 So ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our webinar. My name is Catherine Meen and I'm chair of the Germany group in the Institute. And we're particularly pleased today that we're joined by Dr Benjamin Telles, who's a senior research fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations. He'll talk for about 20 minutes and then we'll go as always to question and answer with the audience. You'll be able to join the discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom, which you were already familiar with. So send your questions as they come to you throughout the session. And we'll send them to Dr Telles once he's finished his presentation. But I particularly would ask you to identify yourself when you're sending in your questions. Please note that today's presentation and the question and answer are both on the record. And you can also join the discussion on X or Twitter using the handle at IIEA. So it's a great pleasure to welcome Dr Telles and to hand over to him. He's a senior research fellow with the German Council on Foreign Relations, where he leads the action group Zeitengwende, as well as the ground strategy group and co-hosts the Berlin podcast, Berlin Inside Out. He's the author of the concepts of neo-idealism and team power and of several books, including To Ukraine with Love, Essays on Russia's War and Europe's Future, and Identities, Borderscapes, Orders, Immobility, Insecurity and Crisis in EU and Ukraine. He's worked on EU security missions in the Balkans and Ukraine and researched, analyzed and advised and practiced European security for 20 years. And he was recently awarded the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Medal of Honor. So Benjamin, I have great pleasure in handing over to you and I look forward with great interest to what you're going to say. Thank you. Vielen Dank, Catherine. Thank you very much indeed and thank you to the IIEA for this generous invitation to come and talk today about the Zeitengwende, among other things. Now Zeitengwende, I'm glad to say, is a concept and a word that is gaining traction outside of Germany as well as within. It's not quite up there with Litzkrieg or Kindergarten yet as words that we know and love from German. And what I would hope to do today is to give a clearer picture of what is actually happening or what's not happening with Germany's supposed security transformation, which has come under the title of Zeitengwende. I'm going to talk a little bit about that and move on from that to one of the main conclusions that we've drawn from the work of the Action Group Zeitengwende, which as you mentioned, I lead at the DGAP and how that actually has drawn us to think that Germany needs to think a little bigger. And so even beyond the Zeitengwende, it would need to think about ground strategy. And I think that's not a uniquely German need. So it's something that we can talk about in the context of the wider emerging global situation. So spoiler alert, bottom line up front, Germany's Zeitengwende, the security transformation, remains incomplete. And on its current track, it's also dangerously inadequate. Despite what we would argue is that despite the manufactured budgetary crisis that we see in Germany through the debt break or Schuldenbremse, as it's known, the Schultz government really needs to finish the task that it started. And I'm going to talk a little bit and happy to also take questions on why I think that's unlikely to happen, unfortunately, partly because it requires the courage to be honest with the German people about the state of the world and about the state of Germany. So I think to go through a little bit, provide a little bit of context first, go through different aspects of the Zeitengwende and where that stands, what more might need to be done and why I think that's unlikely to happen in current circumstances, but why leaving it at that won't be enough for Germany or for its allies. And this all draws on the work of that group that I mentioned, the Action Group Zeitengwende, which brings together serving politicians from the four main parties, the mainstream parties in Germany. We don't work with the IFD, Alternative for Deutschland on the far right or Die Linke, the left party on the left, nor the new party of Sarah Wagenknecht. So we work with the Social Democrats, Christian Democrats, Free Democrats, the Liberals and the Greens. And it brings together politicians from across those parties, together with officials from various ministries, some Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Energy and Economy, or Economy and Climate Protection, as it's now known, as well as experts, both German-based and German themselves, but also international experts and former politicians too. So it brings together a really interesting, diverse group of views and perspectives, as well as diverse expertise across different policy fields. So with that in mind, it's important to note that the Zeitengwende has yielded some change, but it remains, as I say, both unfinished and insufficient for Germany to actually face the future in a serious way and to deal with the current threat situation that we see. But it's also insufficient for Germany to seize the opportunities that are actually out there to do more to protect the values that Germany shares with many of its partners, as well as to pursue our common interests in a serious way. A lot has actually happened in German policy since February 2022, and Germany, of course, has been part of the coalition of countries that has delivered weapons to Ukraine. A quite significant step forward in some ways, breaking national taboo, but I'll come back to that later as well because breaking national taboo is not enough, it's not going to