 Dyna ymddangos, yn cymryd cyntaf o'r ddweud wedi'i ddweud ythodol, Thorsten Benner, dyfodd y dyfodd y Gwlad Poblig Pwyllwyr i'r Ddwylliannol. Mae'r gweithio ymddangos ymddangos yng Nghymru i'r newid gyfwyrd gyda'r newid gyfwyrd gyfwyrd. Yn ymddangos, mae'n ddwy'n ddweud. mae'r cofannadau yn ymddangosol o'r Ffbau Gwladol Cymru, mae'r cooeddau dechareddau orthodol, i gwysoeddfyddeth yn ymddangosol i ddinSurol yn ysgrinwyd ddiweddol. Mae'n rhoi ddogfnwyllur yn ymddangosol a'r gwrddwyr yn mynd i grefnodol i weithio ar gyfer y newid yma yn iawn i gylirio'r unigol sy'n unigol iawn i gyflymref o'r yrhyf. Mae'n oeddu bethrydol f iawn, awr yn gy sang, York at the University of California at Berkeley and there's an MPA from Harvard so normal rules apply firstly if you wouldn't mind turning off your phones secondly Torsten will talk for 15 maybe 20 minutes on the record and then we move to question and answer which will be off the record so thank you very much for the kind interaction and also to the invite to your institute and to Dublin I think you also max for organizing this is a great pleasure to be here I met an old friend in Frankfurt last night and said like I'll go to Dublin and give a talk about German foreign policy strategy and he said ah interesting is there a strategy I wouldn't know that we had one and he then when I said like hmm what do you mean and then he said like look in the old days what what he remembered from history was that Germany had clear strategies in the 50s what we called West Bindong integration into the into the west then os politic in this in the 70s and then fostering fostering European unity and making our contribution to that to which I replied but those were also in a sense easier times because West Bindong actually meant or presupposed that you had a west you can integrate with os politic presumed a bipolar system where you could kind of you know make a slight important adjustment but the kind of parameters were clear and right now Germany and that's why I say out of order is facing an environment where these old parameters that that we thought were clear are no longer givens and I think we're not the only country that that struggles to navigate this new geopolitical competition but maybe we're the country that's challenged hardest and that's my first point and Thomas Bagger explained this really well in a recent Washington quarterly essay called the world according to Germany where he argued that of all the countries after 1989 Germany kind of thought this was the kind of universal message for how the rest of world history would unfold that it would unfold in the exact same way with the cold war ended and were liberal democracy and multilateralism were victorious and that things would move in this direction and that we kind of invested in this and banked on on this so Germany Germany's foreign policy philosophy was very much multilateral is almost a fetish is the thing that we push for there's nothing there's nothing else in the in the kind of imaginary that could easily supplant this so we're much much more challenged than other countries like France for example where you had a strong we still have a string goalist tradition in foreign policy thinking by the by the events this return of the geopolitical competition Crimea and Russia's advances in Europe China's rapid ascent and the end of the illusion that China by integrating and being successful economically would become more like more like us so and of course the election of Donald Trump and no longer being NATO is turning 17 now but I think doubts have never been stronger in terms of how long it will last and whether we can still rely on the kind of bests of all worlds that we ever lived in the unconditional security guarantee by the US then the offer to compete economically with with the US that all that the NATO's NATO offers so this came as quite a shock to to the German dominant mindset after 1989 and it's no no wonder that we're struggling to adapt to this and what I tried to trace in just give you a few a few indication in terms of what are the ideas that are being kind of floated by German policy makers in terms of how we should be it could be adapting adapting to this I agree with my my friend that we haven't adapted well or like well enough and fast enough so there are big question marks on what the German strategy actually is but it's also a pretty tricky challenge and also the baseline our German foreign minister Heiko Maas he always talked about the kind of discursive vegetative state that we're in in terms of our the discursive coma vigil he called it that we're in in our terms of our foreign policy discussion and we're only slowly coming out of this the first answer five years ago by German leading German politicians our president the then foreign minister Steinmeier and our defense minister was to talk about merger more German responsibility but talking about more German responsibility is almost is nothing more than a cop out because what does it mean it only becomes is a very is a wonderful agent to paper over all sorts of difficult questions about trade-offs between interests security interests economic interests interest in in human rights that we have in trade-off decisions to be made if you just say more responsibility it sounds nice until you actually until you actually spell it out so more recently there have been some attempts by by German politicians to say how can we react to these end of