The political dynamics even of a parliamentary democracy don't necessarily yield the correct actions.
They even don't necessarily follow the people's will.
The German government's stance to Afghanistan is consistently against a majority of the Germans population, for example.

Granted, lots of governments thinking differently than me is a reason to question my stance.
A dozen influential German politicians who coin our foreign and defense policy standing against a 55-80% majority of their 82 million citizens is a reason to question their stance as well.
So I'm not really alone or part of a minority.

Back to the dynamics; the German military ops "out-of-area" (outside of NATO territory) have not benefited the nation visibly.
The appearance (and the speak) of our responsible politicians hints very much into the direction that they PLAY with the Bundeswehr, as an asset to use in foreign policy games just like we used money in earlier times.
Inf act, our military missions overseas have degraded our national security by adding foes and have cost a lot of money and military readiness.

And then there's the small detail that I assume to have a better general and military history knowledge than most if not all the top 20 politicians who define that policy (some of which were never in armed forces, none of them has officially studied history afaik - so they have no professional background superiority concerning this, just briefings).

Finally, some of our military missions overseas were ordered by Scharping, a douchebag who has been exposed to be a liar since then and who fell into deep disgrace. He's now denying doping troubles in the doping-infested national bicycle association that he leads now.


France has a history of small expeditions and many befriended African nations that depend on this kind of assistance to keep their defense expenditure bearable. They have the expeditionary capability and there's no real need to expand that imho.