Biography
Moritz Brake is an officer in the German Navy and PhD candidate at the Department of War Studies Department, King’s College London. He is also auditeur of the French Institut des Hautes Études de Défense National (IHEDN), member of the Deutsches Maritimes Institut (DMI) and Corbett Centre for Maritime Policy Studies (UK) and holds a Master’s degree in War Studies from King’s College London and an engineering degree in Nautical Sciences from the Jade University’s nautical department in Elsfleth, Germany. In addition to seagoing service on merchant vessels and warships, he served on the UN-mission UNIFIL (Eastern Mediterranean, Lebanon, 2007) and the EU-counter-piracy-mission ATALANTA off the Horn of Africa (2010 & 2011).
In his present role as Youth Information Officer in Cologne, he is part of the Federal German government’s obligation to engage in citizenship education in public. Adhering to strict political neutrality, this educational mission encompasses presentations, seminars, work-shops and public debates on issues of security and defense policy.
As a visiting lecturer, Moritz Brake teaches a course on ‘Maritime Security and Strategy’ at the University of Bonn, Germany.
Find out more about Moritz Brake’s work as an author at the Deutsches Maritimes Kompetenz Netzwerk.
Thesis Title
German Naval Diplomacy in the 21st Century
Abstract
Navies are important tools of Foreign Policy – in the 21st century as much as before. Their strategic environment, operational challenges, modes of employment, technology, demographics and socio-cultural framework may have changed substantially in the decades since the Cold War, but their utility to the states that build and maintain them persists – if proven by nothing else than the considerable resources the latter continue to invest in the former. Judging by capabilities, operational range, level of technology and training, as well as the history of deployment in the past three decades since the end of the Cold War, the German Navy is not a ‘token navy’. Indeed, it has been of valuable utility to Germany and its foreign policy goals over the past thirty years.
Germany arguably has developed its own characteristic way of conducting foreign policy in the post-war Federal Republic. More than many other international actors, it has subscribed to the liberal rules-based international order and renounces – even opposes – ‘power politics’ Machtpolitik, especially when conducted with military force. How does this affect the use of its navy as a tool of foreign policy? Does this lead to a specific way Germany conducts naval diplomacy? And if so, is this part of a wider global trend towards a new way of thinking and practising naval diplomacy?
Research Interests
Naval Diplomacy, Maritime Security and Strategy
Supervisors
Dr Marcus Faulkner and Dr Rachel Kerr