Horst Köhler was never a man to actively seek the limelight. Nevertheless, in the spring of 2010, he dominated the headlines across Germany for weeks. At that time he was Germany's president, the largely ceremonial head of state. He had given an interview in which he commented on the role of the Bundeswehr, the country's armed forces.

Referring to Germany, the then 67-year-old said "a country of our size which is orientated toward foreign trade and therefore heavily reliant on it, must also know that in case of doubt, in an emergency, military interventions could also be necessary to uphold our interests, for example secure trade routes."

This statement, it quickly became apparent, was a mistake. Attempting to justify the controversial military deployment to Afghanistan with securing trade routes unleashed criticism across party lines. "Ambiguous," "a presidential misstep," "extreme positions" and "highly dangerous" were only a few of the reactions in Berlin political circles.

It didn't help the scolded Köhler that he only a little later announced that his statement was not in reference to the Afghanistan operation, but to a Bundeswehr engagement against piracy — and that his statements were consistent with a Bundeswehr White Paper published by the government in 2006, so they had been official government policy for........

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