The 80-page document provides an overview of Berlin’s foreign policy, which has shifted towards prioritizing security over economic interests since the outbreak of the war, at a time when Western observers and reports considered the strategy came at a time when Germany feels it has become more vulnerable to military threats The economic and geopolitical news.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said during his presentation and his government ministers of this strategy, that it is “an important contribution to ensuring the safety of Germans in the light of a changing environment (.. .) Germany is a strong country and it can cope with the challenges it faces. »
3 pillars Overall, the new strategy focuses on 3 pillars of German national security, including:
Active defence: including a commitment to high military spending, including meeting NATO’s goal of having its members spend 2% of GDP on defence, and focusing on deterrence. Resilience: This targets the ability of Germany and its allies to protect their values, reduce economic dependency, deter and defeat cyberattacks, and uphold the UN Charter and the rule of law. Sustainability: a pillar that includes issues such as climate change and the energy and food crises.
The danger of Russia… and the ambitions of China
Germany’s new national security strategy saw Russia as the “greatest threat” to peace in Europe and the Atlantic, as it stipulated that Berlin “must work with the international community to deal with hybrid threats”. In its strategy, the German government denounced “China’s actions”, which it said “contradict our interests and values”. She said, “China is trying in various ways to reshape the rules-based international order, increasingly aggressively claiming territorial sovereignty and constantly behaving against our interests and values. The strategy also aims to ensure a more cohesive approach to security across German ministries, even though the government was unable to agree on the creation of a National Security Council due to disagreements within it. Schulze’s coalition. However, one of the strategy’s few specific commitments refers to “military readiness”.
defense spending
The strategy includes a pledge that Germany will spend 2% of its gross domestic product on defence, starting with a 100 billion euro special fund created last year. German Finance Minister Christian Lindner said Berlin aims to meet the 2% defense spending target from next year, which means budget consultations for the years up to 2029 will have to be reviewed and that some projects will be postponed, as the priority will be for projects that have security considerations. Other national security system measures include reducing reliance on other countries to import goods and encouraging companies to hold onto strategic reserves after Germany’s overreliance on the regard to Russia caused an energy crisis last year.
German role in Europe
For his part, international relations expert residing in Berlin, Abd al-Masih al-Shami, said in statements to “Sky News Arabia” that Germany’s national security strategy is considered the country’s first after the World War II, as the state sought to define its strategy after the profound change in the German role since the war in Ukraine.
Al-Shami defined the importance of publishing this strategy in a number of points, saying that it is:
With this strategy, Germany moves from the stage of defense to the right to attack, identifying the dangers it faces outside and defending itself, and perhaps waging wars independently depending on German priority. The strategy has several important points, the first of which is the identification of direct enemies, because it considers that “Russia and China” are enemies, and that they constitute a threat to German and European national security. What is remarkable about this strategy is that it speaks on the basis of European national security, not just German, which means that it goes beyond Germany’s role as a state and gives it a role in the protection of Europe. Considering Russia as a real threat to the security of Europe, in the same way as China, is tantamount to opening the borders of confrontation with Russia and China in space and the Asian ocean, because this does not is not limited to threats or the Ukrainian crisis, but rather to talk about the “hostile role” as he describes China in the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean, for example. The emphasis is on the question of the existing international system, which the strategy aims to preserve, rejecting any modification of this system, and not transforming it into a multipolar world order, and this is clear from the meaning of the texts of the strategy . The strategy involves a radical shift in Germany’s role and policies, and there is no doubt that it establishes changes and possibly major clashes with Russia and China.
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