22 – A Strategic Deficit with German Characteristics: Why Berlin Struggles to Move Beyond the Zeitenwende

00:00:00: Welcome to Berlin Side Out, the podcast that takes an expert look at how Germany sees the

00:00:05: world and the world sees Germany with me, Benjamin Tallis.

00:00:09: And me, Aaron Gash-Bernett.

00:00:11: Hello, and welcome back to Berlin Side Out, the Foreign Affairs Podcast in association

00:00:20: with the German Council on Foreign Relations that takes a look at how Germany sees the

00:00:24: world and the world sees Germany.

00:00:27: I'm Aaron Gash-Bernett, a journalist and security analyst specializing in German politics and

00:00:32: foreign policy, and I'm here, as always, with my friend and co-host, Benjamin Tallis, Senior

00:00:37: Research Fellow here at the Council and head of its action group, Sitenbende.

00:00:41: Now, Ben, we're here today actually to talk about, in a way, how to move on from Sitenbende.

00:00:47: The sea change Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced was supposed to happen in German foreign policy

00:00:53: after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

00:00:57: Germany has spent the last two years reacting, often foot-dragging on military assistance

00:01:01: for Ukraine and seldom leading.

00:01:04: And that has had costs in Ukrainian lives, in the hundreds of billions that we were ready

00:01:08: to spend to see ourselves through a single winter, and those knock-on budgetary effects

00:01:13: domestically.

00:01:15: And we could have prevented many of those costs if we were more proactive in the past.

00:01:21: And crucially, while Germany might want to hold on to, as you often say, the world of

00:01:25: yesterday that it did so well out of, we're not getting any closer to figuring out what

00:01:29: world Germany wants for the future.

00:01:32: And for that, it would need to go from reactive Sitenbende to proactive grand strategy, a

00:01:38: strategy it doesn't yet have.

00:01:41: Luckily for us, though, there's some discussion on this, including in a piece you wrote recently

00:01:46: that you can find in our show notes, as well as in contributions our guests today have made

00:01:50: on this topic.

00:01:51: And we're going to address two central questions, among others.

00:01:55: So what kind of grand strategy do we need?

00:01:57: And crucially, how do we actually go about finally getting one?

00:02:02: But first up, Ben, what exactly is grand strategy?

00:02:04: And how does it differ from, for example, military strategy?

00:02:08: Well, hello, Aaron, and hello, everyone.

00:02:10: Grand strategy is a term and a concept with a very contested history shrouded in mystery,

00:02:17: controversy, and complexity.

00:02:19: But actually, in essence, it's really quite straightforward, at least in theory.

00:02:24: It's strategic in the way that it's a government chooses to actually get to where it wants

00:02:29: to go to reach a particular objective or desired state.

00:02:33: And it's considered grand in two ways, that it encompasses all policy fields, so not just

00:02:38: military, as you mentioned, it's not just about how you go about winning a war, for

00:02:42: example, it's about a bigger, more overriding and far reaching goal than that.

00:02:48: And as part of that, as you mentioned, it's about having a vision that goes beyond war,

00:02:52: for example, to the kind of peace that you would actually like to see, or to the kind

00:02:56: of regional or world order that is desired.

00:02:59: So something beyond just victory or survival, it's about the kind of world or the kind of

00:03:04: region, the kind of society that you want to shape.

00:03:07: And so, as I say, in theory, it's quite simple.

00:03:10: It's the way that a state can actually marshal its resources and align all the sources of

00:03:15: power at its disposal, including its alliances, its diplomatic power, its economic power,

00:03:21: and its military might, in the service of achieving a particular mid or long term objective

00:03:26: or vision.

00:03:27: But, as I mentioned, despite this ostensible simplicity, good grand strategy is actually

00:03:33: a lot more complex.

00:03:34: And that's because there's some questions at its heart and some tensions between different

00:03:38: ways of doing it.

00:03:39: Those we could see in three main terms.

00:03:41: One, it's a concept that is contested between different approaches to international relations,

00:03:46: for example.

00:03:47: So realists might see state strategic decisions largely determined by either human nature,

00:03:53: the flawed human nature that they see as conditioning the actions of statespeople and

00:03:57: of people more widely, or by the structure of the international system.

00:04:02: And realists have tended, mainly, though not exclusively, to assign agency in that international

00:04:07: system to great powers or major powers.

00:04:10: Some have looked at how small states can have grand strategies as well.

00:04:13: But by and large, when we talk about grand strategy, in historical terms, it's been

00:04:17: assigned to larger players.

00:04:19: Empires.

00:04:20: Empires.

00:04:21: But also great powers of various kinds.

00:04:23: So the United States would be a kind of example.

00:04:26: Soviet Union, indeed an empire.

00:04:28: China today would be seen as act as capable of having a grand strategy.

00:04:33: But I have argued elsewhere that others can as well.

00:04:37: Real approaches to international relations, broadly speaking, tend to prioritize more

00:04:42: normative goals rather than this pursuit of power for either survival or primacy.

00:04:48: And one example of that could be Woodrow Wilson's famous statement about to make a world safe

00:04:53: for democracy.

00:04:55: And that would be an example of a leading statement, a description of a grand strategy

00:04:59: that led to then the kind of internationalism that Wilson wasn't able to implement, but

00:05:03: came to be implemented after the Second World War in the form of liberal internationalism.

00:05:09: We could also see there would be post-Cold War grand strategies from the neo-conservatives

00:05:14: in the US trying to impose democracy by force, trying to iron out the kinks, and they saw

00:05:18: it as that hegemonic world of liberal democracy.

00:05:24: In other more bloodless forms, perhaps liberalism is focused on institutions and on the possibility

00:05:29: for global stability.

00:05:31: But these different conceptions also come with other questions about the normative qualities

00:05:35: of grand strategy.

00:05:36: And that means can you use it for good or not?

00:05:38: Or is it actually necessarily something that will end up with bad outcomes?

00:05:42: And that's a discussion that's really big in Germany because when you hear the term

00:05:45: grand strategy in Germany, or when you say the term grand strategy in Germany, a lot

00:05:49: of people think it immediately relates back to the bad old ways of doing geopolitics,

00:05:53: the kind of politics that the Nazis practiced, the kind of back room decision making and

00:05:58: deal making that would be associated with people like Henry Kissinger in the United

00:06:02: States.

00:06:04: But that's a very one-sided discussion that actually ignores when there have been other

00:06:08: types of grand strategy, such as making a world safe democracy, or for example, the

00:06:13: Reagan administration's use of peace through strength combined with quiet diplomacy in order

00:06:18: to be able to actually achieve goals from a position of strength to be armed to the teeth

00:06:22: but ready to talk.

00:06:24: And that was the grand strategy that many have argued actually helped bring about an end

00:06:28: to the Cold War, ramping up the costs of competition militarily for the Soviets, so hollowing out

00:06:35: their economy from within, but at the same time actually removing some of the danger

00:06:39: from the nuclear confrontation in Europe and around the world by being willing to talk,

00:06:43: engaging in this quiet diplomacy from a position of strength.

00:06:47: So there's different views on the normative quality of grand strategy, whether it can

00:06:51: be a force for good or whether it necessarily leads you down a bad track.

00:06:55: And last, I think the elements that the contested within grand strategy are who it's for, who

00:07:01: it's against, and who it's made by and how that is made.

00:07:04: And I've alluded to this a little bit before, but understanding whether this is an action

00:07:09: of the state for an abstract concept of the state, is it for the national interest, or

00:07:15: is it something broader?

00:07:16: Is this actually something that the whole of society can benefit from?

00:07:20: Who is it against?

00:07:21: Is it against adversaries?

