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Germany’s National Security Strategy: Is It Helping or Hurting the Zeitenwende?
Marina E. Henke
©2025 Marina E. Henke
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In June 2023, Germany released its first-ever National Security Strategy (NSS), making it, along with Italy, one of the last Group of Seven countries to produce such a document. For many years, calls were made for a national-level security policy document. Nevertheless, all the calls were ignored by the German government and the German chancellery, the most important actor in this process.1 Only in 2021 did the topic get picked up again. The coalition treaty of the new government, succeeding Angela Merkel after 16 years in power, pledged to work toward an NSS during its electoral mandate. Nevertheless, the Ampelkoalition government probably would not have committed to its pledge without Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.2 Indeed, writing the NSS became part and parcel of the Zeitenwende. The strategy document was meant to codify many of the security policy and doctrine changes Germany would undertake.
In this essay, I examine whether the NSS has the potential to succeed in this endeavor. Will the NSS help or hurt Germany in the process of implementing the Zeitenwende? In addition, what does the strategy mean for US-German cooperation? What can we deduce from the document that would suggest Germany will become a more (or less) capable NATO ally and partner? Indeed, a capable ally possesses both: (1) the necessary capabilities to engage in meaningful burden sharing and (2) the ability to make a meaningful strategic contribution to transatlantic security and global order—in material and in intellectual terms.
Unfortunately, I find Germany’s first-ever security strategy exhibits significant deficiencies. Above all, the NSS is less an actual strategy than a wish list of goals such as maintaining national security, democracy, and prosperity; mitigating the climate crisis; and maintaining a strong Europe and a close relationship with the United States. The document fails to make choices and fails to recognize pursuing all these goals will inevitably require trade-offs. It also falls short in filtering and diagnosing the threats Germany faces. Although the NSS certainly mentions Russia as a threat, the Russian threat is followed by numerous other threats and challenges, thus diluting its importance. Lastly, many of the proposed means and measures listed in the NSS are vague and lack coherence.
In short, the NSS is currently not very useful to implementing Germany’s Zeitenwende or making Germany a more capable US ally and partner. The German government seems to have treated the NSS as an exercise in goal setting rather than problem-solving, avoiding difficult decisions for fear of political backlash. Instead of saying no, the German government attempted to resolve conflicts by embracing all available options. The document is thus unlikely to provide any significant help in streamlining German defense spending. On the contrary, given the numerous funding areas outlined in the document, Germany is likely to spread its investments thin, resulting in limited overall impact. The document also depicts German strategic confusion. Germany appears to want it all (for example, national security and a strong social welfare state; democracy, the rule of law, and close ties with authoritarian states such as China; European strategic autonomy and a strong NATO). Such a lack of strategic focus impedes German intellectual leadership on transatlantic security and global order.
Nonetheless, a silver lining might still exist. Constructive US-German discussions on the weaknesses of the NSS could help Germany recognize its challenges in strategic thinking and strategy development. During the Cold War, Germany possessed the necessary intellectual infrastructure to develop and implement strategy. Germany was able to provide intellectual leadership in NATO. Since the 1990s, Germany’s intellectual infrastructure has gradually collapsed. Today, very few German universities, think tanks, and government research institutions practice research and teaching on strategic issues. Germany’s intellectual infrastructure must be rebuilt. The Zeitenwende must encompass a dual-track process: (1) the restoration of Germany’s military defense capability and (2) the rebuilding of an intellectual infrastructure that allows Germany to think strategically and foster a broad understanding of security policy among its population. The latter is indispensable to the societal acceptance of Germany’s security and defense reform program going forward.
What Is Good Grand Strategy?
Germany’s NSS qualifies as a grand-strategic document. It outlines Germany’s long-term objectives in terms of foreign policy, security, and overall strategy. The NSS applies all the tools Germany has at its disposal. The latter characteristic, indeed, makes the document a grand strategy—as it sits above strategies that deal with lower levels of statecraft (for example, cyberstrategy and defense strategy).
Most scholars in history, political science, and business administration would agree having a (grand) strategy is better than not having one. Why? First, a grand strategy improves policy coherence. Government structures are often complex. All levels (from the local level to the regional and national levels) can be involved in foreign and security policy decision making, sometimes even simultaneously. Often, little coordination occurs between these many different levels. A grand strategy can help. It creates a reference framework: a common thread.
Second, strategy increases efficiency. It sets the direction for foreign and security policy and indicates where money, troops, surveillance capacities, time, and other resources should be invested. Strategy helps identify key areas that require investment and areas where resources can be saved.
