Despite the Taliban's seizure of power in Afghanistan, the fragile change in America, the Middle East crisis arc and the Chinese power projections, foreign policy issues have so far hardly been discussed in the current federal election campaign.
The Union Chancellor candidate Armin Laschet put his proposal for a new "National Security Council" (which had been circulating in the CDU for a long time) up for debate many weeks ago, but it hardly met with any response.
Johannes Leithäuser
Political correspondent in Berlin.
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SPD Chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz has so far only resorted to foreign policy issues when it was necessary to distance oneself from the Left Party.
The left wanted to dissolve NATO, said Scholz, but the SPD would “strengthen NATO”.
This statement is not entirely covered by the election manifesto of the SPD.
In its foreign policy chapter, NATO only appears in one sentence, combined with the commitment that Germany should be a “reliable partner” in the western alliance “with a well-equipped and modern Bundeswehr”.
SPD stands by the two percent target
The NATO goal of spending two percent of its economic power on defense spending is not mentioned in the SPD program. The promise that the Bundeswehr will be well equipped is limited by the sentence that the SPD wants to “continuously improve the personal equipment” of the soldiers. The security policy priorities in the Social Democrats' program are on other aspects.
It says, for example, that Germany will further expand its commitment to brokering peace, in which it already has a "global leadership role", and for this purpose "build up a highly professional team of peace emissaries to conduct negotiations". The issues of the acquisition of armed drones and the modernization of the air force in order to use American atomic bombs (nuclear participation), which are disputed within the SPD, remain open; they should be subjected to a “careful assessment” of all aspects or a “careful discussion”.
In its security policy statements, the Union is not only committed to NATO's two percent target, it has also set itself other goals. According to this, the Bundeswehr should be able to provide at least ten percent of NATO's military capabilities by 2030; In addition, financial resources would have to be available in order to be able to maintain nuclear participation for the Bundeswehr. On the one hand, the Greens consider NATO to be “indispensable” in their program, but reject the two percent target as a static figure. The FDP supports NATO's spending targets and advocates the development of a new Alliance strategy for dealing with China and the Indo-Pacific region.
When assessing the state of the world there are nuances in the programs of the Union, SPD, FDP and Greens; there is a strong demarcation from the ideas of the AfD and the Left Party. While the Greens issue the most critical assessment of Russia and China, which they accuse of systematically undermining human and civil rights, forcing other countries into economic and political dependency and dividing Europe, the Left Party represents exactly the opposite. She accuses the United States and the European Union of enforcing their supremacy over Russia and China, and warns the West of a new "cold war". The AfD, in turn, takes the position that a stable European peace order requires cooperation with both the USA and Russia.
Differences in the German-American relationship
There are also differences in the assessment of the transatlantic relationship.
While the Union sees the United States as the most important global partner in world politics and understands a strengthening of relations as the core of a new “Alliance of Democracies”, the SPD speaks of a “new start” in relation to America and names fields in which the relationship is being redefined should, among other things, climate protection, global health policy, trade, disarmament and security issues.