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Jessica Rosenthal
Photo: Fabian Sommer / picture alliance / dpa
In mid-April, I was sitting in the living room of a shared student flat in my Bonn constituency when I heard the sentence that spoke to my heart: "At that moment, my whole world collapsed." That was six weeks after the Russian invasion, in violation of international law Troops in the Ukraine, after the "turning point" that Olaf Scholz had proclaimed in a Sunday session of the Bundestag, and after everything was simply different.
For a generation that, like me, was born in Germany in 1992 or later, a war of aggression on our doorstep, on European soil, means a deep turning point.
Many who were not directly affected by the war in the Balkans have only a vague memory of it.
Peace and freedom have become a matter of course.
War was always somewhere else.
The fact that this statement hardly applies to the many who have their family roots in other countries is a first part of the realization.
A second part is: far too often we were blind to what we didn't want to see.
Therefore, the turning point means one thing above all: self-criticism.
German politicians have not listened to their eastern partner countries, who have warned urgently about the danger posed by Russia.
German politicians, all of us, never saw the war in Georgia and the annexation of Crimea as the turning point it was.
And social democracy even increased its dependence on Russian gas in the years that followed and pushed Nord Stream 2 against the wishes of our European partner states.
We are now in a shambles.
If you want to do better in the future,
must have the strength to correct these mistakes.
This also applies to the SPD.
Doing better also means listening to Ukraine, which is also being attacked for setting out to be part of the EU.
Not explicitly promoting Ukraine's candidate status now shows that nothing has been learned.
I expect the German federal government to grasp this outstretched hand now.
In my opinion, practicing self-criticism does not mean only looking for mistakes in others.
It was not without reason that I shared the feelings of my interlocutor in the student flat share: For me, too, a world view collapsed with this war of aggression.
It was a world without weapons and the Bundeswehr was a necessary evil in it.
None of this was wrong.
It remains right to strive for a world without weapons, without violence and in peace.
In the medium and long term, it is even urgently necessary in the interests of humanity to work towards disarmament scenarios.
But all of these beliefs have never seriously considered the possibility of autocrats like Putin using violence to advance their interests.
I never asked myself how we would react to that.
That remains the mistake.
Especially when the social left wants to create a permanent peace order, the serious discussion about the ability of our democracies to defend themselves belongs right at the center of the substantive work.
That's why I'm not rejecting a special fund for the Bundeswehr on principle, but because circumventing the debt brake through the amendment to the Basic Law for the military is too small a solution for a much bigger problem.
A majority of states have condemned Russia's illegal war of aggression against Ukraine.
That's good news.
But the bitter truth is that the majority of the world's population does not live in democracies.
It is all the more important and decisive that we are able to defend our values and our freedom - if necessary also militarily.
That is also what the war Russia is waging is about.
The autocrats of this world fear nothing more than the idea of liberty, equality for all people and democracy, because nothing threatens their power more.
Anyone who wants to defend democracy and human rights against autocrats, both internally and externally, cannot and must not limit themselves to western regions or the military sphere.
Because as much as I put fundamental beliefs to the test on the one hand, I am firmly convinced on the other hand that it has never been more important to stand up for progressive politics: for global and national redistribution, for broad investment in Germany , the EU and the world, for a resolute fight against climate change and the fight against global poverty.
A special fund for the Bundeswehr alone does not go far enough.
Never before has European action been so important and never before has it been so necessary for Germany to finally assume a leading role in the EU.
Because even the last one should have realized that strengthening the European supply chains is a security issue.
Key industries must not be abandoned to the markets alone, only to wake up in a Chinese-dominated economy.
It is finally time for a European investment offensive and an active industrial policy.
It is necessary to build the necessary infrastructure, settle industry and make existing branches of the economy independent of fossil fuels in autocratic hands.
There is only one answer to this independence: Renewable energies!
The development of a climate-neutral European economic area, which can exist in a resource-saving manner and thus as self-sufficient as possible with the help of a circular economy, costs money.
This money is also needed if Europe wants to be a real economic partner for African states and does not want to leave the African continent to China's sphere of influence.
Finally, rebuilding Ukraine and dealing with the global hunger crisis will require additional funds.
But instead of facing these challenges resolutely, we haggle for every additional euro for development cooperation and already know that the money will not be enough.
Without the debt brake, which makes it impossible for us to make urgently needed investments in so many areas, we would not need a special fund for the Bundeswehr.
»Our democracy is also vulnerable internally«
Democracy must be defended externally, but also internally.
Our democracy is also vulnerable internally and parts of the population have less and less trust in it, which is also shown by the historically low turnout in the state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia.
The bottom-up redistribution that is becoming more and more visible is undoubtedly making a decisive contribution to this turning away from democracy.
The burdens of rising energy and food prices hit those who already have little and who no longer expect anything positive from the ongoing change in the world of work, whether through digitization or globalization.
The cohesion of society, which is the foundation for a strong and well-fortified democracy, continues to erode.
What should we answer when nurses ask why there are 100 billion euros for the Bundeswehr, but no money for better pay or a fully funded hospital infrastructure.
It's absolutely understandable when parents ask why their children don't want to use the school toilet because there is supposedly no money for the renovation.
The honest answer to this is: money is there – with those who no longer know what to do with it and also in the national budget.
But we prefer to comply with the debt brake instead of investing in our society.
In view of the increasing burdens caused by the war in Ukraine, the answer can only be: We are now ready to spend additional money.
For further relief packages, which are undoubtedly necessary, but also for the many structural changes that we finally have to implement.
If you want to strengthen cohesion in the long term and make democracy defensive internally, you can and must choose big solutions.
The flattening of tax progression, especially for small and medium-sized incomes, the introduction of social climate money, free local transport, basic child security: Politicians must show that we are ready to take big steps and that we are capable of acting - for the Bundeswehr, but also for our society as a whole .
For this, the state needs the financial room for manoeuvre,
which is not given with a debt brake.
But he also needs the courage to redistribute – for example by increasing inheritance tax.
Anyone who says a turning point must mean a turning point.
It must not be a mantra that only means the Bundeswehr, but not the entire defensiveness of democracy, both internally and externally.
February 24 demanded self-criticism and a course correction from me and my party.
February 24 demands the same from the FDP, but also from the Union.
The special fund is being created because the Bundeswehr has been completely saved in 16 years of Union-led Defense Ministry and is not operational for its mission.
That's why the Bundeswehr needs a lot of money now, of course, to compensate for the shortage management of the past 16 years and to produce modern equipment.
But many billions alone will not be able to restore the operational capability of the Bundeswehr.
The procurement system must also undergo a thorough reform, otherwise all the money will go to waste without the desired effect of better equipping the Bundeswehr militarily in the future.
Above all, however, we must finally have strategic debates, such as the two percent target and a strategic positioning of the Bundeswehr, together in society and in parliament.
This is the only way we can jointly find viable answers to the challenges of this turning point in time.
If we, as parliamentarians, want to defend our democracy, then we all have to have the necessary courage to critically examine principles that we once thought were right and throw them overboard when they are no longer up-to-date.
This applies to the defense budget and the equipment of the Bundeswehr as well as to the debt brake.
I'm not willing to tamper with the Basic Law for a special fund for the Bundeswehr, even though the mistake lies elsewhere.
I am not willing to agree to an amendment to the Basic Law because we lack the courage to genuinely reform our budgetary policy.
A turning point is bigger than that, a turning point requires unprecedented power and scope for a defensive democracy that takes responsibility.
