Every comment coming out of the German Foreign and Defense Ministries in recent days has played up the idea of increased military engagement abroad as a matter of course. Asking the public apparently never entered into the equation.
If they had asked, however, they’d have found out the same thing a YouGov/DPA poll released today did, that the German public is overwhelmingly opposed to increasing the nation’s military involvement abroad.
The poll showed the country split roughly down the middle on whether the current level of intervention is “too much,” opposition for increases above the current level of 5,000 troops abroad, and a strong majority believing Germany is better off settling conflicts diplomatically instead of with military force.
German officials have bashed the current system as a “policy of restraint” that must come to an end, pushing in particular for major military interventions into Central Africa to help neighboring France, who has already hurled itself into that particular quagmire.
The Obama Administration has repeatedly pushed German into being more aggressive abroad, since they are one of the only NATO member nations that can really afford escalated interventionism during the current budget crises, and US officials see any increases in NATO military spending as necessarily a good thing, no matter how the wars play out.
