerce expanded and supply chains deepened, many Western leaders assumed that geopolitical rivalries would gradually soften. Economic integration was expected to encourage political moderation and reduce the incentives for confrontation.
The future, it seemed, belonged not to military alliances but to economic networks.
For a time, the assumption appeared justified.
Germany prospered. Japan prospered. Europe appeared more united than ever. The European Union expanded eastward. NATO welcomed new members from the former communist bloc. Former adversaries were increasingly connected through trade, investment and diplomacy.
Yet beneath the optimism, doubts persisted.
The Critics Who Warned of Trouble Ahead
Among the most prominent sceptics was George Kennan, one of the architects of America’s Cold War strategy.
Kennan had spent much of his career analysing Soviet behaviour and helping shape the policy of containment. Yet when NATO began expanding eastward after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he expressed deep concern.
In 1997, Kennan famously described NATO enlargement as a “fateful error.” He feared that extending the alliance toward Russia’s borders would provoke resentment, strengthen nationalist forces inside Russia and undermine prospects for a stable European security order.
At the time, many regarded such warnings as unnecessarily pessimistic.
Russia was economically weak, politically unstable and widely viewed as a declining power. The Soviet Union had disappeared. The Warsaw Pact no longer existed. Few policymakers believed that Moscow could seriously challenge the emerging Western-led order.
Kennan was not alone. Former diplomats, military officials and scholars on both sides of the Atlantic raised similar concerns. Their argument was not necessarily pro-Russian. Rather, it reflected a traditional understanding of geopolitics: major powers rarely remain indifferent when rival military alliances move steadily closer to their borders.
Supporters of NATO expansion saw the matter differently.
Countries in Central and Eastern Europe had experienced Soviet domination firsthand. Their desire to join NATO was driven by fears rooted in history. Membership represented security, sovereignty and a return to Europe.
To deny them entry, many argued, would effectively give Moscow a veto over the choices of independent states.
The disagreement would become one of the defining strategic debates of the post-Cold War era.
For years, however, it remained largely academic.
Then Ukraine moved to the centre of world politics.
Ukraine and the Fault Line of Europe
Few countries occupied a more sensitive position in the emerging European order than Ukraine.
Geographically, it stood between Russia and the European Union. Historically, it occupied a central place in Russian identity and strategic thinking. Politically, it became increasingly divided between competing visions of its future.
After gaining independence in 1991, Ukraine sought closer relations with Europe while maintaining complex ties with Russia. Over time, however, those paths increasingly diverged.
The Orange Revolution in 2004 and the Maidan uprising in 2014 accelerated Ukraine’s movement toward the West. Russia responded with the annexation of Crimea and support for separatist forces in eastern Ukraine.
What had once been a geopolitical debate became an active conflict.
The issue of NATO membership moved steadily toward the centre of the dispute.
For many Ukrainians, joining NATO appeared to offer protection against future Russian pressure.
For Moscow, the prospect was viewed as a direct challenge to Russian security.
For NATO, the alliance’s “open door” policy reflected the principle that sovereign states should be free to choose their own security arrangements.
These positions proved extraordinarily difficult to reconcile.
The debate intensified further in 2019, when Ukraine amended its constitution to commit itself to eventual membership in both NATO and the European Union. Supporters regarded the move as an affirmation of national sovereignty. Critics argued that it narrowed the space for compromise and deepened geopolitical confrontation.
The disagreement extended far beyond Ukraine itself.
It increasingly shaped debates in Germany, where memories of Ostpolitik and Cold War diplomacy remained influential.
Klaus von Dohnanyi and Germany’s Uncomfortable Debate
Among the most prominent voices questioning Western policy was Klaus von Dohnanyi, the veteran Social Democrat and former mayor of Hamburg.
Dohnanyi belongs to a generation shaped by Willy Brandt’s policy of engagement with the Soviet Union. Long before Russia’s full-scale invasion, he warned that Western leaders were underestimating the importance of Russian security concerns.
In his view, the crisis surrounding Ukraine could not be understood solely through the lens of Russian aggression. He argued that policymakers in Washington, Brussels and Berlin had failed to appreciate how Moscow viewed NATO’s gradual movement eastward.
Dohnanyi advocated exploring arrangements that would preserve Ukraine’s independence while removing NATO membership from the equation. A neutral Ukraine, he suggested, might have served as a bridge between Russia and the West rather than becoming the focal point of a geopolitical confrontation.
