Annalena Baerbock has now announced that she wants a New National Security Strategy adopted. In addition to the usual blocks Climate, Corona, Ukraine, possibly feminist foreign policy and children and women, it remains to be seen how far the spectrum and prioritization will go. Neue Ostpolitik7New East Policy as Röttgen and Timothy Garton Ashproposed  should be the European reference. According to both of them, it is based on a 3-pillar construction 1) Strong European military, whereby the connection with NATO remains to be kept in mind. Even if Lindner just announced that the Bundeswehr should once again become the leading army throughout Europe, the structure of the Bundeswehr and its role in Europe and in relation to NATO have not yet been clarified. Regardless of what all the money is going for, from 100 billion Bundeswehr funds to a 2% NATO target.

But apart from the financial issues and procurement of the Bundeswehr, EU army and NATO, the question of strategy always remains. It must be understood globally, as ex-NATO general Naumann and 4 ex-NATO generals very far-sightedly put it in their paper „Towards a New Grand Strategy“. 2) Empowerment of the East European neighbors. 3) A new Russia strategy

Nevertheless, the universally praised US strategY master Brzezinski is universally acknowledged by his good old fellow friend Josse-Joffe (SZ/ ZEIT/ Atlantic Bridge) and many German educated citizens politicians due to their own lack of strategy or vision (Helmut Schmidt: „A Politician who says visions should seek immediate medical attention“) to be a far-sighted strategic thinker, but Brzezinski has always known how to subdivide strategies. Short-, medium-term and long-term strategy, although you can dream up a lot in the latter, even though it should actually be your ultimate goal and to which the short term and midterm stratgies have to be sudoridnated and managed.. What he published, however, was only a very long-term strategy, which some from the Foreign Office, somewhat excited and irritated, noted that it was probably a „grand strategy“. Well, what is or should be a strategy, remains esoteric secret or classified information without the risk of plagiarism. In any case, the published strategies of many think tanks and never politicians show a very self-satiated degree of abstraction, which wants to decouple itself from any binding statement and wants to remain vague so that further more concrete differentiations and options are de facto excluded (exception: The German Association for Foreign Policy `s (DGAP) 10 point plan for the new goverment, which is a to-do-list which claims to be a strategy) .

It is also interesting because of what level of hierarchy and which specialist, expert or Putin advisors start a heated debate in think tanks and all of these groups from the AA to people who are consultants in some kind of strategy consulting, what is THE AND ONE STRATEGY. On the one hand, it should be noted that it can be a simple hierarchical top-down problem, i.e. that a manager who cannot transmit the corporate identity and company strategy to his or her subordinates or vice versa cannot perceive or understand this due to lack of education or toileting . In addition to such observations that go back more to the contradiction between organization sociologiolgy and the Frankfurt School’s authoritarian character, it remains to be noted that the „grand strategist“ Brzizinski himself distinguishes between short-, medium-term and long-term strategy, while other people now think the ultimate long-term strategy “final goal” or the first short-term strategy approach was chosen incorrectly, which is why such misconceptions would affect the ideological strategic middle layer of bueratrats, consultants and the medium-term strategy, which is “the political middle center”. Everything else is not a strategy. But then there were people who thought that the mid-level staff formed such a poor synthesis of short-term and long-term strategic thinking, since both the wrong approach logic and the utopian strategic end goal were the mistakes in all strategy formation and the mid-level staff who has to suuport it, is already wrong from both sides. There is no right strategy. At least you met people who said: “Strategy is outdated. Concepts are the future. The „concept“ hits then offer you upbeat short-term problem-solving strategies that sometimes sound quite radical, otherwise they are more likely to have come from the “Live hard, die young” and “Today and here” generations. But at least within their concept they already feel like strategists or even grand strategists, i.e. the greatest strategists of the microcosm. In any case, in view of so much disagreements, one must first make it clear what a strategy should be. But there is already disagreement about this, even in the upper floors, which can at best be allowed to pass with the title „pluralistic discussion“. In any case, strategy in terms of its meaning, logic and scope is on the one hand a dimension of the time perspective and the hierarchy, but depends on the place in the hierarchy, the level of education, superior or enlightened king which are said to be more gracious and tolerant, as well as one’s own social saturation, availability and seductibility and associated (not only) Berlin “pulp problems” and “echo chambers”.

In any case, it is wrong in both directions to rely only on short-term concepts, on ad hoc decisions, on sight driving or on long-term strategies, even grand strategies that have never worked out, since the West at least since Trump and all the right-wing radicals and right-wing populists no longer exist, the Republican consensus in the USA has been terminated, the Pax Americana after the Iraq and Libyan wars, the financial crisis, is currently geared more towards withdrawal from the Greater Middle East, possibly also Europe in favor of the Asian Pivot, so at best short-term strategies (4 years) or medium-term strategies (8 years after the US election cycle, since the EU continues to be continuously dependent on US nuclear and military protection). And with regard to Joschka’s Fischer’s EU army and EU nuclear detterence, one should consider that neither the old Stahlhelm/steel helmet faction around Strauss, nor Dregger, nor Erhardt could, who promised the USA Bundeswehr troops for the Vietnam War if Germany would get nuclear weapons which was rejected,could get any aprroval or good-will for their idea, just as France and Great Britain didn´t like Strauss’s idea of ​​a European nuclear weapon power. And a European nuclear waepon power, should it ever come together between France, Germany and Poland, would simply not be operational and wouldn´t be a real deterrent, since Poland would be the first to press the red button, although it will not have nuclear weapons, France will not press the button, since the question „Warsaw or Paris?“ arises, Germany is neither granted nuclear weapons nor wants them, apart from the fact that the nuclear infrastructure required for this has meanwhile been destroyed after the nuclear phase-out. In addition, who would have the supreme command and due to which majority and command structure, if France and Poland are known for not wanting to give up so-called sovereignty, even Macron not with the Force de Frappe? So we’re curious to see what Annalena sees as her strategy and the national security strategy, whether she had advisors who wrote it herself or whether she would like to strategically accommodate the Green Party program or whether it’s more a new declaration of independence including all abstract and universal phrases, Pippi Langstrumpian visionary grand strategy or concept reamins to be seen..