the kind of geopolitical competition in which we find ourselves with primarily with China and and Russia and the US the big question marks on in terms of the the role of the role of the US and how how Germany and Europe should position themselves one idea that like one important rethink and I think their Germany really has has made quite an advance and we talked about it briefly over over lunch is on the economic front that in the German discussion it has become an important element to speak of this this team that with Chinese state capitalism a competition of systems in which we find ourselves in and that we need to be reacting reacting to that's primarily an economic wake-up call from the German side because German's read very closely the made in China 2025 strategy that the Chinese party state put out and did the math in terms of if China succeeded reaching its goal in terms of made in China 2025 which would be the countries and industries that would be affected most globally and on this heat map it clearly showed that the traditional German industrial strength would be hard hardest hit by a success of China's made in China 2025 strategy so there's there's quite a bit of rethink that from this perfectly complementary economic relationship that we had with China we sent high value added goods there and we get some cheap cheap manufacturing back that this complementary relationship is over and we find ourselves in a fairly tough and fierce competition where there's no level playing field because China hasn't developed into a social market economy but state capitalism that plays with plays by different rules and uses different instruments and that we need to be reacting to this so on on this side Germany has really rethought quite dramatically in terms of what at least is conceivable in in terms of policy reactions that right now we've become a lot more French in our approach to industrial policy our our economics ministry put out a strategy on German industrial policy 2030 where we we talk about national champions about active industrial policy measures about investment protection and screening of of course that we've kind of tightened over over the past years and we're also rethinking competition policy to kind of take into account what the that the relevant market may not just be Europe but globally and that it may some argue it's very contested that it may take European champions to compete effectively on that and that European competition policy needs to take needs to take this into account so vis-à-vis on the on the economic front vis-à-vis kind of a system with China I do think we have seen quite a shift in the in the German discussion and that's only a start of course it remains to be seen how this gets gets operationalized the the other front is of course how we how we would deal with with competition on the on security front and how we structure our relationship with with the US and our contribution to NATO and I think there the picture is much much less favorable in in terms of having having found answers I think there is Chancellor Merkel hasn't presented a coherent approach to how we should face the United States but our foreign minister has last last summer it was quite an interesting document he put out on German america politica how we should deal with with the United with the United States and he said that we should come to a more balanced relationship where we also pull our weight more that we have to invest more into our military and our military capabilities that at the same time we have to act as a counterweight to the US where the US directly goes against German and and European interests and that we have to step into the void that the US has left by no longer investing in multilateralism that we need to kind of invest there and take some stopgap measures to kind of hold the decline of the of the multilateral order now all these things at in and especially if they're combined with this approach of european strategic autonomy as a as a goal that motivates this all these approaches all these concepts make a lot of sense to me and I don't share the skepticism of a lot in the german of a lot of voices in the german discussions traditional transatlanticists who say that any talk about european strategic autonomy would jeopardize our relationship with nato and our anchoring in in the transatlantic reliance i do think that it actually has a dual use function to talk about about strategic autonomy on the one hand you can say this is what we actually need in order to make a meaningful contribution to nato to have to have nato become more balanced because this is also what the US expects that we build our own capabilities and if interests are aligned and if the US decides they will kind of want to continue with nato we can happily contribute these assets and capabilities into the transatlantic alliance no problem and i think will also be taken more seriously by the US in the in the medium term if we have these capabilities as as as germans and that this is also what the US side expects but it's also a hedging strategy for the day that the US decides maybe it's over with this unconditional security guarantee and we need to have an answer on the european front for this and the german front and strategic autonomy could it can be an important kind of focal concept for preparing this while you know making a more kind of balanced contribution to the to the transatlantic alliance so that on