00:07:23: Do we want to have those kind of adversarial relationships?

00:07:26: Is that necessary to actually face down the kind of threats that you would see to achieving

00:07:31: your grand strategic vision?

00:07:33: Or is that setting up a friend-enemy relation that's going to take you in a bad way?

00:07:37: Again different views on that.

00:07:38: Again, with whom?

00:07:40: So is it with allies or is it actually to the detriment of your allies?

00:07:44: And all those questions are things that we've tried to address in the new working group

00:07:48: on grand strategy that I set up at the German Council on Foreign Relations, the DGAP, which

00:07:53: has been working since September last year.

00:07:56: And you can read more about that in the show notes, as you say.

00:07:59: But we also wanted to get into a discussion about that with some real experts, two of whom

00:08:03: are part of the grand strategy group, Eileen Matley and Jakob Bross, and with a renowned

00:08:07: German grand strategist, Maximilian Teh-Hallop.

00:08:10: Yes, absolutely Ben.

00:08:11: And before we welcome our guests here, as you've been saying, in this country the word

00:08:18: "grand strategy" comes with assumptions about that it's somehow nefarious.

00:08:24: But as you've been saying, of course, it's not good or bad to have a strategy.

00:08:30: It is how you use that strategy that makes it good or bad.

00:08:33: And we must always remember that our adversaries, the worlds of authoritarian, they always have

00:08:39: a strategy.

00:08:40: So that's why we have to discuss having one ourselves as democracies.

00:08:44: Exactly right.

00:08:45: And that's the time when democracies can afford to be strategie loss or without a strategy.

00:08:50: Because there are clear strategic actors aligned against us and working against our interests

00:08:54: as well as against our values.

00:08:56: And it's been that lack of a compelling strategy that has actually undermined Germany's foreign

00:09:01: policy in a case in point.

00:09:04: But also the West's approach to international relations more widely in the last 10 to 15

00:09:09: years, when previous grand strategies ran out of steam, and when we started to get into

00:09:13: a bit of a strategic confusion.

00:09:15: And you can argue about whether that's a confusion over the goals or a confusion over

00:09:19: the means to achieve them.

00:09:20: So is it about the vision or the strategy itself?

00:09:23: Is it a deficit that comes from not having a strategy or is it the deficit from having

00:09:27: bad strategy?

00:09:28: And that's what we're going to talk about with our guests today.

00:09:30: And joining us to talk about grand strategic vision today, we have Maximilian Terhala, a

00:09:36: professor of strategic studies at the London School of Economics and former advisor to

00:09:41: the UK Ministry of Defense.

00:09:43: He has literally written the book on the new strategic culture Germany needs.

00:09:47: The book is called the Responsibility to Defend.

00:09:51: And you can find the info you need on that in the show notes.

00:09:54: Also joining us, I'm pleased to say, are two returning guests to Berlin's side out.

00:09:59: Eileen Matle is a research fellow in the Council's Center on Security and Defense, who appeared

00:10:04: on our third episode covering German defense.

00:10:07: And finally, we have Jakob Brass, also a council research fellow focusing on Franco-German

00:10:12: relations, who first appeared on our Franco-German episode with French author Sylvie Kaufman.

00:10:18: Welcome to the show, everyone.

00:10:20: Max, let's start with you.

00:10:23: NATO's First Secretary General Lord Ismay famously described NATO's purpose as keep

00:10:29: the Soviet Union out, the US in and the Germans down.

00:10:33: Now, you've argued that purpose should be reimagined to keep the US in, the Russians

00:10:39: out and the Chinese in check.

00:10:42: How significant is that keep the Germans down line doesn't appear in that new reimagining

00:10:48: you argue for.

00:10:49: And second, so far, I personally see resolute German commitment to only one of those three

00:10:55: new goals, which is to keep the US in.

00:10:59: What is Germany's role in this new NATO and how do we get there?

00:11:04: Indeed.

00:11:05: I tried to rephrase the pattern put out some 75 years ago.

00:11:09: I would nowadays, I would say that keeping the Americans in is absolute key.

00:11:15: However difficult that is, I would stress keeping the Russians down.

00:11:21: You would have a much more appropriate way of putting it and keeping the Chinese in check,

00:11:28: if not more, is fundamental.

00:11:30: And why am I saying that?

00:11:32: I do see that these two major powers and major in the sense that they have the material power

00:11:42: to disrupt and a fundamentally clear understanding on behalf of Russia to disrupt the Western

00:11:53: order, if you like, in Europe and beyond.

00:11:55: And that these two powers have in many ways linked up their efforts to disrupt the Western

00:12:02: order to a very, very high standard already.

00:12:07: So in that sense, the question was how do we have it addressed that Germany needs to

00:12:13: revisit and refine its own understanding of membership at NATO.

00:12:20: NATO as the key alliance that brought Germany back into life after World War Two.

00:12:29: And that instead of a more passive understanding of membership where Germany has certainly

00:12:37: done its duties during the Cold War, but now needs to pick up and see that this alliance

00:12:45: is the bedrock of its own security and of the security of Europe.

00:12:54: And for that to work, Germany needs to be proactive, taking the initiative and underlying

00:13:03: it with substantive material power in order to face off those that want to disrupt the

00:13:11: order from which Germany has benefited more than anybody else in Europe.

00:13:15: I think this quote, this famous quote about keeping the Germans down is often a little

00:13:19: misunderstood.

00:13:20: I mean, it sounds terrible, but at its heart what it is is a balance of power argument

00:13:24: to stop an over mighty Germany rising in its geostrategically significant position in Europe

00:13:31: and disrupting the European order.

00:13:33: So that was what the idea behind it was after seeing the rising Germany as a challenging

00:13:39: power revisionist power having caused two world wars within 30 years.

00:13:44: And so that was the logic behind that.

00:13:46: As well as this, you mentioned that NATO actually was a way for Germany to rise up,

00:13:50: to rise from the ashes of World War II and from its crimes that it committed.

00:13:55: But in order to do that, as you mentioned, it had to contribute.

00:13:58: And to contribute, there had to be a clear rationale for this.

00:14:00: And that's where I think grand strategy comes into this equation, because Germany's contribution

00:14:05: to NATO was part of its process of Westbindel or West integration, reintegration with the

00:14:11: West.

00:14:12: So could you say a little bit more about that?

00:14:14: And why, I mean, you've written in your book Responsibility to Defend, that the position

00:14:19: of equidistance, for example, between two other blocks, between the US and between China,

00:14:26: would not provide a suitable grand strategy for Germany today?

00:14:29: Two points I would like to make.

00:14:30: One is more historical.

00:14:32: The other one straightforward, strategic.

00:14:34: So first, the historical one, I think a fundamental problem in all of the discussions that we

00:14:40: have had about the so-called mindset that needs to change in our thinking, which when

00:14:48: I look at core parts of the government, I don't see much of change.

00:14:53: But the fundamental point here is really to look at our own history no longer as we've

00:15:02: done for good reasons, as a negative foil against which we can only say never again.

00:15:11: But to flip this foil around and say, yes, never again, of course, but that's no longer

00:15:16: the point.

00:15:17: The point is to turn this legacy into a proactive action and to see what aggressive revisionist

00:15:26: powers are up to and how you take them on in order to stop them from what they're doing.

00:15:34: So in that sense, I would say our Germans are, and I'm not ironic here, better prepared

00:15:41: than anybody else to understand what revisionist powers are about.

00:15:44: Now, so that's the first more historic philosophical point, but I think it would help to flip the

00:15:50: mindset into the right direction.

00:15:54: The second about the contribution, again, if driven by an understanding that such a contribution

00:16:06: is fundamental to Germany's own security and well-being, and therefore Germany needs to

00:16:13: take on a leadership position within NATO, I think is core.

