Germany adopts a more muscular security plan. Critics call it “weak.”
Haunted by its responsibility for World War II and the tyranny of the Nazis, Germany embraced the pursuit of peace with the fervor of a convert. But on Wednesday, the government took a major step toward shedding that legacy as war once again transforms the European continent.
For the first time since the end of the world war, the government has unveiled a comprehensive document national security strategy intended to address Germany’s vulnerability to new military, economic and geopolitical threats, including climate change.
With the war in Ukraine in its 16th month, Chancellor Olaf Scholz hailed the security plan as “a big, big change in the way we handle security issues.” The goal, he said, is to combine foreign, domestic and economic priorities and increase spending on the military.
But the document may not be all the chancellor had in mind when he took office in December 2021 with a pledge to rethink the national security strategy. Mr Scholz’s tri-party coalition has been hampered by increasing public bickering that both delayed the new plan and left it vulnerable to criticism that it was too watered down.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine, which came months after the German government came to power, has only reinforced the sense of urgency that it can no longer cling to the self-imposed taboo on military power it has had for three-quarters of a century.
While the document received relatively positive reviews from analysts as an explanation of how far Germany has come in changing its strategic culture since the invasion, they questioned whether the ministries of a rival coalition government will follow through on the document’s ambitions or money will stick behind.
A pledge made in February by Mr Scholz – to meet the NATO spending target of 2% of GDP next year and maintain that spending – has been capped, with a pledge to meet that target as an average over a multi-year period.
At the same time, the coalition rejected a request from Defense Minister Boris Pistorius to increase its own budget by 10 billion euros (about $10.8 billion) to get a decent start on rebuilding the German military. Instead, he promised his budget will not be cut — meaning it will be eroded by inflation.
China has been such a contentious issue that the coalition has shelved it, and it will be addressed in a separate paper due next month.
And after fierce arguments about the establishment of a German National Security Council, the parties abandoned the idea.
“It’s hard to be ambitious with so many chefs,” says Ulrich Speck, a German analyst. The vagueness in the document about how Germany plans to deliver on its ambitions is deliberate, he suggested, a way for Mr Scholz, a Social Democrat, to keep the chancellery free to act on the big questions of foreign policy and not to be relinquished to the Foreign Office and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, a Green.
In general, the strategy focuses on three pillars of German security. First, there is an active, “robust” defense, including a new strategic culture, high military spending commitments, including meeting the NATO spending target, at least as part of the multi-annual average, and a concentration on deterrence, not disarmament.
Second is resilience: the ability of Germany and its allies to protect their values, reduce economic dependence on rivals, deter and defeat cyber-attacks, and defend the United Nations Charter and the rule of law.
Third is sustainability, a pillar that includes things like climate change and the energy and food crisis.
“Calling it a status quo document sounds unfair, but it does try to take stock of where we are now, and it is already an achievement to say how far Germany has come,” said Claudia Major, head of the International Security Division at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.
Strategies should be progressive and link resources and goals, she said. “But to some extent this strategy is incapable of doing that because it is not linked to clear budgetary implications,” she said. “Ambitions are nice to have, but without the resources they are hard to judge.”
Christian Lindner, the country’s finance minister and head of the Free Democrats, acknowledged on Wednesday that any new commitments proposed in the strategy — particularly the 2 percent defense spending — would require new funding, but he could not provide forecasts on costs.
Germany has always considered its national interests safe within the NATO alliance, the European Union and its relationship with Washington. So it has never before felt the need to map out its own security strategy.
But that changed with the complicated US presidency of Donald J. Trump, who spoke at various times about leaving NATO and accused Germany of being a free rider and not spending enough on its own defense.
The drafting of a strategy was an important part of the agreement between Mr Scholz’s social democrats and their two coalition partners, the Greens and the Free Democrats. But the Russian invasion in February 2022, just a few months after the coalition took office, generated new urgency, attention and controversy.
Norbert Röttgen, an opposition legislator from the Christian Democratic Union and a foreign policy expert, was sharply critical of the document, which he called “the lowest common denominator” of a divided coalition government, “a description of the undisputed part of the status quo’ and ‘essentially without strategy’.
There are no answers to important questions, he said. He noted the postponement of a China strategy until next month because it has been so controversial, while the current paper simply echoes the European language received about China and never mentions the word Taiwan.
“What is the German idea of a European security order after the war?” he asked. “What about NATO membership for Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova? Not a word,” he said. One of the main challenges for Germany is “the reduction of our trade and investment in China and vice versa, which requires an economic growth strategy to compensate,” he said.
But the links between foreign and economic and technology policy are also left out, he said.
Daniela Schwarzer, foreign policy analyst and member of the board of directors of the Bertelsmann Foundation, said the strategy paper was an important “next step” for Germany. Although it is disappointing for many, “it is as ambitious as it gets for this coalition,” she said.
It’s thinnest to pay for new targets with a static budget, she said, but it shows that “Germany is more serious about defending itself, even if it hopes not to spend more, which of course won’t work.”
But it also includes major cybersecurity goals, sharpens language somewhat about China’s nature as a troubling partner when needed, and “is a call to action” for government ministries and industry.
For Anna Sauerbrey, Die Zeit’s foreign editor, the newspaper was “slightly disappointing” but tried to “provide a holistic view of security that combines foreign and domestic issues, but which must be filled in by tangible policies.”
She noted a new commitment to EU enlargement for Ukraine and Moldova, beyond the Western Balkans, but said the main weakness was “no commitment to increase budget spending”.
Mr Speck, the analyst, said the document broadly described the issues, “but what is particularly lacking are clearly defined goals and priorities to decide where resources should be deployed.” It helps different parts of the government to jointly gain insight into the major goals.
But ultimately, he said, “it is too weak to really make a difference in foreign policy and won’t be very consistent in setting a future course,” which will be decided in the chancery.