Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (CDU) wants to use the Bundeswehr more abroad than before. The minister and CDU chairwoman told the Süddeutsche Zeitung that in the future Germany must "openly deal with the fact that we - like every other country in the world - have their own strategic interests." Like no other country, Germany is "dependent on having free trade based on rules" and that there are open trade routes, Kramp-Karrenbauer said.
She referred to earlier statements by German politicians that Germany must take more responsibility. But Berlin was "not always up to date". In recent years, "we have often acted inactive enough: We have come to missions when we have been asked - sometimes we have more involved, sometimes less".
AKK: Provide existing resources
She knew "how difficult that is, how many victims it demands". In the future, Germany must "take the initiative itself, set impulses, show options". And it must be ready to "bear the costs involved - financially, politically and morally, as Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble has recently formulated it."
Only in this way could Germany "protect and shape an international environment that is in line with our values and interests". In doing so, one must be "in principle willing to make available the range of capabilities that we have".
On the objection that German soldiers would return more often in zinc coffins from the operation, the defense minister said that every operation was dangerous. But you have to, for example, the situation in the Sahel zone in mind.
There is "one of the biggest hubs for Islamist terrorism". The question is whether this terrorism will be exported to Europe. Mali is one of the regions with the highest levels of illegal migration and organized crime. "Security in the Sahel is part of our own security," she said.
