Global Courant
Germany has a national security strategy for the first time.
In it, the federal government explains how it intends to respond to external and internal threats.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock presented Germany’s long-awaited national security strategy on Wednesday. At the presentation they were accompanied by the Minister of Finance, Christian Lindner and the Minister of the Interior, Nancy Faeser. The drafting of the strategy is an attempt to avoid the mistakes of the past, which have put the government in front of difficulties.
Germany has had security guidance documents in the past, but no specific overall strategy.
Scholz and Baerbock: security architecture has changed
Chancellor Scholz noted that since his government had agreed to develop a strategy, Europe’s security architecture had changed dramatically. He cited the attack on Ukraine, the ongoing war and the destruction of critical infrastructure such as the Nord Stream gas pipelines as all giving new impetus to the implementation of the idea.
“I highlight all these events to make it clear how much the security environment for Germany has changed over the last eighteen months.”
“Despite all these changes, the essential duty of a state is still to ensure the safety of its citizens.”
Scholzi noted that while the old policy documents focused on defence, the new strategy would focus more on foreign policy.
Foreign Minister Baerbock acknowledged that it was clear that more emphasis needed to be placed on security since the attack on Ukraine.
“All of us had to learn, with Russia’s brutal war of aggression against Ukraine, that freedom and peace do not fall from the sky.”
Why was the document necessary?
Scholz’s tripartite coalition agreed to create a more comprehensive strategy in the Government Program of November 2021. But this idea gained momentum when Russia launched the war in Ukraine in February last year.
This war highlighted the shortcomings of the German military, the country’s over-reliance on Russia for energy, and issues related to the protection of critical infrastructure such as gas pipelines.
Critics say Germany has been too complacent in the face of new global threats, with authoritarian states like China and Russia increasingly asserting themselves.
The document is the result of months of gathering opinions from experts and non-professionals at the district, state and national levels. The process was led by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, led by the Greens.
Content elements
It is a comprehensive study of the environment of foreign policy and security, under the concept of “integrated security”. In this term, the social democratic member of the Bundestag Johannes Arlt explained to DW, “security includes many things: from education policy and health policy to environmental, food and financial policy”.
The document emphasizes friendship with France, partnership with the USA and integration into the EU and NATO, as well as loyalty to the principles of the UN, several German media reported.
Germany will also be better prepared to protect critical infrastructure, e.g. from China, diversifying suppliers. To better arm itself against disinformation and other forms of foreign influence in the future, the government is improving Constitution Protection, the National Intelligence Service and Military Counterintelligence. The national security strategy will strengthen the capacities to detect, analyze and combat these threats and to further develop the means to respond to them. “This also includes strengthening the analytical capabilities of our intelligence services,” the document states.
A specific strategy to combat disinformation is also planned. Among other things, it is about “expanding the instruments for the early detection of manipulative communication in the information space”.
The coalition initially agreed to finish drafting the strategy during its first year in office, but disagreements between parties and ministries delayed the process.
New structures are not introduced with the security strategy. The German conservative parties, the CDU in the last year of government and now recently the FDP, a member of Germany’s tripartite government coalition, put forward the idea of setting up a National Security Council. But this idea was abandoned, for fear that it would disrupt the power between the chancellery and the ministries.
The presentation of the document was postponed several times
This policy document, which touches almost all policy areas, was to be presented at the Munich Security Conference in mid-February. Other announcements about the announcement were also ignored; most recently, the announcement was scheduled for late May.
“Perhaps the government and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, responsible for the development of the strategy, should not have put themselves under such great time pressure from the beginning. After all, it is a complex process with many participants,” explained Antonia Witt from the Peace and Conflict Research Foundation, PRIF./DW
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