00:16:18: The notion of equidistance is a bit remote, but it has had a very lively appearance in

00:16:25: the German debates, and I think it should be completely off the table.

00:16:28: So it's very clear who is against and who's for us.

00:16:32: And that's what war is about.

00:16:35: The enemy is clear.

00:16:36: The enemy is Russia.

00:16:37: It is also very clear, despite recent, the recent visit of Charles Shultz in China, what

00:16:46: China is doing to support Russia in all kinds that hybrid warfare allows it to do.

00:16:54: And in that sense, there can be no equidistance.

00:16:57: There should be much more, especially in regard to China, much more inventive thinking as

00:17:03: to how Germany can start decoupling from China.

00:17:08: Jacob Ross, we've talked about grand strategy a lot at the DGAP in our grand strategy group.

00:17:14: Is there really that clarity in German decision making?

00:17:17: Has the war brought the necessary clarity?

00:17:19: Or is there still actually a strategic confusion in your view about how to deal with these

00:17:24: adversarial powers, Russia and China, as well as how to deal with Germany's allies?

00:17:28: I would say that there is still a lot of confusion.

00:17:31: I agree with what Max said, that the direction at least has become clear since Russia's full

00:17:39: scale invasion of Ukraine, where we have to go.

00:17:43: But there's a sense, and I feel this very much since I remember my days in university,

00:17:50: that this is a generational task to get to a level of strategic thinking in Germany,

00:17:54: to discuss geopolitics in a way that has been normal in other countries, say France,

00:18:01: the country I'm very familiar with.

00:18:03: It's not the case in Germany, and it will not happen overnight.

00:18:07: It will take at least a generation to shift the mindset.

00:18:14: The confusion is still very clear with regards to Russia, I think.

00:18:19: In Germany, you still have a separated country to a certain degree.

00:18:23: You have Eastern Germany that is much less clear with regards to the Russian threat.

00:18:32: We will see that in the elections in several federal states at the end of the year in Germany,

00:18:39: where both the IFD on the extreme right and extreme left parties have much clearer stance

00:18:47: towards Russia and are polling very well currently.

00:18:52: So I think it's not that clear, at least in parts of the country.

00:18:56: And the same is true for China.

00:18:57: The German economy is very much intermingled with the Chinese economy.

00:19:02: Big German corporations, car manufacturers, the chemistry industry, machine builders are

00:19:09: very much dependent on the Chinese market.

00:19:13: I mean, most of our children today are on TikTok, and nobody is really controlling that.

00:19:18: So I think that the clear separation is much more difficult today than it used to be probably

00:19:25: in the Cold War.

00:19:26: And just the economic links that still exist towards Russia, the French who are buying

00:19:33: uranium, there's the imports going out of Russia.

00:19:38: We are still selling parts or at least machinery that is built by German companies ends up

00:19:45: in Russia.

00:19:46: So the clear cut line is much harder to get in a globalized economy.

00:19:51: Germany was indeed the country that profited most from this opening up of economies, globalization.

00:19:56: But today we have to get back to these interconnections and have a critical look on each and everyone

00:20:05: on them, not only Russia and China.

00:20:07: It's not just the Germany's children as Germany's Chancellor who's on TikTok, but I would push

00:20:11: back a little bit on the notion that it was less complex in the old days, the good old

00:20:16: days when everything was simple, cut and clear.

00:20:18: We actually had to make it simple, the kind of things that cocom restrictions on trade

00:20:23: with the Eastern Bloc, with the Soviet and Soviet satellite states imposed on Western

00:20:28: companies and were enforced, was driven by a clear geopolitical agenda.

00:20:32: And this is where we see the need for a grand strategy, is that it does act as that load

00:20:36: star for policy making across different fields.

00:20:40: So not only in building up military strength and contributing as Maximilian Tehala said

00:20:45: to NATO's force posture and force availability, but actually understanding that companies

00:20:49: play a role in that the private trade cannot be allowed to undermine national positioning.

00:20:54: I don't think it was necessarily as cut and dried in the Cold War as sometimes people

00:20:59: make it out to be, but we were able to actually have a policy that cohere because we had that

00:21:04: strategic vision.

00:21:05: Now, Eileen, I'd like to come to you on that in terms of how Germany's current strategic

00:21:11: positioning manifests itself in the defense realm and in practical defense matters.

00:21:17: Thank you, Ben.

00:21:18: I think we are not as pessimistic about Germany's role in NATO as Maximilian, to be honest.

00:21:27: I do agree that Germany has to do much more.

00:21:31: Germany has to raise, first of all, its defense budget in order to enable itself to do more.

00:21:37: However, I don't see Germany having a passive understanding of its role in NATO at all.

00:21:44: Why do I say that?

00:21:46: Well, starting in 2014, Germany did step up its game, compared to what it did before.

00:21:54: I'm not saying that necessarily compared to what was necessary, but definitely compared

00:21:59: to what it did before.

00:22:01: With the beginning of Russia's attack on Ukraine in 2014, Germany was actually key

00:22:07: in coming up in conceptual terms, but also in its practical implementation of the Red

00:22:13: Red Enist Action Plan, which was NATO's first reaction to Russia's attack on Ukraine, dating

00:22:19: back to 2014.

00:22:21: For example, Germany, not only, as I said, came up with a concept, but it also was a

00:22:27: lead nation in providing troops and also leading the BJTF, the very high Red Enist joint force

00:22:36: that was also created in 2014.

00:22:41: Coming up on that, Germany agreed in 2016 to become a lead nation or a framework nation

00:22:47: in Lithuania, together with Canada, together with the UK and the US and the three Baltic

00:22:55: states in Poland.

00:22:57: Now we've also seen dramatic shifts compared to what Germany did before since 2022.

00:23:05: Let's not forget that Germany offered to dispatch an entire brigade to Lithuania.

00:23:12: I also understand that there was quite a bit of confusion between the both countries, between

00:23:17: Lithuania and Germany, as to how that should materialize.

00:23:21: Initially, Germany only wanted to assign a brigade stationed on German soil to the defense

00:23:29: of Lithuania.

00:23:30: But then, as we all know, last year, the German defense minister stepped forward and offered

00:23:39: to dispatch that entire brigade to Lithuanian soil.

00:23:43: That's the first in Germany's history.

00:23:45: And it's by no means clear yet whether Germany will succeed in that endeavor.

00:23:51: However, claiming that Germany doesn't have any understanding of what it is doing in NATO

00:23:56: and also its role in NATO, I would strongly object to.

00:23:59: I think it's the key distinction that we need to make is between what the head of governments

00:24:06: are doing and what they're thinking and what the organization does and offers to the Alliance.

00:24:16: So between the entire years of the Merkel years, remember the Kremlin annexation in 2014,

00:24:23: the big APRO in Berlin and the Munich Security Conference.

00:24:31: Everybody agreed that everything had to change.

00:24:33: All these things are going on here and there.

00:24:36: Bits and pieces, even the white paper in 2016 spoke off for the first time of Landesenbundesverteidion.

00:24:45: But all of this had been pulverized, really, by Ms. Merkel following the track of Minsk,

00:24:53: not willing to pay 2% throughout her entire time as the Chancellor.

00:25:03: And so all I'm saying is that there was a massive tension between what the bureaucracy,

00:25:08: the organization, the military did in terms of the bits and pieces that were possible.

00:25:16: But all of this was literally defeated in the mind of Putin in terms of credibility of

00:25:23: deterrence that he nonetheless invaded what he wanted to invade, regardless of the steps

00:25:31: that you correctly mentioned as a move forward.

