Formen- und Funktionswandel der Bundeswehr in der deutschen Sicherheitsarchitektur seit 1990

Abstract This special issue offers an insight into a research project at the Bundeswehr Center for Military History and Social Sciences on the history of the German armed forces after 1990. The articles presented here approach this history of the Bundeswehr in the »era of foreign deployments« (» Ära der Auslandseinsätze «) from different perspectives. However, the starting point is no longer the foreign deployment itself. Instead, the project aims to shed light on the political conditions and determining factors of military missions abroad. Thus, the foreign mission no longer emerges as a quasi-objective and static ontological entity, but rather as a field of action characterized by dynamic change. This already applies to the perspective-bound and time-varying definition of deployment. At least at the beginning of the 1990s, however, the competence to plan and order foreign missions was also controversial. Although the German military was subject to the primacy of politics with regard to decisions on deployments, it nevertheless had room for maneuver that had an impact on the political sphere. The aim of this special issue is to shed light on German politics.