From Climate to Feminism, Germany’s First Security Strategy Casts Wide Net

“It is not just about defense and the army,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Wednesday. “It marks the start of a process that will see government, business and society cooperate to strengthen our security.”

The paper is the latest evidence of a broader effort in Europe’s largest economy to put security at the center of policy-making, making the country less vulnerable to adversaries and more resilient in the event of disasters.

Work on the strategy predates Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine last year, but the attack, which caught Berlin largely unprepared, gave the initiative considerably more urgency. The war cast light on Germany’s depleted military after years of underinvestment and highlighted its dangerous reliance on Russian energy supplies and global trade flows. 

Before the attack, Russia accounted for more than half of German natural gas imports and Germany’s largest gas storage facility was owned by Russian state-controlled giant Gazprom. As Russia began to throttle supplies, Berlin rushed to buy expensive liquefied natural gas from others, contributing to a spike in energy prices.

Thanks to the measures outlined in the strategy, future governments would make sure such situations never occurred again, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said.

Billing itself as an “integrated security strategy,” the paper encompasses concrete measures not just to diversify raw material supplies, build national food, medicine and energy reserves and improve cyber defenses, but also to combat climate change, promote biodiversity and better target development aid.

“Our security is linked to the security and stability of other regions of the world,” the document states. “The government will pay special attention to the interests of women and disadvantaged groups as part of its feminist foreign and development policies.”

Security also meant reassuring citizens that their private communications weren’t being spied on by China or that the water they used was monitored for safety, Baerbock said.

On defense, the strategy repeats Germany’s commitment to raise spending to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s target of 2% of gross domestic product a year. Last year, Germany spent 1.5% of its GDP on defense. 

A €100 billion, equivalent to $108 billion, five-year special defense fund created just after Russia’s attack should help the government reach the goal in the short term. But based on current spending trends, the Cologne-based German Economic Institute forecast in December that Berlin would fall back under the 2% target from 2026.

Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said the strategy encompassed lessons from the conflict in Ukraine, for instance, stressing the need to expand and strengthen Germany’s air defenses. Berlin has supplied Ukraine with the sophisticated IRIS-T antiaircraft system, a weapon it hasn’t deployed at home because of its high cost.

Disagreements in Scholz’s three-party ruling coalition delayed the publication of the strategy, which is missing some measures envisaged at the outset. 

Negotiators abandoned a plan to create a National Security Council modeled on its U.S. equivalent after the foreign ministry and the chancellery clashed over who would have final authority over the structure, officials said. A discussion about developing a capacity to strike back against cyberattacks was also dropped after the Justice Ministry objected, they added.

Work on a separate China policy document has been slow because of tensions between Scholz, who favors continuing engagement with China and the more hard-line Greens around Baerbock. Asked about it on Wednesday, Scholz said the paper would be published “when it is ready.”