Germany’s Staatsräson Has Become an Extra-Legal Doctrine

In attempting to redeem the past, Germany risks compromising the very liberal principles that post-war Germany was built to defend.

From moral responsibility to constitutional exception

Few countries have confronted their darkest chapter as profoundly as Germany. The Holocaust imposed a unique historical obligation that no serious observer disputes. Successive governments therefore made support for Israel a central pillar of German foreign policy, culminating in Angela Merkel’s declaration that Israel’s security forms part of Germany’s Staatsräson.

In geopolitical terms, Staatsräson (“reason of state”) denotes the doctrine that the preservation of the state’s fundamental interests and strategic identity takes precedence over ordinary political considerations. As Friedrich Meinecke argued in his classic study Die Idee der Staatsräson (1924), it is the principle that elevates certain national interests into enduring imperatives of statecraft. In Germany’s post-war context, the term has come to signify that safeguarding Israel’s security is regarded not merely as a policy preference but as a defining element of the Federal Republic’s political identity.

The problem is not the historical responsibility itself. The problem is that Germany has gradually transformed it into blind support for Israel, no matter how many war crimes Israel commits, genocide, neighbouring countries’ invasions, colonial apartheid, and blatant disrespect for international norms and law. This fact places Germany in a critical, complicit situation, as all these are explicit in Israel’s law apparatus or public declarations by its leaders (president, prime minister, and ministers). The export of arms to Israel by Germany enjoys priority within the export clearance bureaucracy.

Staatsräson is neither a constitutional provision nor a statutory norm. It appears nowhere in the Basic Law. Yet it is increasingly........

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