Germany’s Strategic Partnerships

Felix Heiduk, a research scholar from the Asia Division at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, has published a new article. His piece What Is In a Name? Germany’s Strategic Partnerships with Asia’s Rising Powers appeared in the current issue (volume 13 issue 2) of the Asia Europe Journal. Looking specifically at intergovernmental relations forged between Berlin, Beijing and New Delhi, this article evaluates the nature of the German government’s so-called ‘strategic partnerships’ based upon both material and ideational factors. Heiduk finds that while economic ties have steadily increased, in other sectors, many of these partnerships are asymmetric and lacking substance due to the “perception of China and India as juniors, or even inferiors, in a number of other policy fields.” Yet in spite of this imbalance, Heiduk concludes that the Sino-German and Indo-German partnerships are consistent with “Berlin’s self-attribution as an ‘Exportnation,’” and that for the time being, economics, rather than “idealist notions of common values” will “be the ties that bind.”

The full article is available here.

Photo courtesy of Olli Henze via Flickr Creative Commons