The Bundeswehr of today is characterised by its ongoing missions. The missions carried out by the Bundeswehr span a wide geographic arc from the Balkans to Africa and all the way to Afghanistan. The fact that over 8,000 German soldiers are deployed on missions in foreign theatres of operation is evidence of how important our Armed Forces have become in the preservation of peace and security worldwide. There is hardly another area of politics where the evolution of Germany over the past few years can be better demonstrated than in foreign and security policy. Comprehensive interministerial efforts on the basis of a common understanding of security are necessary. The Federal Government has acknowledged this fact and issued pertinent action directives in the ‘White Paper on Germany’s Security Policy and the Future of the Bundeswehr’ (Weißbuch 2006) in the form of the concept of networked security. This concept is based, firstly, on the consideration that, today, security is no longer influenced solely by military factors: social, economic, ecological and cultural conditions play just as big a role. Secondly, it takes into account the realisation that security can be guaranteed neither at a national level nor by armed forces alone.

Globalisation

Operations in foreign countries highlight a development that is characteristic of the security-political environment of the twenty-first century. Today, security policy can no longer be defined solely in geographic terms. The process of globalisation has a particularly formative influence on our modern world. It encompasses nearly all nations and societies worldwide. It involves an increasing networking of international flows of trade, investments, travel, communication and knowledge. This offers many societies better opportunities to take part in the modern world. The importance of geographic distance is steadily diminishing. Globalisation continually accelerates and facilitates the exchange of ideas and technologies. A consequence of these developments is an ever-increasing mutual dependency among societies worldwide.

At the same time, however, this development is not without risks. A result of ever-larger interdependence is that regional and sectorial developments can have a detrimental effect on our security to which little attention was paid in the former mind-set on security, when it was defined primarily in geographical and military terms. The growing importance of non-governmental players, international terrorism and organised crime are examples of the heightened danger posed by difficult-to-pinpoint threats which exist right in the middle of civil societies and which can be countered neither separately nor by military means alone.