Stay wary, Germany

This turbulent summer has turned some tables in the West as well as the Middle East. While Germany's Greens speak approvingly of weapons shipments to the Kurdish peshmerga fighters, Barack Obama last week used words that could have come out of the mouth of a German opposition leader: "There is no American military solution to the larger crisis in Iraq." He told the "New York Times" that the US had no intention of being the Iraqi air force or the Kurdish air force, but would continue to press "a commitment of the people on the ground to get their act together and do what's necessary politically."

Meanwhile, debate rages in Berlin about the merits of military solutions - at least partial ones - made in Germany. A day after categorically rejecting arms deliveries to a conflict zone, the government said Tuesday that it is considering dispatching non-lethal military aid to help Iraq push back against the IS forces. Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said that Germany could possibly send equipment such as armored vehicles, helmets, night-vision equipment, booby-trap detectors and medical supplies. Even Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier signaled a willingness to pave the way for German weapons shipments, saying that given the dramatic humanitarian situation, "I am ready to go to the limits of what is politically and legally feasible."

Germany's foreign policy pivot

It is a surprising turn to a debate initiated at the Munich Security Conference in early February, when von der Leyen and Steinmeier joined German President Joachim Gauck in calling for Germany to take a more active role on the world stage. President Gauck upped the rhetoric in June, saying that goal would sometimes require committing military as well as diplomatic resources. His remarks met with harsh criticism from left-leaning politicians. And polls show a majority of Germans would be perfectly content to preserve the country's longstanding approach of economic ambition combined with diplomatic and military restraint.

But this summer of hot conflict in Ukraine and across the Middle East has called into question an assumption at the root of much of Germany's post-1989 foreign policy. It was an American professor who propagated "the end of history," but it is Germans - and particularly the country's broader public - who have clung to the notion that the fall of the Berlin Wall signified a linear trend toward a world in which violence is an irrational aberration and conflict resolution a humanitarian rather than strategic or military challenge.

Maybe that is why the word "genocide" comes up so frequently in the current discussion on arms shipments. Rhetoric emphasizing dire humanitarian crises may make military solutions more palatable to a skeptical public, but it does not make them more effective. No region illustrates the potential for "blowback" more potently than the Middle East, where arms often wind up in the hands of parties pursuing aims at counter-purposes to those of the weapons' initial providers. Gifts of non-lethal supplies free up resources that can be used to secure deadly equipment. If Berlin continues to support an inclusive Iraq within the country's existing borders, it should be wary of sending any form of military support to a group that makes no secret of its hope for an independent Kurdish state.

The gentle arms exporter

Weapons exports do not constitute foreign policy, nor do they add up to the sort of strategic responsibility that President Gauck had in mind. If they did, his appeal would scarcely have provoked controversy, for here Germany has long been punching above its weight: it is the third largest arms exporter in the world, just behind the US and Russia. Gauck warned that cases of aggression could arise in which Germans might be required not to sell or donate arms but to take them up. As unpopular as the prospect may be, that discussion is certain to continue - at the latest when a NATO summit this fall addresses discrepancies in members' military spending.

For now, though, it would be regrettable if Germany's uncharacteristic focus on the military end of the spectrum were to prompt heedless action or to obscure how much has already happened at the diplomatic end. The past few months have witnessed a fairly effective division of labor: while the US bears the predominant burden in the Middle East, Germany has played a preeminent role closer to home, in tireless diplomacy aimed at preventing the conflict in Ukraine from escalating into a full fledged war between that country and Russia. That is no small contribution in the hot summer of 2014.

Melinda Crane is DW's chief political correspondent and has hosted the English editions of the television talk shows "Quadriga" and "People & Politics."