German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/181, pp. 23422-23423.
Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.
Yes, NATO is a success story. It has bestowed peace and security on its members for 75 years. And yes, we need NATO still today. With the Gorch Fock, Germany’s trade and seaways are not secured. Germany is not in the position to defend itself. NATO guarantees us protection and security.
This should nevertheless not prevent us from putting a couple of questions. The collapse of the Warsaw Pact had offered the possibility involving an all-European security system with Russia. The opportunity was wasted.
Sara Nanni
(Greens): By whom, then?
Instead – and honesty is in order to state this – we sought to drive Russia in a weak phase out of Mitteleuropa. That might have been a geostrategic aim of the U.S.A. – it did not serve European peace.
Ladies and gentlemen, in this house it is fairly senseless to recall that in the reunification negotiations declarations had been delivered – I name now only one – like that of the British Foreign Minister Douglas Hurd, which maintained – cite:
“There was no plan in NATO to admit in any form the countries of eastern and middle Europe into NATO.”
I could continue the list with James Baker and with our former Foreign Minister Genscher – I know, the CDU contests this and ever again was heard, all of that is not right.
Joe Weingarten
(SPD): You can stop! The remittance from Moscow comes!
Therefore I have also used this citation.
I of course also know that the Warsaw Pact then still existed and corresponding developments lay in the future. Yet the question needs be allowed whether it would not have been smarter to include Russia in the changes taking place.
President Bärbel Bas: Herr Dr.
Gauland, do you allow an interim question or an interim remark?
No, I do not now allow that.
The present war in the Ukraine has a long, previous history, and which also – and not in the least measure – has to do with the eastern expansion of the alliance. It is therefore important in this moment to recall: NATO is a European Atlantic alliance of defense. The Ukraine is not a part of NATO, just as little as, for that matter, Taiwan.
Joe Weingarten
(SPD): Er tut mal für sein Geld!
NATO is thus not responsible for the integrity [Unversehrheit] of non-member states nor does it have duties to fulfill in the Indo-Pacific area. And, ladies and gentlemen, it is also no ideological bulwark of democrats against autocrats.
We should always keep in view – and for this too is honesty in order – that the world’s largest democracy, India, does not share our viewpoint on the Ukraine conflict. In the world of Ranke’s Die Grossen Mächte, NATO is insurance coverage for Germany, and it is very good for that. It should not be an ideological spearhead in a fight against Russia, if we want to live in a peaceful world.
I am grateful.
[trans: tem]
