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We have to want NATO - as Foreign Minister Heiko Maas writes in his guest contribution. Want replaces reality. This is original German idealism. It can not be what may not be.
But is not French President Emmanuel Macron right? What is this alliance in which the economically strongest member of the USA classifies the cars from the second strongest member Germany as a threat to its "national security"? Where the NATO member Turkey repeatedly invades another country in violation of international law - forcing the special forces of the NATO member France to retreat? Where the same Turkey organizes ethnic cleansing and forced relocation on a large scale - but the rest of the alliance step aside and emphasize that NATO is a value alliance?
One can call such an alliance brain-dead - but it does not have to. But it is naive to poke your head in the sand in front of this reality. It is time to be honest.
Heiko Maas longs for a NATO that has not existed for a long time. In the 70th year of its existence, the Alliance is only a shadow of itself. NATO is in an existential crisis.
Different interests of the Allies
The truth is that NATO can no longer secure the essential security interests of its member states due to diverging interests of its members. The intervention of Turkey in Syria directly endangers the security interests of Europe. It threatens to destroy the successes in the fight against the IS.
Like in Syria, NATO will not change the second major threat to European security in Libya. That is why Europe, with its own resources, will have to do everything to end this conflict. The most important step for that will be that the NATO and EU members Italy and France no longer support, pay and equip opposing belligerents there.
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This is precisely where Europe's ability to cope with the problems on its doorstep must be proven. That does not make NATO obsolete - but forces painful prioritization. Are we banking more on the European Union, or are we blindly upgrading the NATO alliance to two percent? Heiko Maas has no answer to these questions.
NATO was and is good at deterring symmetrical threats. She can do this because European NATO members spend around three times as much on armaments today as Russia. And because - out of their own interest - the nuclear power USA behind it. We take the security concerns of Eastern European NATO members seriously. These include continued reinsurance measures such as so-called air policing over the Baltic States, NATO's rotating presence in Eastern Europe and an improvement in reaction times.
"To keep the Russians out" still works as well as "to keep the Americans in" . For this purpose, NATO was founded. No one wants to hear about the third order "to keep the Germans down" today. On the contrary.
There is no European disarmament initiative
But relations with Russia also reveal strategic differences between NATO members. The termination of the INF contract by Donald Trump may be in the interests of the US and Russia. Both now have no restrictions on China. But it is not in the interest of Europe.
These nuclear weapons threaten Europe's security. Anyone who refuses to think about disarmament will find himself "intellectually self-destructive," as Professor Bernd Greiner, most recently director of the Center for Cold War Studies, aptly analyzed. The demand for disarmament is not about left-wing reverie, but tough realpolitik.
Where was the initiative of the Social Democratic German Foreign Minister to react to the resignation with their own advances on disarmament? What would an Egon Bahr, a Willy Brandt, have done in such a situation?
It would have long been a European disarmament initiative needed. For example, Russia's bid to relinquish the tactical nuclear weapons in Büchel and US missile defense in Eastern Europe when Russia withdraws its "Iskander " missiles from Kaliningrad and its medium-range land-based missiles from Europe. For this, Maas not only had to want NATO, but had to promote such proposals within NATO. Because even this would have been controversial in NATO. But none of this happened.
How little the strategic interests in NATO still agree, shows the foreseeable end of the Iran nuclear agreement (JCPOA). Once an effective agreement against Iran's nuclear arming, the US under Trump unilaterally terminated it without a vote within NATO and destroyed it with a brutal unilateral sanctions policy. Now we are on the brink of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. This directly endangers the security of Europe.
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If there is much talk now of the strategic sovereignty of Europe - in the rescue of the JCPOA it should have been proven. But all the promises of European foreign and finance ministers to allow Iran trade - even with oil - proved hollow. Europe is not even able to bring humanitarian aid such as cancer medicine to Iran. But that would not have been a military issue, but one in which Europe has real strengths - business and trade.
You can not replace politics with military ones
If NATO no longer covers the essential security interests of Europe, if NATO members even endanger Europe's security, then Germany must assume more responsibility. In the world and in Europe. But you must not replace politics with military, as Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer intended. We need a strategy for resilient European sovereignty. And that means, first of all, strengthening Europe's strengths.
For the world's largest single market, this is less of a military issue than a question of economic and fiscal policy. If we want to give an answer to US unilateralism, we must establish the euro as the global reserve currency. This is the only way we can really play internationally and are no longer helpless against unilateral sanctions.
Above all, however, the deep crisis between Germany and France must be overcome. But that takes more than coming to uniform European standards for arms exports. It means no longer putting selfish national German interests above Europe - as in digital taxation. And it means strengthening Europe's capacity for civil-military interventions in the asymmetric conflicts in its neighborhood. This requires different equipment, other procurement than the renewed strengthening of conventional deterrence. It would mean more policemen than tanks, more helicopters than frigates.
That would be the opposite of brain death - but above all, it would be the overcoming of nostalgia for Nato in favor of Realpolitik. It's time to be honest.
