Military ethics and popular culture: An analysis of movies about military missions of the German Bundeswehr
Florence Ertel (formerly Reiter) and Daniel Göler from the University of Passau presented results of their research at the EuroISME Conference 2022 in Budapest on 19 May 2022. The analysis focuses on the portrayal of military ethics in popular culture using the example of the German and US armed forces. In the context of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, the role of the German Bundeswehr in German society and present military ethics become increasingly controversial topics among citizens and popular media alike. Therefore, the question of the potential importance that cultural framing entails for foreign and security policy decisions arises. The construction of collective memory regarding jarring events such as Russia’s warfare against Ukraine has long-lasting effects on the nation state’s perceptions of EU-EEU/Russia relations and therefore heavily influences the potential for either further conflict and competition or future convergence and cooperation.
The analysis is based on an US-American and a German movie on military missions and their individual framing regarding foreign and security policy are then compared to each other. The strategic culture approach provides the theoretical basis for this, through which the importance of investigations of popular media for International Relations (IR) research is highlighted. Central questions that are evaluated in the scope of the paper regard the justified goals for the use of military means as well as degree of heroization of own victims of military. It becomes apparent, how essential cultural framing via popular media is for the comprehension of differing foreign and security policies between the nation states, as cultural artefacts such as movies contribute to the social construction of reality through their representation of political life.