Third, strategy fosters democracy, transparency, and accountability. Many fundamental questions arise in the process of writing a grand-strategic document: What are a state’s most important strategic goals? What are the biggest threats to achieving these goals? What measures and steps are necessary to mitigate these threats? A good grand strategy forces political decisionmakers to provide clear answers to these questions. In this way, a grand strategy increases the political leadership’s accountability to society.
Nevertheless, not all strategy can fulfill those tasks. Some strategic documents miss their mark by, for example, diluting focus instead of enhancing it; by discounting strategic trade-offs, thus raising false expectations among the population; or by focusing on processes and methods rather than outcomes. Indeed, bad strategy is more than just the absence of good strategy. Bad strategy often has a life and logic of its own, a false edifice built on mistaken foundations. The result is a weakened, confused, and inefficient state.
What, then, makes grand strategy good? Similar to a musicologist evaluating a piece of music using a combination of analytical, historical, cultural, and theoretical frameworks, a grand-strategy document can be evaluated using criteria borrowed from international relations, political sciences, and historical research.
Criteria 1: Define Core Strategic Goals
Any grand strategy needs to define a state’s core strategic goals. These goals should reflect the highest purpose of state action—the absolute priorities of a government. The goals are set for the long term, which can mean years, even decades. National security is best suited to be any state’s core strategic goal. States operate within a world where the potential for war exists continuously. National security is thus any state’s most precious good, and grand strategic thinking should not be diluted by prioritizing other goals of lesser importance. What does national security entail? The term encompasses the preservation of a state’s sovereignty, safety, and territorial integrity.3 Nevertheless, national security also includes the necessary means to achieve the latter ends—the capability to defend a state’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and safety. These capabilities encompass the size, health, and skill levels of a state’s population as well as its economic resources, agricultural output, access to raw materials, and military strength.4
Criteria 2: Identify Core Strategic Challenges
Any grand strategy has at its very core the task of overcoming problems.5 As such, the second criterion any grand strategy needs to meet is identifying the most important challenges that stand between a state and its core strategic goals. For example, what prevents a country from ensuring security for its citizens and territory? If a state fails to identify and analyze these challenges, no strategy is being developed. Only challenges that either threaten a state’s core values or threaten its very existence ought to be mentioned. If the identified challenge does not qualify, it ought to be dropped from the grand strategic design process.
Criteria 3: Analyze Core Strategic Challenges
The set of core strategic challenges defined above needs to be analyzed in detail. This analysis entails a diagnosis and an explanation of the nature of each challenge. Why does the challenge exist? What are its causes, triggers, or drivers? Why have certain challenges become salient? What forces are at work? In concrete terms, analyzing core strategic challenges means, for example, asking: Why does Russia pursue a revisionist foreign policy? Why is China spending more and more on its military?
Criteria 4: Designing a Logic of Action
A good grand strategy includes an overarching logic of action (that is, an overall approach to overcoming the diagnosed strategic challenges). Like the guardrails on a highway, this logic of action directs and constrains policy without fully defining its content.6 The logic of action channels action in a certain direction without defining exactly what shall be done. Such coordination creates leverage. It allows states to get the greatest return on or result from a given input.
Criteria 5: Translating Strategic Ideas into Concrete Actions
Finally, a good grand strategy translates the logic of action into concrete policies and resource commitments involving all means of statecraft, including political, diplomatic, military, economic, or technological resources. A good grand strategy also recognizes a state’s strengths and weaknesses and seeks to use the most efficient available tools. A good grand strategy also involves considering one’s capabilities and competencies in comparison to others (most notably one’s antagonists). Where do my strengths lie compared to others? A good grand strategy also uses such asymmetries by cleverly leveraging a state’s strengths against the weaknesses of the other side when necessary.7
A grand strategic document does not need to point to all the actions that will be taken as events unfold, but enough clarity about action must exist to bring concepts down to earth.
Does Germany’s National Security Strategy Apply These Best Practices?
The five criteria described above might seem reasonably easy to implement. But in the real world, many grand-strategic documents often do not follow these best practices. How does Germany’s NSS fare in following the five best practices described above? In what follows, I do not aspire to provide an exhaustive analysis of the NSS but rather point out a number of relevant observations.
