The Zeitenwende is Not Enough – Germany Needs a Grand Strategy

According to Dr Benjamin Tallis, the Zeitenwende, Germany’s security transformation, remains incomplete. On its current track, it is also dangerously inadequate. Despite the manufactured budgetary crisis, the Scholz government needs to finish the task it started. This requires the courage to be honest with the German people about the state of the world – and of Germany. To prepare for the future, however, the country’s leaders need to think bigger and define a vision for Germany and the world it wants to shape. This will be difficult as German leaders have long been reluctant to discuss, let alone set, grand strategy. But now, with the world in flux and the old ways no longer working, Berlin needs to clearly lay out what it wants—and how it plans to get it.

About the Speaker:

Dr Benjamin Tallis is a Senior Research Fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) where he leads the ‘Action Group Zeitenwende’ as well as the DGAP Grand Strategy Group & co-hosts the podcast BerlinsideOut. He is the author of the concepts of Neo-Idealism and Team Power and of the books To Ukraine With Love: Essays on Russia’s War and Europe’s Future and Identities, Borderscapes, Orders: (Im)Mobility, (In)Security and Crisis in the EU and Ukraine. Benjamin Tallis worked on EU security missions in the Balkans and Ukraine and has researched, analysed, advised on and practiced European security for 20 years. He was recently awarded the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Medal of Honour – the Star of Lithuanian Diplomacy.