00:25:36: It didn't change at all Putin's thinking.

00:25:39: The bottom line here is, Merkel sent throughout her time in office a message that deterrence

00:25:45: was not the number one term on her mindset.

00:25:50: This rather points to that strategic deficit, or either in terms of not having a grand strategy

00:25:55: or in terms of having a very poor strategy, because all those steps that Eileen, you mentioned,

00:25:59: they ended up becoming less than the sum of their parts because they weren't actually

00:26:03: coherent.

00:26:04: They weren't consistent across policy fields.

00:26:06: And for all the positive steps you mentioned, even if it still wasn't enough, even if it

00:26:10: still wasn't meeting the 2% target, etc., they were undermined by doing things like

00:26:14: signing the Nord Stream 2 agreement with Russia after the annexation of Crimea.

00:26:21: And that, again, I think points to this strategic lack that was there, or certainly strategic

00:26:25: ambiguity and perhaps the worst sense, strategic confusion that was dominating German policymaking

00:26:29: there.

00:26:30: Now, Jakob, coming to this historical point, why has Germany found that so difficult in

00:26:35: recent times to avow an overt strategic positioning?

00:26:39: Well, I mean, as we discussed at DJP and in the piece we published on grand strategy

00:26:45: and the problems that might come with it in public debate, and especially with regards

00:26:51: to Germany's history, is that Germany's experience with grand strategy, with geopolitics, with

00:26:58: these grand designs is one of great suffering that Germany brought to the world, especially

00:27:04: to its European neighbors.

00:27:07: Something that developed to a certain degree in Germany, the Munich School of Geopolitics

00:27:13: is a very specific way to see the world.

00:27:16: And I can very well remember studying international politics in Germany at German universities,

00:27:21: that you couldn't discuss geopolitics at times, maybe in classes on geography, and then

00:27:29: it was critical geopolitics, but you always had to approach it in a certain way.

00:27:34: And there was no classes to approach strategic questions in a way as has been normal once

00:27:43: again in the US, in Britain, in France, in other allied states.

00:27:49: I think that's changing.

00:27:50: There's now new university programs, including at the University of Bonn.

00:27:55: Maximilian might also witness to the fact that these questions have been discussed at

00:27:59: the universities of the Bundeswehr already, but not in a manner like in other countries

00:28:05: that generations of students get introduced to these concepts, can discuss them in a critical

00:28:12: way.

00:28:13: That's an important part of grand strategy, of a vivid debate outside of expert circles.

00:28:19: But this is something that definitely lacks in Germany, and it's mainly due to the controversial

00:28:25: parts of geopolitics, the entanglement with the Nazi regime in the 1930s, 1940s, concepts

00:28:35: like Lebensraum.

00:28:37: But I think that there has to be more discussions on geopolitics.

00:28:41: And if they are critical, well, that's a good thing that Germany might be able to bring

00:28:47: to the debate where, say, France is not critical enough of its use of grand designs, grand

00:28:55: strategy in the past, and might not be critical enough going forward.

00:28:59: I think our history has essentially almost deceived us into thinking that we are past

00:29:06: geopolitics.

00:29:07: We are above geopolitics.

00:29:08: We are a post-strategic discussion, and that we can have a world that is absent strategy.

00:29:17: I mean, we talked about Nord Stream 2 just a second ago.

00:29:21: And for a long, long, long time, German elites pretended that this was a purely commercial

00:29:27: project when, of course, Central and East Europeans and Ukrainians said that it wasn't.

00:29:32: It had a strategic and geopolitical implication that we simply refused to see.

00:29:36: And sometimes I actually wonder whether our refusal to really consider de-risking versus

00:29:43: decoupling in China is repeating this exact same mistake.

00:29:48: We're just not repeating it with the Russians.

00:29:50: We're repeating with the Chinese.

00:29:51: Grand strategy is more than a military strategy.

00:29:54: And as the title of your piece goes on Grand Strategy, Ben, Germany needs a strategy grand

00:30:02: and democratic.

00:30:04: But part of having a democratic grand strategy is recognizing that you are, in fact, in a

00:30:10: world of systemic competition between democracies and authoritarian states, that everything

00:30:15: comes into play, not just military questions, but also economic ones.

00:30:20: And those authoritarians certainly see us as adversaries.

00:30:23: Putin clearly already thinks Russia is at war with NATO, even if Olaf Schulz and Joe

00:30:27: Biden don't want to admit it.

00:30:29: And while we might not have a strategy, our adversaries certainly do.

00:30:34: Yet neither our public nor our elites really seem to understand the need for strategy.

00:30:38: I mean, how do we actually change this strategic discussion?

00:30:42: What sort of concrete steps do you start taking?

00:30:45: I've worked on grand strategic questions for a very long time.

00:30:50: And I do see the necessity to translate governmental thinking into coherent thinking, drawing

00:30:59: together conceptually and then materially all resources that a state has in order to bring

00:31:06: together to maximize its power.

00:31:09: Now, the question is, to which purpose?

00:31:11: And that goes back to what Aaron hinted at.

00:31:15: It's the perception.

00:31:17: What kind of perception of our international environment do we have?

00:31:21: Do we perceive, as Ms. Merkel has did a long time, Russia not as an enemy, but as someone

00:31:28: that's difficult, but we can deal with without understanding the long-term intentions?

00:31:33: And there's a legacy in that thinking also in the current government.

00:31:40: So coherence in terms of drawing together and drawing on all resources possible.

00:31:48: But fundamental is to any strategic thinking, clear perception of your environment.

00:31:56: If you don't have a strategic view, which recognizes the need to identify potential

00:32:06: enemies as such as they are, as good as they are at deceiving and veiling their intentions,

00:32:16: the whole strategic debate falls flat.

00:32:19: And that's something we're clearly lacking.

00:32:20: It's a war where someone wants to bring down an entire order.

00:32:24: And the only thing that matters really is to have a very clear understanding of what the

00:32:31: attention is, talking about perception, and then go against it, fall in.

00:32:37: Talking about NATO, I think this problem is not as big since NATO was indeed founded

00:32:43: against a clear enemy with a clear purpose.

00:32:46: But I mean, in Germany, you have to take into account other structures.

00:32:49: The European Union, for instance, was not found against anything.

00:32:53: It was found to integrate the continent.

00:32:55: It was basically a peace project.

00:32:57: So I think that's part of the discussion in Germany and other both EU and NATO member

00:33:04: states how to find a good balance between those objectives, integrating a continent

00:33:10: and then developing a clear-cut strategy against a threat to this continent.

00:33:15: And that's absolutely not clear to me.

00:33:17: I mean, many important partner states of Germany, France, first and foremost, are still trying

00:33:28: to get an autonomous European answer, autonomous from the United States, autonomous from NATO.

00:33:35: I mean, even though France might have shifted and might be more present on NATO's eastern

00:33:41: flank, more conscious about the Russian threat, more engaged in supporting Eastern European

00:33:46: member states of both NATO and the European Union in terms of the long-term objectives.

00:33:51: If we are talking about grand strategy, this idea of European autonomy in a transatlantic

00:33:57: world where the United States are drifting towards the Pacific is definitely something

00:34:02: that has to be taken into account as well.

00:34:05: And I think it's not going to go away and it very much impacts the discussions in Germany

00:34:10: as well.

00:34:11: I largely do agree that most Germans, including the highest ranks in the current government,

00:34:18: do like a strategic vision or, to put it differently, on the flip side, they suffer from a sort

00:34:26: of strategic confusion.

00:34:29: Most of them.

00:34:30: I would not agree that it applies to all members of the government.

00:34:34: I wouldn't agree that it applies to all members of our parliament.