Germany’s Strategic Goals
Germany’s NSS lists the following interests and goals that guide German strategy:
(1) protecting the people, sovereignty and territorial integrity of our country, the European Union and our allies; (2) protecting our free democratic order; (3) strengthening the European Union’s ability to act and its internal cohesion and further deepening the profound friendship we share with France; (4) consolidating the transatlantic alliance and our close partnership based on mutual trust with the United States of America; (5) fostering prosperity and social cohesion in our country by protecting our social market economy; (6) promoting an international order based on international law, the United Nations Charter and universal human rights; (7) fostering peace and stability worldwide and championing democracy, the rule of law, human development and participation by all population groups as a prerequisite for sustainable security; (8) promoting the sustainable protection of natural resources, limiting the climate crisis and managing its impacts, securing access to water and food, as well as protecting people’s health; (9) maintaining an open, rules-based international economic and financial system with free trade routes and a secure, sustainable supply of raw materials and energy.8
This list violates the best practices described above. First, instead of defining a core strategic goal to be achieved, the document provides a long list of strategic goals. Why is this problematic? As mentioned above, choice is the essence of strategy. Presenting a long list of strategic goals dilutes focus and strains resources, making prioritizing and working effectively difficult for the German government. The result is a thin allocation of time, funding, and personnel, reducing the likelihood of meaningful progress in any area.
Second, several of Germany’s strategic goals are kept very vague (for example, “strengthening the European Union’s ability to act and its internal cohesion” or “fostering peace and stability worldwide”).9 But clarity of strategic goals is required for government employees and citizens to understand what needs to be achieved and where to direct their efforts. Without clarity, resources get wasted on inefficient actions. Unclear goals or the ambiguity of goals also lead to procrastination.10 When people do not know which steps to take, they often tend to postpone tasks.
Finally, the list ignores strategic trade-offs. It creates the illusion Germany can have it all: territorial security and generous social spending to ensure social cohesion; environmental protection and limitless economic prosperity; the rule of law and good trade relations with all countries of the world (including authoritarian states, foremost among which is China). The paper ignores the impossibility of this simultaneity and the fact Germany must inevitably set priorities and make compromises. The NSS also raises false expectations among the population.
Germany’s Strategic Challenges
The NSS 2023 describes the strategic challenges Germany faces on pages 22–27. Due to space constraints, the challenges cannot be fully reproduced here. But the section refers to the following threats: (1) Russia; (2) growing multipolarity and increasing systemic rivalry; (3) China; (4) wars, crises, and conflicts in Europe’s neighborhood; (5) terrorism and extremism; (6) erosion of the arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation architecture; (7) chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threats; (8) power-political considerations in international economic and financial relations; (9) intensified international technology competition; (10) cyberattacks; (11) activities of foreign intelligence services and other actors; (12) serious and organized crime; (13) illegal financial flows; (14) the climate crisis; and (15) refugee and migration movements.
The part of the NSS that describes strategic challenges also exhibits strategic weaknesses. On the one hand, the NSS fails to prioritize threats. Not all threats amount to either threatening Germany’s core values or threatening its very existence (for example, foreign intelligence services, organized crime, or illegal financial flows come to mind). Why is this problematic? Trying to tackle a multitude of threats all at once can be overwhelming and unproductive.
Many of the threats are also not analyzed in detail. Their causes are largely ignored. Many of the dangers are even anonymized (that is, their driving forces are generalized), as the following examples illustrate: “international economic and financial relations are also ever more informed by considerations of power and influence” and “critical infrastructure is absolutely essential and is increasingly the target of serious threats and interference.”11 Why is listing the challenges and diagnosing them necessary? Without a clear diagnosis, the treatment can be misdirected, or the wrong problems get addressed, thus potentially causing more harm than good.
Germany’s Policy Recommendations
The NSS 2023 presents its catalog of means and measures under the banner of integrated security. But the term does not offer an overarching logic of action. It prescribes all tools of statecraft ought to be used to implement the NSS but does not prescribe how they should be used. As a result, how Germany intends to create leverage is unclear. The listed measures also feel somewhat disconnected from the strategic challenges, which makes checking whether the proposed measures are effective in terms of the objectives they are intended to serve more difficult. Democratic accountability is denied. Key challenges also remain potentially unaddressed or inadequately handled.
For example, the subsection on defense focuses on military measures. But it does not explain how specific means will address the mentioned challenges, such as deterring Russia, terrorism, or organized crime. The subsection also lists measures for civil protection, even though this topic is not directly mentioned under the strategic challenges. The EU is assigned numerous tasks, such as intensified engagement for the stability of our neighborhood, “sanctions,” countering “terrorism,” and dealing with “irregular and involuntary” migration and “migration instrumentalisation.”12 The NSS 2023 also mentions ideas like changing the treaties, “greater use of majority voting,” and “EU integration, cohesion, and enlargement,” which remain vague.13 Crisis engagement is addressed without a direct reference to the strategic threats. When and where Germany intends to deploy its crisis tools remains unclear—worldwide? Worldwide deployment is of course unrealistic.
