Rüdiger Lucassen
National Security Debate
German Bundestag, February 14, 2019, Plenarprotokoll 19/80, pp.
9378-9380
[Rüdiger Lucassen is an Alternative
für Deutschland Bundestag member from the western German state of
Nordrhein-Westphalen. He is a retired army colonel and here introduces an AfD
motion calling for an annual defense and security issues debate in the
Bundestag.]
Herr President. Right honorable colleagues.
The AfD motion under consideration requires what is self-evident.
We want to debate here in the Bundestag questions of German security and
defense policy.
Ladies and gentlemen, since the end of the Cold War, German
security policy has lacked a compass. The government in the last three decades
has not succeeded in sufficiently defining Germany’s interests in the world,
due principally to the censure of Germany’s historical mortgage: the Second
World War and the Holocaust. This censure however has degenerated into a lame
excuse behind which the government hides itself, taking refuge in the useless
generalities of a so-called peace policy. But this peace policy is in truth no
policy. It is only a vulgar kind of pacifism according to which it is, in the
end, the same whether people die or not; the main thing being that the
political managers feel pure. Yet that is an illusion. The German refusals are
guilty, guilty by inaction. Abroad, the German excuses are long since no more
accepted.
Alexander S. Neu
(Linke): It must come from the Greens, the motion!
When the German past is not mis-used as an excuse, then the
government takes refuge in an imaginary European interest. Such a thing exists
neither in France nor Great Britain nor Italy.
Franziska
Brantner (Bündnis90/Grünen): You are obviously quite suspicious.
It exists nowhere. Yet the government uses this illusion so that
it need not deliver. The favorite phrase of the foreign minister is: That must
be concluded at the European level.
Peter Beyer
(CDU/CSU): You know nothing of what that is!
Its synonym is: For a long time now, nothing happens and Germany
has no position. That must change.
German security policy belongs here in plenary session for two
reasons: one is that security policy decisions in the last consequence are
always decisions of life and death – not of the life and death of the
decision-makers, but of the young men and women doing their duty in the armed
forces. A parliament which refuses to debate why its soldiers give their lives
is a disgrace.
Henning Otte
(CDU/CSU): What? That is shamelessness!
The second reason has less to do with decency than with management
security.
Franziska Brantner (Bündnis90/Grünen):
So many lies! That is not possible in one speech. Nonsense!
Here, the righteous rage.
Only when the strategic performance of German security and defense
policy is defined can the operational routine of the government and parliament
succeed. Since the government has never proceeded on this basis, all
subordinate decisions poke about in a fog.
Some examples. Since the government has never defined what
Germany’s interests in northern Africa are, to this day no adequate strategy
can be put forward for the Bundeswehr’s mission in Mali. Because the government
does not want to say that it is the German interest to cut off the flight
routes in the sub-Sahara, the Bundeswehr cannot be given a robust mandate to
combat the smuggling gangs [Schleuserbanden]. The result:
neither the people nor the troops actually know why the Bundeswehr is in Mali.
Such a mission is senseless.
Next example. Because the federal government evaluates the
conflict in Syria according to domestic political flirtations, it has
contributed nothing to ending the terrible war. To the contrary. For years, the
federal government gave out the slogan, “Assad must go!” That was it, without
stating an alternative, without proper engagement, without a plan. That is not
a foreign policy, that is opinion politics; in other words, ideology.
It might have been appropriate to clearly state Germany’s interest
in stability in the region and thereby arrange matters, since without stability
there can be no peace. Only thus functions Realpolitik
and thus only can German diplomats and soldiers clearly orient themselves. The
mere wish for the possible disappearance of a dictator, without saying what
comes after, is unworthy of Europe’s strongest nation.
A final example. The German military technology industry. What is
Germany’s strategic goal? We do not know. Which key technologies do we want to
keep purely national?
Markus Grübel
(CDU/CSU): There is a pretty graphic at the BMVg!
Which export quota do we require to attain that? Which foreign and
security policy interests does Germany pursue with arms exports and which
conditions do we tie to these exports? These are all questions which are never
debated in this parliament and therefore never conclusively settled.
Henning Otte
(CDU/CSU): Haven’t you listened to anything?
Out of this lack of openness and democratic debate culture arises
management insecurity. Out of this management insecurity arises German
unreliability. Ladies and gentlemen, it does not suffice to point the
moralist’s finger at the USA. Unreliability in alliance issues is a German invention.
To what purpose are maintained the armed forces of the Federal
Republic of Germany? That is in and of itself a simple question. Since 1990 has
it no longer been sufficiently answered. The armed forces should defend us and
our interests to the point of employment of force in an emergency. The British
defense minister said exactly that on Monday in a speech to the Royal United
Services Institute, an independent think tank for defense and security. The
British have something there. And the British have something else: a broad
public debate. Since when is there that in Germany?
Germany today is no longer capable of defense, neither national
defense nor in alliance. For that fact alone, should calm no longer be permissible
in the Bundestag. You keep quiet as if you had nothing to do with this
unsustainable situation. That is not acceptable. The parliament should compel
you to declare yourselves.
Germany must define its security policy interests. A condition
precedent is dispute thereon in the
highest constitutional branch. Then must society thereon dispute.
Dispute belongs to democracy.
Tomorrow the security conference begins in Munich. Germany is
host…
Germany should however also be a participant. That presupposes the
definition of one’s own security policy position. There is only one place to do
that: that is in the German Bundestag. Thanks.
[Translated by Todd Martin]
