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Fair enough you're right.
I guess what I was driving at is that politically, Germany has less pressure to enter conflicts.
If you think about the flack France gets, internationally everyone is a lot more sensitive in relation to Germany and there isn't the same domestic* pressure.
*or from the little I know there doesn't appear to be the same domestic pressure.
hugo7-
I guess what I was driving at is that politically, Germany has less pressure to enter conflicts.
It's not only about pressure. Germany has very restrictive constitutional (well, it doesn't have a constitution, but that's a different story) provisions against entering conflict. There has been a slippery slope in which this has been changed since the 1990s, but it's still substantially in place.
If you think about the flack France gets, internationally everyone is a lot more sensitive in relation to Germany and there isn't the same domestic pressure.
There is obviously the historical background. However, there has been quite a lot of pressure placed on Germany in the recent past because its defence spending is relatively lower than that of other NATO countries.
What the map on page 4 doesn't show is that Germany has the largest population of any country in Europe, at about 80 million, and is apparently now accepting up to a million Syrian refugees.
I don't know much about Italy, but it is interesting that it appears to have a similar level of spending to Germany. Perhaps this is likewise quite low because of its history of alliance with Nazi Germany.
Oliver Schick
Germany is sending warplanes to fly reconnaissance missions.
It's the third major military conflict in which Germany has become involved since the traditional non-involvement doctrine was broken in the 90s over Kosovo. They then became involved in Afghanistan, which was a shrewd move as it meant they could afford not to get involved in Iraq.