His arguments remain deeply controversial.
Critics contend that such reasoning effectively grants Russia a veto over the choices of neighbouring states and overlooks Moscow’s own record in Georgia, Crimea and eastern Ukraine. They argue that Ukraine, like any sovereign nation, has the right to determine its own future.
Supporters counter that recognising another country’s security concerns is not the same as endorsing its actions. They argue that sustainable diplomacy requires understanding how rival powers perceive threats, whether those perceptions are considered justified or not.
The debate remains unresolved.
But its significance extends beyond questions of historical responsibility.
It reveals how profoundly Germany’s assumptions about security have been challenged.
For many Germans, the war represents proof that military power remains central to international politics.
For others, it demonstrates the consequences of a failed security architecture that ignored legitimate concerns on all sides.
Both interpretations continue to shape public discussion.
Zeitenwende: Germany’s Strategic Awakening
When Russian forces crossed into Ukraine in February 2022, decades of assumptions collapsed almost overnight.
The belief that economic interdependence would prevent major war in Europe suddenly seemed naïve.
The expectation that Russia could gradually be integrated into a cooperative European security framework lay in ruins.
The idea that military power had become secondary to economic influence no longer appeared convincing.
Within days, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced what would become one of the defining phrases of contemporary German politics: Zeitenwende—a turning point.
The word captured a broader realisation that Germany’s post-Cold War worldview required fundamental revision.
The government established a €100 billion special fund to modernise the Bundeswehr. Defence spending increased. Long-standing restrictions and taboos surrounding military policy were reconsidered.
The significance of the decision extended far beyond budgets and procurement plans.
Germany was rethinking its identity.
For decades, it had seen itself primarily as a civilian power. Diplomacy, economic engagement and multilateral cooperation formed the core of its international role.
The Zeitenwende suggested that this era had ended.
Military readiness was once again becoming a central responsibility of the state.
For many Germans, the shift felt uncomfortable. It challenged assumptions that had shaped political culture for generations.
Yet few events have transformed German strategic thinking more profoundly since reunification.
Japan Watches—and Draws Its Own Conclusions
While Europe grappled with the consequences of the war in Ukraine, policymakers in Tokyo were watching closely.
For Japan, the conflict was never merely a European issue.
It was a warning.
If borders could still be challenged through force in Europe, what did that imply for Asia?
If a major power was willing to risk war to reshape its strategic environment, could similar scenarios emerge around Taiwan, the East China Sea or the Korean Peninsula?
The questions were impossible to ignore.
Japan already faced a rapidly changing security landscape. China’s military modernisation was accelerating. North Korea continued to develop missile and nuclear capabilities. Regional tensions were becoming more pronounced.
The war in Ukraine reinforced a growing sense that the international environment was entering a more dangerous phase.
The result was Japan’s own strategic awakening.
Defence budgets increased. Long-range counter-strike capabilities moved from theoretical discussions into policy planning. Concepts such as deterrence, resilience and military preparedness gained new prominence.
For many Japanese policymakers, Ukraine underscored a lesson that Germans were also beginning to absorb: peace could no longer be taken for granted.
It had to be defended.
The parallels between Germany and Japan became increasingly striking.
Both countries had built postwar identities around restraint.
Both had relied heavily on American security guarantees.
Both had prospered under a relatively stable international order.
And both now found themselves confronting a world in which that stability appeared increasingly fragile.
From Strategy to Memory
What once seemed theoretical had become urgent.
In both Berlin and Tokyo, questions that had long belonged to academic seminars were suddenly matters of national strategy.
Yet behind the debates over missiles, budgets and alliances lay a deeper struggle—not over power, but over memory.
This version is more human and magazine-like, with smoother transitions, stronger narrative flow, and integrated subheadings that guide the reader naturally from post-Cold War optimism to Ukraine, Dohnanyi, Zeitenwende, and Japan’s awakening, ending with a bridge into the next section on memory, protests, and identity.
About the author: Ramesh Jaura is affiliated with ACUNS, the Academic Council of the United Nations, and an accomplished journalist with sixty years of professional experience as a freelancer, head of Inter Press Service, and founder-editor of IDN-InDepthNews. His expertise is grounded in extensive field reporting and comprehensive coverage of international conferences and events. Subscribe for free or pay and stay updated. Buy SKYWARD HAVEN – A Speculative Novel.