The ontological security of special relationships: the case of Germany’s relations with Israel

Abstract

This article suggests studying special relationships in international politics from an ontological security perspective. It argues that conceptualising the partners to special relationships as ontological security seekers provides a promising theoretical angle to address gaps in our understanding of three important dimensions of such relations: their emergence and stability; the processes and practices of maintaining them; and the power relations within special relations. The article illustrates its theoretical argument in a case study on the German-Israeli relationship. The close partnership between the two countries that has developed since the Holocaust ranks as one of the most remarkable examples of special relationships in the international arena. We argue that foregrounding the ontological security that the special relationship provides, in particular for Germany, sheds important new light on how German-Israeli relations have developed. Specifically, we hold that Germany’s ontological security needs were already an important driver in establishing the relationship and have been a key stabiliser of it ever since; that the ontological security perspective can make sense of three interrelated practices of maintaining the ‘specialness’ of the relationship; and that the asymmetries between the ontological security needs of the two partners help account for Israel’s political leverage in the relationship.

Soft Power Revisited: What Attraction Is in International Relations

“…Indeed, while the US-Israeli special relationship is mainly based on the instrumental benefits both sides receive from it (Bar-Siman-Tov 1998), Germany's 69 As defined by Oppermann and Hansel (2016: 4), a special relationship is "exclusive and relatively durable bilateral relations between states in the international system which are based on mutual expectations of preferential treatment and which are recognised by its members and by outsiders as being qualitatively distinct from other interstate relations in international politics." special relationship with Israel is primarily grounded in morality, in the country's perception of historical responsibility towards Jews for the Holocaust (Oppermann and Hansel 2016, see also Chapter 6 in this thesis), Serbia's special relationship with Russia mostly rests on a sense of identification and an attendant affective attachment.…”

“…It is also no coincidence that criticism of Israel in Germany rises in times of military conflicts in which Israel sends its troops outside its borders. This was the case in the 1967 Six-Day War, the 1982 Israeli intervention in Lebanon (Oppermann & Hansel 2016: 14), Israel's suppression of the Second Intifada in early 2000s (Gardner Feldman 2012: 166) and the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War, when Germans were more critical of Israel than Brits and Americans (Belkin 2007: 8). Consistent with this argument is also the fact that in the 1990s, after the demise of the communist system in Central and Eastern Europe, German historians and societal actors started to widely use new available data to extend their focus from solely Jews towards a broader range of the Nazi regime's victims, particularly those residing in those countries (Langenbacher 2010: 48).…”

Conflict, Peace, and Ontological Security

“…Accordingly, special relationships between states are also driven primarily by ontological security rather than material benefits. One case in point is the German-Israeli special relationship after the World War Two, characterized by the former's responsibility for the latter's security due to its role in the Holocaust (Oppermann and Hansel 2019). Moreover, Israel has managed over the years to exploit the German guilt by negotiating favorable deals, including the ones on reparations and arms sales, despite Germany's more significant economic and political clout (Ibid: 87).…”

International Theory and German Foreign Policy: Introduction to a Special Issue

“…A range of authors analyse German foreign policy through insights grounded in political science and policy studies, including cognitive and psychological approaches (Heiduk 2014;Mader and Pötzschke 2014), the Advocacy Coalition Framework (Schröer 2014), or theories of opportunity structures and non-state actors (Wochnik 2014). Yet others bring in rich insights based on conceptual interrogations of identity (Urrestarazu 2015), intersectionality (Yoder 2011), power (Fix 2018), trust (Brugger 2019), leadership (Siddi 2018), ontological security (Berenskoetter and Giegerich 2010;Karp 2018;Oppermann and Hansel 2019) or uneven and combined development (Germann 2018).…”