Volker Rühe | |
|---|---|
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| Federal Minister of Defence | |
| In office 1 April 1992 – 26 October 1998 | |
| Chancellor | Helmut Kohl |
| Preceded by | Gerhard Stoltenberg |
| Succeeded by | Rudolf Scharping |
| General Secretary of theChristian Democratic Union | |
| In office 11 September 1989 – 27 October 1992 | |
| Leader | Helmut Kohl |
| Preceded by | Heiner Geißler |
| Succeeded by | Peter Hintze |
| Member of theBundestag forHamburg | |
| In office 14 December 1976 – 18 October 2005 | |
| Constituency | Party List Proportional Representation |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1942-09-25)25 September 1942 (age 83) |
| Political party | Christian Democratic Union (1963–present) |
| Alma mater | University of Hamburg |
| Occupation | Teacher |
Volker Rühe (born 25 September 1942) is a German politician of theChristian Democratic Union (CDU). He served asGermanDefence minister from 1 April 1992, succeedingGerhard Stoltenberg during the firstgovernment of areunified Germany in the fourthcabinet ofChancellorKohl, to the end of the fifthKohl Cabinet on 27 October 1998. During his time at the Defence Ministry Rühe played a central role in placingNATO enlargement on the German political agenda.[1] He unsuccessfully ran for the office ofminister-president of the German stateSchleswig-Holstein in the year 2000, eventually losing against incumbentHeide Simonis.
From 1976 to 2005 Rühe was a member of the GermanBundestag. After the Christian Democrats returned to power in 1982, he joined theCDU/CSU parliamentary group's leadership under its new chairmanAlfred Dregger.
Under the leadership of CDU chairman and Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Rühe held the position of Secretary General of his party from 1989 until 1992, including during the period ofGerman reunification.[2] In this capacity, he succeededHeiner Geissler and was put in charge of administrative matters and electoral tactics.[3] At a party convention in late 1992, the CDU surprisingly replaced Rühe with Heinz Eggert, a representative from East Germany, as one of Kohl's four deputies.[4]
As Germany's longest-serving defense minister, Rühe oversaw the country's integration of the former East German army, expanded Germany's role within NATO and was an early proponent of NATO's expansion eastward. He also proposed more spending on defense[5] and won public backing as well as cross-party support for a Bundeswehr role in international peacekeeping, thus overcoming a German aversion to the use of force—in any circumstances—prevalent after 1945.[6]
During his time in office, German military forces were engaged in numerous UN-linked operations outside the NATO region, including 1,700 soldiers inSomalia (logistic support); 122 inCambodia (medical unit); two ships with combined crews totaling 420 people in theAdriatic Sea (air-navy patrol); 60 inBosnia-Herzegovina (relief flights), and 40 inIraq (UN monitoring staff).[7]
Rühe frequently expressed frustration with restrictions on German troops joining international peacekeeping missions, and faced public criticism of the increasing deployment of German military forces abroad. In 1992, the SPD (unsuccessfully) filed a legal challenge in theFederal Constitutional Court, arguing that the deployment of German forces in the Adriatic violated their constitutional limits on their use.[8] Later, Rühe had to inform the German public in October 1993 about the death of Sgt. Alexander Arndt, a 26-year-old army medic; Arndt had become the first German soldier to die on duty in an area of tension sinceWorld War II after he was shot by an unknown assailant in Cambodia.[9]
Under Rühe's leadership, Germany began destroying stockpiles of tanks and other heavy weapons in August 1992, becoming the first country to implement theTreaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe.[10] After failing narrowly to stop theEurofighter Typhoon project when he took office in 1992, Rühe negotiated down the number of aircraft the air force ordered, as well as the cost of each.[11] In 1993, he canceled plans to buy Lapas, a $1 billion American-designed high-altitude reconnaissance system, after it was revealed that the system's German subcontractor was at the center of a political scandal about reported bribery of Bavarian Minister-PresidentMax Streibl.[12]
In 1997, Rühe suspended a lieutenant general and instituted disciplinary action against a colonel after it was revealed thatManfred Roeder, a neo-Nazi with a criminal record of bombings, had been invited to give a speech to the country's most prestigious military academy in 1995.[13]
Between 1998 and 2000, Rühe served as the chairman of the Committee onForeign Affairs.
By 2000, Rühe was considered a potential opponent ofAngela Merkel for the CDU leadership; however, he eventually dropped out of the race.[14]
In 2004, Rühe from the opposition was named by the government ofChancellorGerhard Schröder to lead Germany's campaign for a permanent seat on theUnited Nations Security Council.[15][16] That same year, Schröder sent Rühe to Moscow for talks withPresidentVladimir Putin on theOrange Revolution.[17] Between 2014 and 2015, he headed a crossparty committee to review the country's parliamentary rules on military deployments.[18]
Domestically, Rühe was an outspoken advocate of tighter immigration laws.[24]
In 2000, as part of the search for a new chair of the CDU, Rühe led an effort to stop frontrunnerAngela Merkel that included overtures toKurt Biedenkopf to serve as an interim leader.[25] Ahead of the party'sleadership election in 2018, Biedenkopf publicly endorsedFriedrich Merz to succeed Merkel as chair.[26][27]
In 1985, Rühe strongly urged that Europe's four major powers – France, Britain, Italy and West Germany – formulate a common European position on theReagan Administration'sStrategic Defense Initiative.[28]
In 1995, Rühe withdrew an invitation for his Moscow counterpart,Pavel Grachev, to visit Germany after Grachev insulted leading critics of the war inChechnya. At the time, this was regarded as throwing into question German-Russian military cooperation on European security issues following the country's reunification.[29] During theGrozny ballistic missile attack in 1999, Rühe called for freezing Western loans to Russia.[30]
In 2010, Rühe wrotean open letter explaining the strategy of including Russia into NATO to counter balance asian powers.
In 2013, Rühe appeared alongsideRussianPresidentVladimir Putin andFrançois Fillon[31] at theValdai Discussion Club. He was quoted byNeue Presse expressing sympathy for Putin and arguing for an intensivedialogue between theGerman government and "the Kremlin" on the subject of theAmerican proposed "missile defensesystem". "We are talking as ifIran already hadnuclear weapons... we can't continue withdeterrence, like duringthe Cold War." In 2015, he joined other foreign policy experts, includingIgor Ivanov andAna Palacio, in calling for a possible Memorandum of Understanding between NATO and the Russian Federation on the Rules of Behaviour for the Safety of Air and Maritime Encounters between the two sides.[32][33]
In a 2019 interview, Rühe blamed his successorKarl-Theodor zu Guttenberg for "having destroyed theBundeswehr".[34]
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| Preceded by | Federal Minister of Defence (Germany) 1992 – 1998 | Succeeded by |
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