The complaint is not new, but it is becoming louder, more urgent, irrefutable: Germany lacks the sense for security policy, for the harshness of the world in which we woke up after Putin’s attack on Ukraine – for the military. And, by no means incidentally, also for the work of the intelligence services.
The German public, the German academic and media world did not touch such things at all or only touched them cautiously. They seemed to be somber themes from a yesterday’s world from which this post-historical, post-national, post-military Germany had emancipated itself.
When it comes to arms deliveries to Ukraine, Olaf Scholz repeatedly emphasizes the close agreements with the USA. Ironically, there have recently been disagreements on the tank issue. CDU leader Merz suspects a “considerable upset” behind the Chancellor’s visit to Washington.
Source: WORLD
It changes. Many feel that things cannot go on like this. Now a remarkable group has met in Berlin, it was about German security policy in the face of Putin’s attack. The Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation had invited. High politicians gave lectures, generals, experts and interested parties listened in the hall.
Friedrich Merz’ speech in one sentence: Germany needs a national security strategy and a national security council. Then Christoph Heusgen, once Merkel’s security adviser, now chairman of the Munich Security Conference, and the Brit John Chipman, director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), spoke.
Chipman in one sentence: “That’s strategy!” He had briefly outlined how NATO should have sent a few warships from several nations to the Black Sea during the wheat crisis last summer with the order and the reason to protect the wheat transports from Odessa – a show of force against Putin and at the same time a declaration of solidarity with the Global South, for which Russia and China are courting: it is we who protect your food security, Russia is trying to cut it.
The south of the world in particular suffered from the lack of Ukrainian wheat. That’s strategy – that’s how strategy works, friends. Bill Clinton once said “It’s the economy, stupid!” A sentence from yesterday’s world, which was rocking in security. Chipman’s sentence applies to today’s warlike world.
He was reminiscent of a Western military principle in the Cold War: always maintain escalation dominance. The West doesn’t have that at the moment. Putin plays his hand and the West serves. And unlike other countries around us, Germany is the country without a safety culture. Unless I’m mistaken, that’s about to change.