What Now?
I started this essay with the question: Does the NSS have the potential to help or hurt Germany in the implementation of the Zeitenwende? Does the document aid Germany in becoming a more (or less) capable NATO ally and partner?
My analysis above shows the NSS 2023 falls short regarding best practices in grand strategy design and is a rather vague and incomplete document that contains only a few elements that can be called strategic. Moreover, the document does not portray a sense of direction. Germany does not appear to have a clear notion of what strategic goals it wants to achieve and which threats and challenges it prioritizes.
Why is this problematic? The document undermines coherence and efficiency, leaving Germany at risk of adopting fragmented policies that could even veer into contradictory directions. The NSS also fails to build public support, as the German public remains uninformed about the government’s strategic priorities and threat assessments. Moreover, the document does little to strengthen Germany’s role as a reliable US partner and ally. The intellectual shortcomings of the NSS weaken collective defense efforts and could jeopardize transatlantic and global stability by emboldening US adversaries.
What steps need to be taken now? The new US government should encourage Germany to rebuild its grand-strategic infrastructure. What does this rebuilding involve? Initial measures would include the German government investing in strategic planning departments, as well as training military and defense officials in strategic studies. Additionally, German universities should establish programs with a renewed emphasis on teaching and research in strategy and grand strategy, while think tanks should actively engage in robust grand-strategic debates.
Since the 1990s, Germany has stepped back from an intellectual leadership role in transatlantic security. Germany is incapable of making a meaningful strategic contribution, to the detriment of the United States and global order. Now that Eurasia is once again a central arena of geopolitical competition, Germany needs to reengage. What the United States needs is a German material contribution to maintaining the military balance in Eurasia and strategic and intellectual leadership from a nation with deep, organic ties to the region. If this challenge is left entirely to the United States, it will stretch US resources and capabilities to their limits. The United States should urge Germany to produce a new NSS under the leadership of the next chancellor, drawing lessons from the shortcomings of the NSS 2023.
Endnotes
- Germany operates as a parliamentary democracy, meaning the executive branch (the government) is derived from and accountable to the legislature (the Bundestag). The chancellor is the head of government in Germany and typically the leader of the majority party or coalition in the Bundestag, which is responsible for forming the government, setting policy agendas, and overseeing the executive branch. Though initiatives to draft a national security strategy can come out of the Foreign Office or the Ministry of Defense, the chancellor will always have the last word. Return to text.
- Writing the National Security Strategy would become an arduous process with many delays. Return to text.
- Barry R. Posen, Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy (Cornell University Press, 2014), 1. Return to text.
- Posen, U.S. Grand Strategy, 4. Return to text.
- Kevin P. Coyne and Somu Subramaniam, “Bringing Discipline to Strategy,” McKinsey Quarterly, no. 4 (Autumn 1996); Hugh Courtney et al., “Strategy Under Uncertainty,” Harvard Business Review (November–December 1997); and Posen, U.S. Grand Strategy, 77. Return to text.
- Richard Rumelt, Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters (Crown Currency, 2011), 84. Return to text.
- A. W. Marshall, Long-Term Competition with the Soviets: A Framework for Strategic Analysis (RAND Corporation, April 1972); and Mie Augier, “Thinking About War and Peace: Andrew Marshall and the Early Development of the Intellectual Foundations for Net Assessment,” Comparative Strategy 32, no. 1 (2013). Return to text.
- Federal Government of Germany, Robust. Resilient. Sustainable. Integrated Security for Germany: National Security Strategy (Federal Government of Germany, June 2023), 21. Return to text.
- Federal Government of Germany, National Security Strategy. Return to text.
- Allan K. Blunt and Timothy A. Pychyl, “Task Aversiveness and Procrastination: A Multi- Dimensional Approach to Task Aversiveness Across Stages of Personal Projects,” Personality and Individual Differences 28, no. 1 (January 2000); and Johannes Hoppe et al., “A Cross-Lagged Panel Design on the Causal Relationship of Task Ambiguity and State Procrastination: A Preliminary Investigation,” North American Journal of Psychology 20, no. 2 (June 2018). Return to text.
- Federal Government of Germany, Robust. Resilient. Sustainable., 24, 25. Return to text.
- Federal Government of Germany, National Security Strategy, 37–39. Return to text.
- Federal Government of Germany, National Security Strategy, 39. Return to text.
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