After a long struggle, Germany has a national security strategy for the first time. In it, the federal government explains how it intends to react to external and internal threats. The Chancellor appeared at the presentation with four cabinet members.
Germany has a national security strategy for the first time. In Berlin, the federal government presented the more than 40-page paper that the coalition had been wrestling with for months.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz called the strategy adopted by the cabinet an “unusual and important decision”. It remains the central task of the state to ensure the security of its citizens, he said. The Chancellor presented the paper together with Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and Finance Minister Christian Lindner. He made it clear that the strategy was not the end point but the starting point. Germany’s security should be permanently strengthened. Scholz emphasized the close connection to the USA and France.
A “special day” for Baerbock
Baerbock spoke of a “special day” and emphasized that the concept of security affects all areas of life. It is about external threats as well as cyber security, medicines or clean drinking water.
The security strategy was originally supposed to be presented in February at the Munich Security Conference, where hundreds of government representatives, experts and journalists from all over the world gather every year. However, the traffic light was not yet able to agree on all formulations and content by this date.
View all threats together
The basic idea of the strategy is to take into account all internal and external threats to Germany’s security for the first time – in other words, in addition to the military threat, also cyber attacks, possible attacks on critical infrastructure or climate change. The federal government calls this a policy of integrated security in the strategy. In concrete terms, Germany has committed itself, among other things, to complying with NATO’s 2 percent target for defense spending in the future or to building up food and energy reserves for emergencies.
FDP continues to promote National Security Council
The FDP had also campaigned for the establishment of a National Security Council. However, this is no longer the case. The Foreign Office feared that it would lose influence if the Chancellery took over leadership of the body. In the end, the decision was made to leave everything as it is.
In the joint morning magazine from ARD and ZDF FDP defense expert Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann criticized the waiver. A central control point in major crises is important. “We free democrats will now work hard to ensure that such an urgently needed security council finds its way into the national security strategy.”
The former head of the Munich Security Conference, Wolfgang Ischinger, expressed doubts about the implementation of the national security strategy. “The decisive and the most difficult point is usually not the preparation of a document, but its implementation,” said Ischinger im Deutschlandfunk. In a three-party coalition like the one now in the federal government, joint implementation will “probably fall by the wayside.”