NEWS ANALYSIS : Bonn Is Giant in Chains at NATO Parley : Europe: Economically troubled Germany is struggling to define its global role. Constitutional curbs on troops abroad are another shackle.

In the uncertain thaw that has followed the end of the Cold War, the summit of the Western military alliance that begins here today carries a special meaning for one of its 16 members--Germany.

The collapse of the Soviet Union, the disappearance of its Communist empire during the last four years and the reunification of Germany have all combined to transform the Old World’s political realities. Yet amid this sweeping change, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization remains the fundamental reference point for German security policy.

The ravings of neo-fascist Russian political figure Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, who last week suggested that a nuclear attack was the appropriate response to Germany’s refusal to issue him a visa, have only underscored the fact that post-Cold War Europe remains anything but safe.

Many believed that these tensions, coupled with Bonn’s role as NATO’s richest and militarily strongest European member, would quickly elevate a united, fully sovereign Germany to a kind of “first among equals” status along with the United States in the task of shaping the alliance’s future.

It hasn’t happened.

Still struggling to define its role in the world and preoccupied by domestic ills, Germany has failed to fill the leadership vacuum within the alliance that began to develop as a result of the Clinton Administration’s initial focus on Asia and the Middle East.

Indeed, the failure of Germany to become a beacon of vision and change in the new Europe is seen by many as a key reason the alliance finds itself searching so desperately for direction.

“NATO was once greater than the sum of its parts, but it’s fast dissolving into 16 sovereign interests,” said a respected German government security specialist who requested anonymity. “We’re drifting on the high seas.”

In part, the reason for Germany’s lack of influence lies in the disputed interpretation of its post-World War II constitution, which for decades has tightly limited the country’s military role to actions within the territory of Atlantic Alliance countries.

The failure to clarify or reinterpret this provision isolated Germany from other NATO allies during the 1991 Persian Gulf War and has left the Federal Constitutional Court, not Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s government, with the power to decide security matters.

It was the court that decided whether German military forces could be deployed to Somalia as part of a U.N. peacekeeping operation and whether German crew members could stay aboard NATO electronic surveillance aircraft deployed to enforce the U.N.-imposed “no-fly” zone over Bosnia-Herzegovina. (Citing political rather than legal grounds, the court ruled in favor of both deployments.)

And while French and British troops provide the backbone of U.N. peacekeeping forces in Bosnia, both the constitutional question and a bitter history in the region preclude any German military involvement there.

As a result, Germany remains a political dwarf on security issues central to its existence.

No one country, for example, is more eager to extend NATO’s membership and its security guarantees eastward than Germany--the nation on the eastern frontier of the alliance.

“The entire political architecture of Europe hangs on this question,” declared Karl Lamers, a member of the German Parliament and the chief foreign affairs spokesman for Kohl’s Christian Democrats. “We have to see this open flank and close it.”

Despite this perceived urgency, Germany has found itself having to embrace the Clinton Administration’s “Partnership for Peace” proposal, which goes only so far as to hold out the prospect of future membership for former Warsaw Pact nations such as Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

“We’re not being taken seriously,” the German government security specialist said.

The hesitation to amend or reinterpret the constitution reflects an allergy among a cross-section of Germans to military action of any kind--an aversion developed by hammering post-World War II generations about the horrors of their nation’s earlier aggressions.

Sending the troops off to fight--even in an honorable cause--would win few political points today.

Yet fearing that continued German reluctance to play an active role in European and global security matters could isolate Bonn further from its main alliance allies, Kohl has consistently pushed for greater involvement.

However, faced with an uphill reelection campaign later this year and saddled with a weak Cabinet, Kohl’s chances of enhancing Germany’s influence in the short term seem severely limited.

While Germany’s role remains less than full-sized within the alliance, Bonn is expected to play a significant part in helping formulate the West’s efforts to support reformist forces within Russia and its former European empire.

In addition to Germany’s role as the major donor of Western assistance to Moscow, Kohl has managed to forge strong personal links with Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin.

He will emphasize those ties and his own position as one of Europe’s senior leaders to press Germany’s view of how to support reform in the former Soviet Bloc when he meets with President Clinton in Washington later this month.