No, the lack of balls is a political issue. It's not really an officer corps issue. The politicians moved some game chips to AFG, they are not really at war. Why should our soldiers risk much? There's nothing to be gained.


The intensity of the experience has rather led to the acknowledgement that you better avoid wars. Seeing how your "allies" planned to nuke our country (your part and the other part of it) in many major exercises was certainly influential, too. At one point in the 80's the German representatives did quit a NATO exercise and our soldiers did afaik quit it, too. The Americans were playing genocide against Germany in that NATO exercise.


Overall, there's little if anything to net gain in war, but much to lose.
To rest planning and concepts on recurring war means thus to plan for recurring catastrophic failure of your national security policy and that's strictly unacceptable.

If there's anything specific German in this, it's that we don't do small wars as much as great ones. With us, it's usually the big deal. We fought the Thirty Years War, the Seven Years War, the army-annihilating wars of the Napoleonic Age, the army-annihilating wars of German unification wars and both world wars. During WW3 we would have become the 137k sq mile Chernobyl.
We don't pay attention to the marginal profits to be had from warfare such as oil contracts or junior officer experiences. War means to use mass destruction - even without so-called WMDs.
Being on the "winning" side doesn't improve it - we know both sides, and neither is a good idea.


Don't fight a war if it's not the least terrible alternative. Period.

To repeatedly manoeuvre your country into a position where organised mass killing and mass destruction is the least terrible alternative means that your manoeuvring would be terrible. In fact, doing so once already disqualifies the whole political establishment of the country.