00:34:38: And I would like to bring in the first ever formulated and published national security

00:34:42: strategy that was last year put out by the German government.

00:34:48: And I would say in some, it does not live up to the expectations that probably most

00:34:56: have or had when they heard that Germany was working on such a document.

00:35:02: I do agree that it is really a bit underwhelming in terms of actually coming up with a certain

00:35:08: strategy because for a strategy, as we all know and has been mentioned before, you need

00:35:13: a clear cut goal.

00:35:15: However, I think there are some bits that we can work with.

00:35:21: For example, I think where Germany or where the government is most, or what the government

00:35:27: is most clear about is actually the threat emanating from Russia.

00:35:32: In the strategy, in the document, it very clearly states that Russia is the most single

00:35:38: threat that the Euro-Atlantic area is facing today.

00:35:43: And that is actually almost the very same language that the new strategic concept of

00:35:48: NATO has used in 2022.

00:35:52: I think there's still room for improvement.

00:35:55: It is a bit of a missed chance.

00:35:56: It could have been much more clear in terms of prioritizing because I think that is also

00:36:01: the task of coming up with a strategy to prioritize, to say, "Okay, this is our most important

00:36:07: goal and this is how we're going about reaching that goal."

00:36:10: That is something that the strategy is missing because it reads a bit like a laundry list

00:36:15: of everything is important.

00:36:18: But in order to go all that document strategy, you must prioritize.

00:36:22: And that is something that you can't, in my view, find in that document and that is also

00:36:27: missing in other debates following the discussions in Berlin.

00:36:33: Going back to our understanding of the strategic mindset that's missing.

00:36:37: Everybody talks about strategic, strategic, strategic nowadays.

00:36:40: But how do you prioritize your priorities?

00:36:44: How do you do that?

00:36:47: Well, if everything is important, which you

00:36:49: defined as priority, then you have a whole list of two pages and everything seems to be important.

00:36:53: And what do governments do? Well, they work them up, work them down and up the ladder based on the

00:37:00: so-called and perceived time pressure, but not based on the strategic importance of the individual

00:37:09: issues. I think that's a point totally lost in the NSS. And again, I would stress we need to

00:37:17: distinguish between what the apparatuses do and think and what they agree on and what leading

00:37:24: decision makers think and do. These are two things. So when it was mentioned that indeed,

00:37:33: Russia is called a threat. It's not so much talk about China here. What is this threat really about?

00:37:40: How do you think about this threat? Threat is a very, very broad term that can be used and it's

00:37:47: not prioritised as to what that implies. And the second thing is basically underlining what I've

00:37:56: said a couple of times, the distinction between leaders and apparatuses. Read the foreword by

00:38:03: Schultz. That's the essential summary of what he thinks is important and what he leaves out doesn't

00:38:10: seem to be that important. I don't see a broad and clear-cut understanding of what is the German

00:38:20: vision for Europe's security order in the next five years and what that means. There's little

00:38:27: debate as to what the future of the transatlantic relationship should look like. There's however

00:38:32: much talk about the so-called global south. All of this is left largely open. There's no

00:38:40: clear-cut understanding of what is the key priority and why. It does well in providing a

00:38:47: framework for outlining the challenges that Germany faces, sure. But it doesn't address how we

00:38:54: actually allocate resources, but also how we coordinate strategy between government, between

00:38:59: business, between civil society. So there doesn't seem to also be a strategy to even get other groups

00:39:06: of society to buy into the strategy. So how do we actually get everyone on board, especially if we

00:39:12: look at one particular part of German society that might be missing the memo? Large parts of

00:39:19: German business when we have the CEO of Mercedes-Benz saying that their version of de-risking is to

00:39:25: actually increase their presence in China and thus our dependence. How do we actually get everyone

00:39:30: on board even with the strategy and the goal in general? I think it's indicative that there is

00:39:36: nothing that you could say about that strategy or about the government's positioning that would

00:39:40: equate to something like Westbindel or Peace Through Strength or something where you would have

00:39:45: this very clear vision that could be encapsulated in just a few words. Instead, what you get is

00:39:50: integrated security, which is actually a description of what a strategy should include,

00:39:54: rather than being a goal for that strategy itself. So you have a fundamental confusion at its heart,

00:39:59: then you have two different visions included in the national security, one of a more multipolar

00:40:04: world and one of one of systemic competition, which gives you a model from the beginning there.

00:40:09: But I would argue that there is something else going on with that and what Max just said about

00:40:13: what's included and what's not. I think you can draw out quite a bit from because I think the

00:40:18: strategy that is underlying this, that is unspoken in a way, is this submerged equidistance, this

00:40:24: submerged multipolarity that is actually underlying a lot of what is driving current government policy,

00:40:30: which is a way of rescuing as much of this flat world of globalization from which Germany did

00:40:35: very well as possible and translating it into the new geopolitical environment. So it's a

00:40:40: strategy and this is where I think the Titan vendor equates a little bit to that wonderful

00:40:44: moment in Il Gattopado, the leopard, where the speech is made, says for everything to stay the

00:40:50: same, everything must change. And so you get this idea of keeping continuity dressed up in a language

00:40:56: of change. And that is what I think is underlying. But this is not something that is avowed publicly.

00:41:01: So it doesn't have that strategic galvanizing effect that Aaron just mentioned of drawing

00:41:06: different actors together around a unifying theme, nor can it really act as a load star

00:41:11: for policymaking. Instead, what you get is the devolved policymaking of the China strategy.

00:41:15: We leave it up to business. Now, what it doesn't do is give you a clear change in direction.

00:41:19: Also, I mean, fundamentally, because it's the same people implementing the change that have

00:41:24: been in office for a very long time, you know, I mean, if you have people like Frank Walter

00:41:29: Steinmeier at the federal presidency, Christoph Hoisgen now heading the Munich Security Conference,

00:41:36: I mean, these were the people that came up with the strategies of the past that clearly did not

00:41:42: work and now implement the sea change. It could work. I mean, surely, but there's no

00:41:49: change, generational change of ideas or personal fundamentally in Berlin. I mean,

00:41:55: it's basically the same people still in power positions implementing the change that were

00:42:01: responsible for the lack of strategy in the past. Yes, there are people who have been in

00:42:08: powerful positions throughout the last couple of years and even decades in some cases. However,

00:42:15: you also have Anna-Lena Baerbock. You have Christian Nintner who has spent in Robert Habek

00:42:19: as who is not part of the government in the past couple of years and decades informing the ideas

00:42:28: or the lack of vision that we've been talking about and criticizing for the past half hour now.

00:42:33: I think it's a bit too easy to just or a bit too simplistic to say everyone in the German government,

00:42:40: everyone in Germany is lacking a clear vision of where Germany needs to go in terms of its

00:42:46: security and defense policies or even when talking about a grand strategy where obviously not only

00:42:52: these two policy fields are affected and should be involved. I think there are actually, especially

00:42:58: when you look at the Green Party, voices and even in the FDP, voices who are more clear cut about

00:43:08: the threat that Russia is presenting. Let's just go back a couple of years when during the election

00:43:13: campaign in 2021, Baerbock was the only one who when asked about Nord Stream 2 said, "Well,

00:43:20: yeah, obviously it is not a commercial project. It is a GPU political project." So I'd like to

00:43:25: object the notion that everyone in Germany is confused about where Germany needs to go and

00:43:31: what we need to do about it. In general, and I understand it's not an Alina Baerbock and or

00:43:38: Robert Harbecker, Christian Lindner leading the chancellery. I understand that most of the

00:43:43: decision making is made at the chancellery by Olaf Scholz. I don't object to that,

00:43:48: which also leads to the observation. I believe that we are lacking a bit of a strategic vision.

