Olaf Scholz
The danes do it. The Dutch do it. Even Jamaica, Honduras and Papua New Guinea regularly state the formal goals of their defence and foreign policies. And so now does Germany. Long squeamish about flexing its muscles despite being the world’s fourth-biggest economy and a pillar of European stability, the country bit the bullet on June 14th and launched its first-ever national security strategy.
The 76-page document, meant to bring coherence and a sense of purpose across the breadth of government, does not make for exciting reading. Predictably, it stresses Germany’s deep commitment to the European Union and to nato, as well as relationships with key partners such as America and France. Understandably, it fingers Russia as “the most serious threat to peace and security in the Euro-Atlantic area”. And somewhat daringly for a country whose biggest businesses depend heavily on trade with China, it does not shy away from blaming the Asian dragon for “acting time and again counter to our interests and values”, though it insists that China “remains a partner without whom many challenges and crises cannot be resolved.”
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