Germany’s role in the Indo-Pacific remains contested domestically: Critics argue that Berlin lacks the military capabilities to influence the regional balance of power, while proponents call for a more visible German presence to deepen the European footprint in the region. Both positions, however, overlook an alternative model of burden-sharing. Germany need not become a Pacific power to contribute meaningfully to Indo-Pacific security. Instead, it can enhance the capabilities of trusted regional partners such as Australia whose security directly underpins the liberal international order.
Three models of burden-sharing in security and defence can be distinguished: (1) power projection consists of sending one’s own forces abroad to produce or maintain security and stability; (2) capability enhancement implies strengthening regional partners and their own contributions to regional and global security; (3) functional or geographic specialisation means defending another theatre, thus freeing up allies‘ capabilities to deploy elsewhere. This paper argues that Germany should combine options (2) and (3) in the Indo-Pacific, enhancing Australia’s regional power while focusing on NATO’s eastern flank as the more urgent security challenge for Germany and Europe.
This paper conceptualizes this approach as strategic solidarity: It differs from classical alliance solidarity because it is not measured by the direct projection of military power but by the contribution a state makes to strengthening the collective strategic position of its partners. As described here, strategic solidarity would build on the shared discursive foundations of international order (Homolar/Turner 2024) and go beyond durable strategic alignment, military cooperation and common security interests (Shim 2006) to include a conscious state-induced and industry-led leveraging of military technological and defence industrial cooperation.
The reason for this partnership model is that Germany’s real strength lies not in projecting military power over great distances, but rather in projecting technological capacity, industrial expertise, institutionalized partnerships, and long-term strategic commitment. Here, strategic solidarity is more than solidarity between like-minded states (Rieck 2022), it is the deliberate combination of complementary capabilities to strengthen the collective strategic position of the Western alliance. Germany should pursue it as a grand strategy in which a state’s own security is pursued primarily by deliberately increasing the political, military, economic, and institutional capabilities of allies and partners.
About the Author
Dr Christian E. Rieck
Associate Professor of War Studies, Universität Potsdam
Christian E. Rieck is an Associate Professor of War Studies at the University of Potsdam where he teaches at the intersection of international relations, armed conflict and contemporary history. He is also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Global Governance Institute in Brussels. In 2025 he was a Visiting Fellow at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.
