Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s foreign minister, writes:

Our security is not a given. For too long, we did not listen to the warnings of our eastern neighbours who urged us to take the threats emanating from Russia seriously. We learned that “hoping for the best” is not enough when dealing with an increasingly autocratic leader. Besides all our efforts to construct a European security architecture with Russia, our economic and political interaction also did not sway the Russian regime toward democracy.

Just after the outbreak of the war, a schoolgirl in Vilnius, Lithuania, who lives only a short drive from the Russian and Belarussian borders, asked me: “Can we count on you?” I wholeheartedly answer: you can. We Germans will never forget that we owe our freedom in a reunited country also to our allies and our eastern neighbours. Just as they were there for us, we will be there for them now, because the security of eastern Europe is Germany’s security.

We know that for the foreseeable future, President Putin’s Russia will remain a threat to peace and security on our continent and that we have to organise our security against Putin’s Russia, not with it. In Germany’s first-ever national security strategy, we lay out how we seek to assume our responsibility in this new phase of foreign policy, in Europe and beyond, through an integrated security policy.

First of all, that means stepping up our commitment to our Euro-Atlantic family. We are strengthening Nato as the guarantor of our collective security. We are beefing up our military capacity with an unprecedented €100bn (£86bn) package and committing to Nato’s defence spending target. We are building a geopolitical European Union that is opening its doors to new members, such as Ukraine, Moldova, the western Balkan countries and, in the long term, Georgia. [Continue reading…]