00:43:59: What to do about that? Several proposals that have been discussed in the last couple of years,

00:44:04: for example, the establishment of a national security council that was heavily debated,

00:44:11: also in the run up to the publication of the national security strategy. I think it was a

00:44:16: missed chance to come up with that coordinating body. I don't think that it's just a sort of top-down

00:44:24: process, but also a bottom-up process that needs to be kicked off in order to get Germany to a

00:44:29: place where we do not struggle to discuss the topics that we've been discussing now. I think it

00:44:37: should be a two-brunged approach where the governing bodies lead the way, but at the same time also

00:44:46: leave room for civil society to be involved in those discussions. However, I think we should also

00:44:52: bear in mind where we came from and compared to where we came from, to what Germany did or didn't

00:44:58: do until 2022. In most parts, I think we have come a long way. Is there still a lot to do?

00:45:04: Yeah, of course there is. But again, I would see the Haas rather half full than half empty.

00:45:12: Often when I hear the debate in Berlin and not just in the Berlin bubble, but in ministries and

00:45:17: elsewhere, I often wonder, does that mean that Germany is setting the time frame within which

00:45:27: decisions can or cannot be made? There's often a belief if we come up with a new

00:45:39: force posture for Bundeswehr or with a new national security strategy or something else within which

00:45:48: we have laid out for how long it will take to implement it. This sends the implication that we

00:45:56: are in charge of setting the time frame within which all of this is happening. No, it's not.

00:46:04: Remember how extremely surprised people were on the 24th of February 2022? Why? Because someone

00:46:14: had not taken into account the German reading of history, but had fundamentally disrupted on its own

00:46:22: terms what he wanted to do. So I just want to throw some cold water on our belief that

00:46:32: as long as we spend enough time on identifying our way forward, which then we will implement

00:46:38: in good course, then most things will fall into line. I think that's a fundamental misunderstanding

00:46:48: as to what threats are around us and how we measure these threats, because they're not going to wait

00:46:57: for us to get ready or should I say battle ready? Indeed, this hubristic notion that somehow the

00:47:03: world adapts to Germany's parliamentary schedule has been thoroughly debunked, but at the same

00:47:08: time still seems to be adhered to. Absolutely. However, there are also signs in my understanding

00:47:15: pointing to the contrary. For example, Defence Minister Bistorius, together with other defence

00:47:22: ministers in Europe, has gone out of his way, has gone on the record saying that we have a time window

00:47:30: of about five to seven, maybe eight years, until Russia might be able to have reassembled its forces

00:47:38: in order to start an attack on NATO territory. And I think that is a very specific timeline we're

00:47:42: talking about, whether that is accurate or not. There's a different discussion. I also hear from

00:47:47: from colleagues in Central and Eastern Europe that time window is much shorter, but regardless,

00:47:53: I think we do see changes. They might not be as happening as quickly as we would like them to.

00:47:59: Just so that we don't fall into the trap of German self-interospection,

00:48:04: we've talked a lot about Germany and what it can do, what constraints are and all of that.

00:48:11: And remembering back to what we were discussing earlier about the national security strategy,

00:48:15: it was very clear about Russia's role as a threat to German and European security.

00:48:22: But I'd like to push back on this a little bit because it's not entirely clear that even though

00:48:26: this isn't a strategic document and it's a stated understanding that Russia is a threat,

00:48:32: that this is really entirely appreciated in terms of how the government in particular,

00:48:36: the Chancellor, is actually acting towards the Russian threat at the moment. We're discussing

00:48:44: a new chapter in German grand strategy at a time when French strategic arguments are shifting,

00:48:48: rhetorically at least. And we seem to be seeing a French president who is more willing to argue

00:48:52: his Prato-Slavic agenda of increased support for Ukraine along with Central and Eastern Europe

00:48:58: and the UK at a time when Berlin and Washington are drip-feeding weapons to Ukraine and not

00:49:03: explicitly backing Ukrainian victory. And Max and Ben, you spearheaded an open letter which

00:49:11: basically said that this was dangerous, that this strategic understanding that Olaf Schulz appeared

00:49:17: to have towards how to win the war in Ukraine was just simply not there. And Macron has been

00:49:27: much more explicit about the need to support Ukraine towards victory as opposed to simply

00:49:34: a stalemate. Can this rift in strategy be mended between France and Germany? And then the last

00:49:43: thing is, you know, it's fine for Germany to say that Russia is threat in some strategic document,

00:49:49: but is it really acting that way? Is the grass really always greener elsewhere? Are others actually

00:49:54: getting this right? Well, I mean, it's interesting to see in France that they are surprisingly having

00:50:00: the same problems with shifting their grand strategic approach, if you will, as the Germans do.

00:50:07: Macron, surprisingly to many, since the speech in Bratislava seems to be willing to do much more

00:50:17: in the NATO framework, to send more soldiers to the Eastern flank. I mean, the French aircraft

00:50:25: carrier strike group just came under NATO command yesterday for the first time in history. So these

00:50:32: are indeed strong signals. But Macron is fighting the same bureaucratic inertia and the entrenched

00:50:40: culture in its own country than Olaf Schulz or anybody else trying to implement site vendors in

00:50:45: Germany, you know, large parts of the French officer corps are pretty pro-Russian. They don't see the

00:50:51: Russian threat as much as many in Germany might or even more so on NATO's Eastern flank. Many in the

00:51:01: French command structures have been raised in a culture that was very much focused on the Pacific,

00:51:08: on Western Africa, on the Grand Larch, as the French say, so French role in the world. So it's

00:51:14: very, very difficult to bring these people to focus on the threat in Russia, on territorial

00:51:20: defence, allied defence in NATO's realm. So no, I don't think the grass is greener in France, but

00:51:26: I think it's a good sign again that this process that we are going through in Germany with site

00:51:33: and vendor is indeed something that is needed and done in other countries too. So I mean,

00:51:38: Germany might be less exceptional in that sense than we in Berlin tend to think with the big

00:51:44: difference again, coming back to this European Union-NATO relationship that Emmanuel Macron,

00:51:51: when he stepped on the international stage in 2017, came with a grand strategic vision to my mind.

00:51:57: I mean, he talked about European strategic autonomy since 2017. And that's that to my mind is this

00:52:05: kind of grand objective, long-term objective that people can work towards too, that people can

00:52:10: concentrate resources on the militarily, economically with regards to supply chains.

00:52:16: But this objective is now very much in contradiction with what we see happening in Europe. I mean,

00:52:25: what I see at least from a German or Franco-German perspective is more of the emergence of a NATO

00:52:31: Europe. So NATO being much more important, especially for states on the East-Sun flank,

00:52:36: but also for others, the British coming back into many of these discussions despite Brexit.

00:52:45: So it's not at all the European Union that is taking the lead in these discussions. And

00:52:50: so that's running contrary to the geo-strategic vision that President Macron came into office with.

00:52:57: And he now has to adapt. And I think to this point, it's still very difficult to say if it's

00:53:04: indeed a long-term strategic change that we are seeing with France, or if it's just a tactical

00:53:12: reaction. And if Macron might go back to European strategic autonomy and try to break out of this

00:53:18: formula of a European pillar within NATO as soon as he can.

00:53:23: Max, let's turn to you on this about other countries and how they're going through this,

00:53:27: other strategic cultures. And I mean, we might argue, indeed, there are many strategic deficits.

00:53:31: There's a German strategic deficit with German characteristics. But what are the strategic

00:53:35: deficits elsewhere? Or how are others actually approaching this? And are they doing any better?

