BERLIN — In an indication of Germany’s growing role on the world stage, the country’s top politicians on Sunday approved the delivery of thousands of machine guns and hand grenades, as well as hundreds of antitank missiles, to Kurdish forces battling Islamic militants in Iraq.
Scarred by its militarism and two resounding defeats in the 20th century, Germany once shied away from conflict zones and limited its involvement to deliveries of humanitarian aid. But, although Chancellor Angela Merkel has yet to articulate a clear policy on intervention, she and her top ministers have dominated efforts to ease the Ukraine crisis. And on Sunday, they moved to approve the weapons for the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
A solid majority in Parliament backs sending weapons, while opinion polls indicate that up to two-thirds of Germans — weaned on decades of pacifism — oppose the move.
Ms. Merkel, fresh from a European summit meeting in Brussels at which Russia was given a week to pull back in Ukraine or face more sanctions, met senior ministers from both parties in her grand coalition government, and consulted with the leader of the Bavarian sister party to her Christian Democrats about sending the weapons to Iraq.
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Parliament is to debate and vote on the weapons deliveries on Monday, but officials said the government had the authority to act in this case without the parliamentary authorization that is required to deploy German troops outside NATO borders.
The weapons are expected to go straight to Kurdish security forces, and delivery will occur only with the approval of the Iraqi government in Baghdad, according to German officials.
The move was the latest sign that Germany, long an economic powerhouse, is playing an increasing role in global security crises.
It has acted strongly before, under Ms. Merkel’s predecessors, most notably deploying German forces as peacekeepers in the Balkans in the 1990s, and backing NATO’s bombing campaign to drive Serbian forces from Kosovo in 1999. Germany has also been part of the international forces in Afghanistan deployed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.
But in 2011, under Ms. Merkel, it stayed out of the campaign against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya, even abstaining on a key United Nations vote. Germany has also remained one of the NATO members whose military spending is well below the 2 percent of gross domestic product sought by the alliance.
But in January, President Joachim Gauck delivered a speech calling on Germans to step out of the shadows of their Nazi and Communist pasts and act more decisively, with military force if necessary.
Mr. Gauck, whose office carries moral authority but no actual political power, received swift backing from the foreign and defense ministers. Often reluctant to weigh in decisively in crucial debates, Ms. Merkel has so far declined — and did so again just last week — to define her exact position.
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She has not, however, hesitated to plunge into diplomacy over Ukraine, conducting dozens of phone calls with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and repeatedly ruling out a military solution to the crisis.
She conceded on Saturday in Brussels that sanctions had so far failed to defuse the conflict, which has claimed well over 2,000 lives. Over the past week, she said, “the situation has escalated greatly,” as it became “quite clear that Russian weapons and also Russian troops are active in Ukraine.”
“If this situation continues or continues to sharpen, there will be discussion of new sanctions,” she said.
In the coming week, NATO leaders will gather in Wales and are expected to agree on new moves to curb the perceived threat from Russia — particularly to neighboring, ex-Soviet bloc countries now in the Atlantic alliance.
The newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, citing a confidential document and unnamed German officials, said Sunday that Germany would contribute some 150 troops to new planning and strategy offices to be established in Poland, Romania and the three Baltic nations.
Like other European officials, Germany’s chiefs of intelligence and senior ministers have also sounded an increasingly uncompromising tone toward ISIS, clearly alarmed by its fast-rising influence. Hans-Georg Maassen, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, noted Sunday that the very brutality of ISIS was drawing young German Muslim recruits.
“The Islamic States is, so to say, the ‘in’ thing — much more attractive than the Nusra Front,” the Qaeda affiliate in Syria, Mr. Maassen told Deutschlandfunk public radio. “What attracts people is the intense brutality, the radicalism and rigor. That suggests to them that this is a more authentic organization.”
“Al Qaeda fades beside the Islamic State when it comes to brutality,” he said, estimating that at least five recruits from Germany had carried out suicide attacks in Iraq or Syria. His agency estimates that more than 400 people have traveled from Germany to join ISIS.
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