paper these these things all make sense what our foreign minister has has said that we need to have a stronger security contribution on the on the germans side that we need to kind of counterbalance the US where it acts against european and german interests and that we need to step into the void where US no longer invests in in matrilateralism in practice is a lot more difficult being this counterweight has kind of worked in some instances but it's tough of course in on the iran deal i think europe has short remarkable unity and even even if this special purpose vehicle that europeans created hasn't made much of a difference that very the very fact that we talk about creating an independent payment system and channels to safeguard our interests against secondary sanctions effects by the US so it was symbolically very important so in in terms of counterweight at least their their germany and europe kind of demonstrated that they can be serious about it if they they see their their very interest threatened and the same goals for for trade of course where where europeans were quite have been quite united against the kind of protectionist threats on the on the part of the US president in terms of our security contribution of course heiko marz is social democratic foreign minister and i think he has said all the right things but getting a majority in his own party and the german public for stronger security contribution is is a different story and that's not just the problem of of the social social democrats we've promised we would kind of pay up to two percent of our GDP we're not getting closer to that anytime anytime soon and it's very politically it's it's very tough to mobilize majorities for this right now in the german discussion and german credibility i think suffers greatly we cannot on the one hand talk about our contribution to european strategic autonomy and a more balanced contribution to nato without without actually making these investments and of course only some of these investments have to be purely military but you need to have a strong and functioning military to be credible in this and then all the investments in more diplomacy and civilian capabilities to go with that of course are critically critically important but we cannot say we invest in our kind of civilian crisis prevention capabilities and not invest in our in our military capabilities third aspect and i want to end with this the kind of investing in multilateralism where the u.s. is abandoning it or even going actively against it i think is also a very important it's a very important element of the strategic rethink that germany has and one that is closest in in line with where we're coming from and what makes up the german dna of foreign policy thinking but there's a lines of multilateralist that foreign minister mass has talked about and also the essence of chancellor Merkel's speech at the munich security conference in febru was we all together have to do this we need to kind of save multilateralism and do everything we can to make multilateralism work of course in practice this is uh a lot harder if you face players that are not interested to do that middle power multilateralism can working with the rest of the european union who is willing working with canada japan some other willing players can get you so far but only ultimately it will be will be quite tough and also the the big question is whether we're actually willing to stand up for for also the the the rights of these multilateral countries those committed to multilateralism when one member of this alliance of multilateralists is being attacked by another kind of bullying country this is the has been the case with canada multiple times last year canada was kind of singled out by saudi arabia after the foreign minister did criticize some human rights practices in in the kingdom and nobody stood with canada in after this and also two canadian citizens are being held as hostages by the chinese party party state right now and there's some solidarity but i think this solidarity on on the part of those committed to multilateralism could be could be a lot could be a lot stronger plus that's the open question in terms of whether this alliance of multilateralism has this kind of mutual support function if it if it is to work plus the big big question is whether you can actually ultimately hold the decline of the multilateral order without the united states with i think you can you can put some stopgap measures in in place as as long as the first trump administration lasts but i don't think we're any remotely prepared for what a second trump term and multilateralism would mean and what our strategy would be because this alliance is a good kind of stopgap measure for one term but i'm not entirely sure we know what what to do with there were a second trump trump term and i'm curious what you think in terms of how germany should be preparing for this how germany should be pulling its weight in europe investing in what our foreign minister calls europe united but where many other european partners of germany often accuse germany with good reasons for hypocrisy and not investing enough in european unity on the euro zone and on other issues i'm curious what you have to think about what you have to say on this and what your recommendations and ideas for how germany can navigate this kind of treacherous and difficult new environment would be thank you very much thank you very much