SPD foreign policy: Klingbeil announces new Ostpolitik

“Security in Europe can only be achieved with Russia” – says the SPD’s basic program. In view of the Russian war against Ukraine, according to party leader Klingbeil, this is no longer tenable. He announces a reorientation.

SPD chairman Lars Klingbeil has announced a realignment of his party’s Ostpolitik. “We focused too much on Russia,” he told Welt am Sonntag. “In the future we will have to cooperate much more closely with the Eastern European countries.” The sentence in the basic program of the SPD, according to which security in Europe can only be achieved with Russia, is no longer correct against the background of the Ukraine war.

“Proud of Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik”

According to Klingbeil, the party’s internal commission for international politics will determine the future principles of social democratic foreign and security policy in the coming months. “This also includes a critical look back,” said the SPD leader. The SPD is proud of Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik. However, mistakes were also made. However, these were not solely to do with the SPD. “Angela Merkel sat in the chancellery for 16 years,” said Klingbeil.

Recently there had been irritations between Germany and Ukraine, as Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier was initially not wanted in Kyiv. The background to the diplomatic disagreements was apparently the SPD politician’s Russia course when he was foreign minister. Steinmeier and the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj cleared up the irritations in a telephone call on Thursday. Scholz then announced that Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock would travel to Kyiv.

Among other things, the SPD politician and Prime Minister of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Manuela Schwesig, has been criticized for her commitment to Russia and her support for the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.

Look to China

The SPD party leader does not only have Russia in mind when realigning SPD foreign policy.” I am concerned with why politics as a whole, even after the occupation of Crimea in 2014, relied solely on change through trade,” said Klingbeil continue. The answer is important for Germany’s future relations with other countries, such as China. Germany must not bring itself into a one-sided dependence on China. “In the case of China, it means that we have to massively reduce the technological dependency on the People’s Republic, which we have long been in,” he said.