The Bundeswehr Usage in the Struggle against ISIS - A Part of Western Coalition?

• Main Author: Philipp Olegovich Trunov
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University) 2018-12-01
• Series: Vestnik RUDN International Relations
• Subjects: Germany; international terrorism; Western coalition; Iraq; Syria; Afghanistan; Africa
• Online Access: http://journals.rudn.ru/international-relations/article/viewFile/20325/16525

In the middle - second half of 2010s the Euro-Atlantic community faces with the necessity to struggle against international terrorism at the huge arc of unstable states including Mali, Libya, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Unlike the first Western coalition (2001-2014) designed to fight al-Qaeda, focused on the struggle against ISIS the second Western coalition does not become the unifying mechanism of a significant part of anti-terrorist military efforts by Western countries. The article covers the reasons of this tendency on the example of Germany as the emerging power. The key methods of the investigation are the exploration of the important military steps (contingents’ deployment, the change of their tasks and the number of troops) in the format of event-analysis and comparative analysis. The paper aims at exploration of the features of military tools’ usage by Germany in the struggle against international terrorism in conjunction with the activity of the second Western coalition. The article considers the reasons of the late German joining the activity of the second coalition at the Syrian and Iraqi theatres of war. In this regard the scientific research covers the main forms of mostly non-military Bundeswehr usage in Mesopotamia and focuses on the cooperation with France. The article also explores the determination of these tendencies. The paper pays attention to German military build-up under NATO activity in Afghanistan and shows that the reasons of it are the strengthening ISIS positions in the country and the failures of Germany and its ISAF partners in the process of Afghan security forces creation in 2002-2014. The scientific research explores the forms of Bundeswehr usage for the struggle against international terrorism at the phone of extension of the areas of this activity at the continent. The author tries to create the scheme of Bundeswehr usage for the struggle against ISIS and its friendly oriented forces at the arc of unstable states from Mali to Afghanistan. The article concludes about the contours of German perspective military presence in the countries which are going on the road of internal stabilization.