After months of negotiations: Germany gets its first national security strategy

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The more than 40-page paper must be approved by the cabinet in the morning and then presented by Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) and four of his ministers at a press conference (11am).

The basic idea of ​​the strategy is to consider all internal and external threats to the country’s security for the first time. In addition to the military threat, there are also cyber attacks, possible attacks on vital infrastructure and climate change.

However, there will be no structural reform of the decision-making processes. The traffic light coalition has decided not to set up a long-discussed National Security Council to coordinate government action. She is still publicly covered about the content. However, expectation management has been practiced for weeks. Tenor: Please don’t expect too many new or concrete things.

Most federal ministries are concerned with the issue of security – some more, some less. However, until now there was no one-size-fits-all strategy. The Department of Defense has issued white papers on security policy several times – most recently in 2016. But they focused on external security, especially national and allied defense. In their coalition negotiations, the SPD, Greens and FDP agreed to develop for the first time a comprehensive security strategy, such as already exists in the US and Japan.

The security strategy was originally scheduled to be presented in February at the Munich Security Conference, which annually gathers hundreds of government representatives, experts and journalists from around the world. This appointment would have attracted a lot of international attention for the traffic light newspaper.

However, Chancellor Scholz and his foreign minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens), the two key players in the negotiation process, were unable to reach an agreement so quickly. The heart of the matter: Should there be a National Security Council as the central point of government? The Foreign Office feared that it would lose influence if the Chancellery took over the management of the body – a matter of power. In the end it was decided to leave everything as it is.

According to everything known so far, German security policy is not reinvented in the newspaper. It should contain much of what is already in the coalition agreement. As for individual countries or regions, the document is not intended to go into detail. There should be a separate strategy for China policy before the end of this year. With regard to Russia and Ukraine, on the one hand, much has already been said and, on the other hand, the situation is so dynamic that it is hardly possible to look far into the future.

The critics: countries feel overwhelmed

The fact that the federated states – contrary to what was initially expected – were not involved in the consultations met with criticism from their side. “If the federal government had a serious interest in developing a forward-looking security strategy, it should have involved the federal states appropriately through the technical working groups of the Conference of Interior Ministers,” said Hesse Interior Minister Peter Beuth. (CDU). ), spokesperson for the Union-led interior ministries. Despite repeated requests from the conference of interior ministers, this was only done at the very last moment.

The framework for the presentation of the paper in a press conference immediately after the cabinet meeting could hardly be greater. In addition to the Chancellor and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, there are also Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP), Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD). The chancellor and four cabinet members at the federal press conference at the Association of Capital Journalists – that has never happened before.

Gerhard Schröder last sat there on stage with three ministers in 1999. It was then about the budget and Schröder was accompanied by ministers Hans Eichel (finance, SPD), Walter Riester (work, SPD) and Andrea Fischer (Greens, health). Only on International Women’s Day 2001 were more government representatives on stage, with seven ministers.

(SDA)

Source: Blick