Feb 27, 2025

Acknowledgments, Foreword, Summary, Executive Summary

Feb 27, 2025

On February 24, 2022, Russia unleashed a brutal escalation of what is now its 10-year war with Ukraine, which began in 2014 with the partial occupation of the Donets Basin and the illegal annexation of Crimea. The 2022 invasion expanded the war into Europe’s largest since World War II. Advancing on Ukraine along multiple axes, roughly 120,000 Russian troops poured across the border from the north, east, southeast, and south, wreaking death and destruction indiscriminately on military personnel and civilians.

Feb 27, 2025

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. 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. 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.

Feb 27, 2025

The Zeitenwende has been warmly welcomed in Washington. For American policymakers, the changes in German approaches toward defense spending, energy security, and Russia more broadly have all been exceedingly positive. For some American officials, the changes might even be viewed as necessary. For the last several years, the United States has been increasingly clear about the necessity of having willing and able allies by its side for the purpose of strategic competition with Russia and China, as well as for managing transnational challenges such as terrorism. United States (US) strategies characterize allies as a comparative advantage—something American adversaries lack—or even an irreplaceable component of Washington’s approach. Germany, given its leading role in Europe, plays a key role in the constellation of American allies worldwide.