00:53:40: What is fundamental in terms of how to read a country's strategic culture is whether or not

00:53:46: you can decipher an instinct about what a country would fight for. Where is the, to use the much

00:53:54: overused term, red line for a country from a strategic point of view? What is it that a country

00:54:01: would fight for? When I say fight for, I don't just mean when would they pick up the weapons in

00:54:07: March. But underlying this is then the grand strategic understanding of how to observe the world

00:54:17: or one's environment while we're still in peacetime or these preparations during peacetime,

00:54:23: about which nobody needs to talk much. That is, I think, the, should be the ingrained language

00:54:32: of grand strategic thinking that you have to prepare for war in order to prevent it. And that

00:54:37: is the grand strategic notion really at its best to be constantly aware that even

00:54:47: though you may have gotten used to a European socialization and that the world around you is

00:54:53: peaceful, but what is happening outside this world and that you are ready to engage with such thinking,

00:55:02: putting up a different hat, a different kind of rationality as to how and as to what

00:55:09: others want to achieve, often not with means that they're used to in Brussels and elsewhere.

00:55:17: And to get that drilled into our understanding of strategic culture is fundamentally important

00:55:25: in order to survive in the world we live in. Jakob has pointed out rightly earlier that it usually

00:55:31: takes a generation to build a strategic culture, to build a strategic mindset. So if that were true,

00:55:40: I think we're talking about timeframes of 10, 15, 20, or maybe even 25 years, if in peacetime.

00:55:47: I think that calculation could change very quickly if indeed we were not no longer in a sort of gray

00:55:54: zone that we are in right now between peace and war, but we're faced with an actual war,

00:56:00: which obviously nobody hopes for, but still I think that could really dramatically change the

00:56:05: situation that we are in today. And I mean, there are empirical data you can point to,

00:56:12: which would suggest that the majority of Germans do understand that Russia is indeed a very, if

00:56:18: not the most significant threat that Germany is faced with. However, the problem always then is

00:56:26: when it comes to practical means. What does that mean? What do we derive from that? And then the

00:56:32: picture becomes a bit more murky. It becomes a bit less clear when we're talking about practical

00:56:39: means. For example, were Germans ready to actually fight Russia? Were Germany to agree to have

00:56:48: Bundeswehr soldiers that are stationed in Lithuania now or on other parts of the Eastern flank

00:56:54: be willing to fight off a Russian attack? I think it's a bit too early to tell. I've been

00:57:00: traveling throughout Germany and engaging in public debates with the larger public for the

00:57:05: past two years. And my sense is that compared to prior 2022, there is more openness to understand

00:57:15: that we are living in a different world now. Arguably, that world existed already much earlier

00:57:23: and prior to 2022. But how can you expect a population to understand the threats they are

00:57:29: facing if their political elites are not raising the alarm bells or making the right

00:57:34: announcements backed up by the right decisions? We here at DJAP are also engaging in that public

00:57:42: outreach with an event series that you've been started with your team, Zeitmende Forteinatür.

00:57:49: And I think those are the exact measures that not only members of parliament or other officials

00:57:55: should engage in, but also civil societies, actors and experts like ourselves. And I think,

00:58:00: I mean, sometimes those discussions will not end the way that we would like them to. And there

00:58:07: might be controversies, but let's not shy away from that because that's what a democracy is about,

00:58:12: to make sure that the best argument wins. Eileen, thank you so much. And also for the plug. And

00:58:16: you will be appearing at our Zeitmende Forteinatür event in Varen on Thursday, the 18th of April.

00:58:22: And Maximilian Tehala will be joining us tonight before in Magdeburg for a discussion of the

00:58:27: Zeitmende. So yes, picking up on that and drawing it together a little bit, we've talked in our

00:58:33: in our group before that there is a, let's say, a contested field of views about strategy in Germany.

00:58:42: There has been, as Eileen mentioned, that if political leaders are not making the case for

00:58:46: this clearly enough, it will be difficult for people to follow. But we also know there are

00:58:49: groups actively resisting this as well. And there's been an anti-strategic culture also

00:58:54: in public debate. I would very much agree with what Eileen just said. I think that it's an important

00:58:59: part of think tanking, of working in expert communities to bring the discussions we are

00:59:05: having to the largest audience possible out there through podcasts, through panel discussions,

00:59:11: through public events. I think that's a very important first step. I think that many more

00:59:16: people in Germany should be discussing foreign policy, security policy. A second step, very

00:59:23: important as well, is to give more resources to research at universities, I think, to break these

00:59:29: the impression that talking about military affairs, about war is something to be stigmatized at

00:59:38: universities, to be kept out of civil universities. That's a big problem in Germany, at least to my

00:59:44: mind. And comparing it once again, I know the French example, comparing it to other countries.

00:59:50: And then I think it's also scrutiny. I mean, I would wish for a federal election campaign

01:00:01: coming up next year that would make for a good competition between foreign policy viewpoints

01:00:09: between grand strategic designs. I would very much like, for instance, the opposition, the

01:00:15: biggest opposition party, the CDU in Germany, taking this topic and bringing it into these

01:00:22: elections and telling the public, okay, we had the announcement of Chancellor Scholz in February 2022

01:00:28: of a Titan vendor, here we are now. That's how we want to pursue this. That's how we want to make

01:00:34: it different. That's how we want to do it better. And then the SPD could react, the Greens would

01:00:39: certainly react. And I mean, I'm certainly biased since I'm working on these questions on a daily

01:00:45: basis, but I think it would do the country tremendously good to make this a central topic

01:00:52: for the electoral campaign in 2025. And that's something we could help along the way. We could

01:00:56: offer to host the debate exactly on what are the competing strategic visions and the strategies to

01:01:01: get there from different parties, challenge them to come up with it, or then accuse them of being

01:01:05: strategalos if they fail to actually deliver. Max, what's your take on this and what are the

01:01:11: obstacles we need to overcome in German public and expert discourse to actually get to that

01:01:16: better strategic culture that we would all like to see? There's a tool of this since we live in

01:01:21: civil societies and democracies. There's a top-down and a bottom-up approach. The top-down

01:01:27: approach has been largely and powerfully shaped by the core understandings of the leading governmental

01:01:38: party, which runs the charcery. The SPD has succeeded against the Greens and the Liberals

01:01:49: in many instances. Look at Taurus, look at the National Security Council,

01:01:55: and other instances where it's simply clear that the SPD is the ruling party. Now, together with

01:02:07: that comes a clear understanding of Schultz and others, not Pistorius, who have communicated

01:02:19: in Parliament and elsewhere, particularly recently about Taurus. I don't want to go into Taurus, but

01:02:26: it's a much broad issue that came up during the debate about Taurus when Schultz attacked one

01:02:37: member of the opposition, saying you are instilling fear into people. People will become fearful

01:02:45: when they hear you. These are powerful tools of public communication that are also very

01:02:59: short-sighted because it seems that the leadership only addresses a single member of Parliament

01:03:08: when the whole world is listening to what the German Chancellor is saying.

01:03:11: So the top-down approach is fairly shaped by the ruling party and has set the tone for many

01:03:22: debates by suggesting I am the one who will take care of the fact that there's no escalation,

01:03:30: you don't need to be fearful. That sets the tone for say ordinary citizens for them. This is a guiding

01:03:37: line when the Chancellor says this is dangerous, this is creating fear and all sorts of people

01:03:46: would say okay, then this must be a valid point. Bottom up, I would agree with Jacob, there's a

01:03:54: lot of new thinking going on that has not yet fully materialized. There are initiatives to come

01:04:04: up with new professorships and so on and so forth, but looking back, the years between let's say

01:04:09: 2014 and 22 were years in which key leaders in public debates did not press forward and demand

01:04:23: for more strategic view in the sense that who is our enemy, who is willing and aiming to literally

01:04:31: disrupt and possibly destroy later the European order from which we have benefited so much.

