Germany’s foreign minister is in charge of the federal government’s first joint national security strategy.
(Photo: IMAGO/Chris Emil Janssen)
Berlin The National Security Strategy is on the agenda for an upcoming government cabinet meeting on Wednesday. Handelsblatt learned of this from several people familiar with the cabinet’s plans. According to publicly available information, a presentation in the German Bundestag is planned for the following day, June 15. People familiar with the process do not expect the appointment to be delayed. The strategy coincides with the June 20 German-Chinese government consultations.
The roughly 40-page document will also cover dealings with China, which has become increasingly offensive, including the region around Taiwan.
The first National Security Strategy in the history of the Federal Republic is one of the important foreign and security policy projects of the Federal Government, supervised by the Federal Foreign Office. In the coalition agreement, Traffic Light has agreed to submit basic documents in its first year in power. But then it got delayed several times. Initially, the strategy should be ready by the end of 2022, with the target then being the Munich Security Conference in February.
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But there have always been divisions between the FDP, SPD and Greens. A few months ago, the Traffic Light Alliance abandoned its original plan to create a national security council after coalition partners could not agree on a location for the agency.
At the end of May, planned cabinet consultations had to be postponed, partly because of disagreements over the wording of setting up hacking possibilities, or digital defenses against cyberattacks from abroad.
The Liberal Democrats have worried about these backlashes for years. Libertarians agree with cybersecurity experts that fighting back against Internet attacks could lead to collateral damage. This means that unrelated third parties are also affected by the consequences of counterattacks. The LDP, on the other hand, worries about the danger of a digital arms race. But now the last differences have been ironed out.
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Work on the China strategy will also be complete once the national security strategy is approved on Wednesday. It is already clear that this will be postponed until after the summer holidays.
The Chinese document is highly anticipated. For weeks, however, representatives of the government and the Traffic Light Party have been emphasizing that there will be no surprises in the Chinese strategy – and for the first time in the history of the Federal Republic. The term is said to be similar to that in the league agreement. The first draft of the strategy, published last year, also includes new rules for the company’s operations in China.
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