In the past year, Angela Merkel had stayed away from the Munich Security Conference and was busy forming a new government with her party, the CSU and the SPD. This year she returned to the international scene with a major foreign policy speech. A speech with which she also signaled: I am not yet gone. At the end there were standing ovations. Even Ivana Trump had nodded once or twice during Merkel's speech.
"We live in an age in which the traces of man penetrate so deeply into the earth that the following generations can see them," the Chancellor began her speech. She reminded of the Dutch meteorologist Paul Crutzen, who coined the term Anthropocene. Be it nuclear weapons testing, climate change, exploitation of raw materials or microplastics in the ocean, all this has implications for global security.
"Who wants to pick up the pieces?" Quoted the Chancellor the motto of the security conference. "Only we all together," was her answer.
Germany also has to move
But her speech was more than just a commitment to multilateralism. For that was what she had already given two years ago, as a clear answer to Donald Trump's policy of isolation, during her speech in Munich at the time.
Merkel reminded that Germany must also move if Europe wanted to develop a common military culture. If one talks with France about joint arms projects, one must also agree on a common policy on arms exports. "There are still many complicated discussions ahead of us," Merkel said.
SPIEGEL had reported that Germany and France had reached a first agreement on arms exports in a secret agreement to the Treaty of Aachen. Germany admitted its partners in this great freedom.
A "safe market for natural gas"
Merkel described NATO as a "stability anchor in stormy times". But the debate on the future of the Western Alliance should not be confined to the question of whether all Member States would devote two percent of their gross domestic product to defense. NATO must discuss a "networked concept of security". Germany has not only increased its defense budget in recent years, but also its development aid. That's not enough. "We have not yet developed a development policy agenda," Merkel said.
The chancellor pointed to the US, for example, in the question of the German-Russian pipeline project Nord Stream 2. The accusation that Germany was going to become even more dependent on Russia than before was nonsense. "A Russian gas molecule is a Russian gas molecule," Merkel said, regardless of whether it was going through a pipeline to Germany or, as before, via Ukraine. Moreover, the US has only been offering liquefied petroleum gas for Europe's acceptance for three years. With the phasing out of nuclear power and coal, Germany remains a "safe market for natural gas".
Kramp-Karrenbauer took the opportunity
The audience also included Merkel's successor in the party presidency, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. She used the security conference to strengthen her foreign policy profile in the background. She met with Fiona Hill, Trump's European Commissioner for National Security, who held a keynote address on Saturday morning at Women in International Security.
Of course, she will continue to work in the field of foreign policy, she said at an event of the Munich press club on Friday afternoon. At the same time she has experienced in her home country, the Saarland, how Europe is everyday and very tangible. That too is a foreign policy competence.