01:04:38: I've experienced much pushback, we're not going to talk much about that.

01:04:41: The most I don't mean was many others who tried to raise the points and there was seriously pushback

01:04:48: because there was a common understanding, a common view, a common worldview which was based on the

01:04:53: win-win globalization understanding the flat world that you mentioned where it was absolutely

01:05:00: inconceivable that someone would go ahead and disrupt this world. As Merkel still said in 2019-22

01:05:07: anybody who goes back to Machtpolitik, power politics will defeat himself. Well, not everybody

01:05:14: saw it that way and that is the kind of thinking where I had wished that powerful think tanks,

01:05:21: powerful public figures would have said, right we would like to invite you to a stern public

01:05:26: debate in our think tanker elsewhere and we would like to have a frank discussion where you can

01:05:32: expose the underlying assumptions of your thinking and then justify them against criticism. That's

01:05:39: what I've seen throughout the world, be it in America and in Britain and elsewhere in Singapore,

01:05:45: that's what needs to be done not by making public leaders look foolish but by exposing

01:05:58: the underlying assumptions what you called Ben earlier which is actually a term used in strategic

01:06:04: studies, what are the unspoken assumptions of leaders? That is something that you will not

01:06:11: find in the national security strategy but you will find it in say emotionally raised

01:06:19: debates in the Bundestag when people really come up with what they think and why they think the

01:06:23: way they think. That is important, I think that we need more professional debates where key leaders

01:06:30: are invited, don't just give their speech and leave but then are questioned by serious and well

01:06:37: educated think tankers, strategically educated think tankers who then can ask powerful piercing

01:06:47: questions in order to get to the heart of the issue and that I think was lacking definitely

01:06:53: between 2014 and 2022. What is the purpose of our strategy? Instead of which you can often see

01:07:02: wrangling about numbers maybe a bit here maybe though and that that's not the point,

01:07:09: that is strategy on a low level but grand strategy works on a different level and that tells you

01:07:16: where the country wants to take itself otherwise it will be taken by others into the opposite

01:07:21: direction. That's it and this is a point we often make on the show is to say the goal defines the

01:07:25: means. If you're stuck talking about the means with no clear goal then you're not actually doing

01:07:30: strategy in any serious sense and I think to pick up on what you said before Max and Jakob,

01:07:35: interrogating those spoken assumptions but also the unspoken assumptions, the stated preferences

01:07:42: and the revealed preferences that come through different forms of acting and speaking is an

01:07:46: essential part of this and instead of that what exactly you mentioned before the accusation is

01:07:51: thrown back of fear mongering, of scare mongering, of war mongering when we should be actually talking

01:07:56: about these potential consequences of different courses of action which would then lead us to

01:08:00: be able to properly interrogate those assumptions upon which either an implicit or explicit strategy

01:08:07: is being formulated or implemented in practice and I think that's what's been lacking to a big

01:08:13: degree in a lot of the German debate which is quite particular for that reason because not only

01:08:18: has the analysis been questioned, the analysis of actually seeing threats is questioned at its

01:08:25: fundamental level for then quote-unquote "securitizing" certain issues for eliminating them from the

01:08:30: discussion of normal politics and we see that as a discussion across so-called critical security

01:08:34: studies in many fields and many countries but also here then the assumption that the remedy to that

01:08:40: of having proper strategy is also part of the problem comes out and so that resistance to strategy

01:08:46: itself because it smacks of those bad old ways of geopolitics that you both mentioned before which

01:08:50: resonate in Germany in a different way than they do elsewhere but I think what we identified also is

01:08:56: that there are strategic cultures and different strategic traditions in other countries that

01:09:00: don't suffer from that problem but they do suffer from those problems of limited backroom decision

01:09:05: making. They suffer from lack of inclusion of various perspectives that could make a genuinely

01:09:09: democratic grand strategy and I think it's important to make it democratic in that way if we're

01:09:14: going to actually have it as a as a clear goal for the democratic world. That's been such an

01:09:18: interesting discussion on grand strategy, its particular context in Germany and the difficulties

01:09:23: of creating new grand strategy here but also much widely more widely applicable issues that go to

01:09:29: other countries other democracies as well who are struggling to find the right approach to deal

01:09:34: with our authoritarian challenges while also trying to create an inclusive world order that

01:09:39: nonetheless serves the interests and values of democracies and I think one thing that it's

01:09:45: really important to point out is that if this is going to catch on in Germany it does seem as though

01:09:50: a more inclusive democratically based grand strategy would have to be the way that that's done

01:09:55: and so that puts the onus on elected politicians and on experts who are active in the public realm

01:10:01: to really engage with these questions and as Max Ter Haller said interrogate some of the underlying

01:10:06: assumptions the unspoken assumptions that undergird the performance of strategy the conceptualization

01:10:12: of strategy either when it's explicitly announced or when it's being practiced without giving it a

01:10:17: name and that kind of exercise I think will help us a lot in addressing the strategic deficit that

01:10:24: either by lack of strategy or by bad strategy still plagues the German response to a rapidly

01:10:29: changing world and as we've been discussing I probably would simply add that it starts with us

01:10:36: simply realizing and also appreciating and acknowledging that any choice we make has strategic

01:10:45: implication so you know it's not that we can simply you know sit out these kinds of decisions

01:10:53: or pretend that they don't have strategic implications we were talking about Nord Stream 2

01:10:57: earlier that had a strategic implication even though German policymakers at the time wanted to

01:11:02: pretend that it was purely a commercial project if we talk about support for Ukraine I mean there's

01:11:07: some members of our political elite who might think that they can just duck certain questions but

01:11:14: on what kind of weapons to send how many that sort of thing but even deciding what to send or not

01:11:22: you know is indeed a strategic choice whether we see Russia's state assets to transfer over to

01:11:32: Ukraine is a strategic choice I mean we can't pretend that if we don't do it that we don't set a

01:11:37: precedent for what happens when a country you know commits violations of international law the way

01:11:44: that Russia has choosing not to act is also a strategic choice you know if there's always a

01:11:51: choice that's right and certainly all these choices have strategic implications and they

01:11:54: affect your strategic positioning what's missing is a clearly announced or clearly enunciated

01:12:00: vision which could act as a load star for policymaking against which such decisions could then be

01:12:05: evaluated such choices could be made in a way that's coherent across those different policy

01:12:09: fields and as we heard in relation to France as well that would be an issue that comes up at the

01:12:14: moment too so while talking tough on Russia while backing that up with quite a bit of military

01:12:20: sabre rattling France is continuing to buy hundreds of millions of euros of Russian

01:12:25: liquid natural gas so that doesn't speak strategic coherence and so actually putting

01:12:30: these things a bit more front and center in decision making would allow us to hold policy makers to

01:12:35: account now whether they want that is a different question but in a democracy that's exactly what

01:12:39: we should be doing and we have the right to do it at the level of the strategic as well

01:12:43: as the level of domestic policy well to close out I would just say there's a reason the title of

01:12:48: your article is strategy grand and democratic so I think that final point is particularly salient

01:12:55: that's all for this episode of Berlin's Side Out join us in the next weeks as we take a look

01:12:59: back at the historical influences over German foreign policy before we get into what victory takes

01:13:06: in Ukraine and for the democratic west of which Germany is a part thank you to our guests today

01:13:13: Maximilian Teuhalla, Eileen Madle and Jack Bross and also to our project assistant Julein Stukla,

01:13:18: our technical producer Hendrik Mena and the DJP team once more from Berlin, Elf Bideszain and tschüss!

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