Nevertheless, today’s strategy must not only be global and set priorities, but states and countries must no longer be understood as geopolitical Lego bricks like Brzezinski and his OSCEA and TESS or Schröder, who advocated a G 9 in his variant of world politics at the time. If you talk about Russia, such a strategy should not see an abstract binary final battle of evil Putin versus western values, but should ask the following options: After the Ukraine war with or without Putin? If with him and his abiding claim wanting to roll back NATO in a kind of hybrid rollback to at least 1997, what are the strategies against tha.Also deterrence. Do we have to go back to the 1980s of “limited nuclear war” and “victory is possible” in the nuclear war, including termination of the NATO-Russia Act. Furthermore: without Putin, one should consider several options and then courses of action in a national security strategy.

Not Putin or Russia, but simply the options of a Putin continuity or Putin replacement. Would one be satisfied if someone from the old Putin faction like Medjewdev, Glazyev or Shoigu replaced him, or Navalny or Kasparov or Khodormkovsky or Russia-Hitler Schirinowski or Eurasians ala Dugin or new shooting stars that aren’t even on the radar yet? One should already include the experiences of the peaceful revolution in 1989 and the Arab Spring, including the Islamic winter and IS. Therefore, such a strategy would not have to speak of Russia, but also address the various options for power and political successor candidates in order to be able to judge which strategic answer(s) man/woman * has. You also have to prevent it. that in the event of a Russian defeat, the cost of reconstruction will be suffered only by the Russian people. In this case, Putin and his oligarchs should probably pay first, as well as the Resource Empire for compensation costs. But that will not be enough and one must be careful that the Russian and Ukrainian population are not so ruined that they see every compromise or peace treaty as a new Versailles, stab in the back, treason by international forces and fulfillment politicians. And that not Navalny or Khodorkovsky but neo-imperialist and right-wing forces like Zhirinovsky, Dugin or a new group can use that for themselves.Let’s not kid ourselves: neither a Navalny nor a Khodorkovsky will disarm Russia or eliminate Russia´s strategic nuclear weapons like Ukraine. Neither does the USA, and how a new Russia could then come together with the USA, which is just as committed to nuclear weapons, within joint structures or loose cooperation is rather improbable as was the case in the 1990s during the Yeltsin era, especially since these politicians would come to power probably in an absolute time of crisis and give birth to a Russian Weimar Republic.

The simple formula “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”, the naïve look at dictators that one wants to overthrow and turning a blind eye to the other forces that are fueled by this should also be incorporated into strategy considerations since the Arab Spring. That one no longer talks about geopolitical state building blocks with a few general binary text blocks of the transatlantic think tank community and that everybody who is against the West´s enemy or competitors  is already naively endorsed and by doing this the West promotes his future enemies as China and  the Islamists against the Sovjet Union, but a differentiated multi-option strategy that knows how to differentiate and that has for every case and scenario an B-/C/D/E option and strategy. Also as far as the question of the reconstruction of Ukraine becomes real : Germany and the EU in particular will probably pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine, if Russia would also pay or not, a UN fund for the reconstruction of Ukraine would make sense, in which the USA, the EU , Russia, China , India and other countries donate together.

To the argument that the Ukrainians should stop fighting, since it would only cost more deaths and mass misery and that the Uklrainians  would be better off if, they submit to the pacifist Russian dictatorship. Oddly enough, it is mainly old 68ers who argue in this way, although in their youth they always supported the Viet Cong, the so-called liberation movements of the 3rd world, the partisans of the Soviet Union, the Resistance, Italian, Greek, Spanish and Tito partisans and they cheered about Hundreds of thousands or even millions despite all the victims, since even the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War from Hemingway to George Orwell alias Eric Blair (1984/ My Catalonia) and the GDR Minister of Defense Hoffmann as a veteran fighter in Spain fought for freedom and the right cause, . and then those guys always sang Moorsoldaten and Bella Ciao. Today probably rather Udo Lindenberg „What are wars for?“ and Biermann’s „Soldat/Soldier“. The pacifist turn that now is  counteracted by the traffic light coalition.

Strange that suddenly differnet stantards and scales are quoted. The Korean and Vietnam wars cost 5 and 3 million dead respectively, the Algerian war 1 million dead, the whole partisan war cost millions dead and the Soviets at that time 20 million dead. That was always accepted by these people and also advocated as the price of liberation, even propagated and encouraged. But now, when the Ukrainian partisans rise up against the new Russian fascism and imperialism, that should no longer apply. Also for reconstruction: Korea and Vietnam were completely annihilated and destroyed after the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Nonetheless, they quickly rebuilt themselves and are now the global economic powerhouses of Asia. Or to quote Paul Nitze: „Hiroshima is once again a thriving city“.