Understanding Germany’s Use of the Navy in Foreign Policy

Tracing and understanding the shift in how Germany evolved in seeing the utility of its navy by analysing the practice of its post-Cold War deployments is at the heart of this study’s contribution to research on navies more generally. This chapter covers the theoretical side of this process, the evolution of the debate and the ideas that define it. This also lays the groundwork for the subsequent work of the chapters that deal with the operational practice that was influenced by and in turn came to influence the ideas presented here.