cut it. Part of this coalition of countries that have delivered weapons to Ukraine, insufficient quantity to stave off defeat, but Berlin has been a key factor in actually preventing the delivery of enough weapons of sufficient quality and quantity to allow Kiev to actually win. And this is a key indicator, I would say, of both the change that has happened and its limits. Similarly, Germany was one of the countries blocking Ukraine's invitation to NATO, which was a key turning point I think last year, and we've seen that was a tipping point in the relations between the West and Ukraine, the level of support provided, the momentum shifted at that point, and Germany was part of that together with the U.S. of blocking Ukraine's membership of, or invitation for membership of NATO. It's interesting to note that Olaf Scholz still hasn't actually said that Ukraine should win the war, and of course it was the full-scale invasion that prompted the Zeitlin-Vendor speech on the 27th of February in that special session of the Bundestag, which raised a lot of expectations among partners, among allies, and even among adversaries that Germany was finally going to get its security act together. But Scholz has still yet to say that Ukraine should actually win that war. His consistent line is that Russia should not win and Ukraine should not lose, and that's a world away from Ukraine should win, and we'll get into the reasons for that a little bit later. But again, I would suggest this points to the limits of the change that is currently being pursued. And I think a lot of frustration has built up after those expectations were raised, particularly also with regard to Germany's defence spending. Now, a lot has been made of the 100 billion Euro so-called Sondervermogen, a special fund that was set aside to improve the capacities of the Bundeswehr. Now, most observers who know the state of the German Bundeswehr are very clear that 100 billion Euros, a lot as it is, would barely touch the sides of the gaps in the Bundeswehr's capabilities. The estimated deficit in spending on Bundeswehr capabilities over the last 10 to 15 years is closer to about 500 or 600 billion Euros in terms of what would have been needed. Moreover, it's being spent on yesterday's shopping list. It's not actually going to give Germany either the breadth of equipment or the depth of munitions it would need to develop a serious warfighting capability of the kind that would also fulfil its NATO commitments and would actually help provide a sufficient deterrent against any renewed Russian aggression in future. So while 100 billion Euros is a lot, it's not enough, and this is to a significant extent the story of the Titan vendor writ large. Something I found interesting coming out of the work of our group is that despite this, and we'll go beyond security and defence in a second because the Titan vendor is broader than that, but despite this, politicians from across the four main parties and the officials that we deal with still insist that Titan vendor is actually a useful political framing to help try and drive change through what are often heavily bureaucratic and quite change resistant institutions. Anyone who's lived in Germany will know what I'm talking about there. They tend to see this term as useful because it has captured the public imagination to a degree and because it has set up a clear purpose of change and it allows the Chancellor's feet to be held to the fire somewhat, to actually hold him to account for what he promised to do. And on the very first episode of our podcast, Berlin's side out, it was Briti Akob who was a former adviser to Anna-Lena Baerbock, German foreign minister, who said if the Schultz government had actually just followed through on what it promised to do, that would actually already have been a Titan vendor worthy of the name. It hasn't done that, and this defence spending issue is one of those indicators of that. We know that Germany is going to hit the 2% target this year, most likely next year, after that, not. Bigger question behind that, of course, is also what do you get for that money? Accounting fixes and pension payments don't deter anybody. So what is the capability you're getting for that 2% and again the gap is extremely large. So Germany's not ready to face the security threats that are out there. It's not ready to play its role militarily. And I think that's irritated quite a lot of allies who had their expectations raised, but change has come slowly. I mean, in a very stuttering way. And it's often looked as though actually stepping up and doing what needs to be done at particular moments has only come as the result of external shaming, external pressure put on Germany by allies, rather than the result of a conscious strategic choice to understand what needs to be done to take ownership of it and even to be able to take credit for it. Germany's been dragged kicking and screaming to deliver tanks, for example. They're still not delivering the tourist long range missiles that would significantly increase Ukraine's operational strike complex. It seems as though only external pressure is good enough and particularly only when it's in lockstep with the US. So this doesn't speak to a really clear strategic point of action or strategic approach to international affairs. So with that in mind, understanding that Germany does need very much still to finish this task that it started the self-congratulation that has become the tone of choice in Berlin of late. Olaf Scholz consistently pointing to how much Germany is giving to Ukraine rather than looking at what needs to be done and to actually ensure victory. And now Olaf Scholz actually pointing the finger at other allies saying they're not doing enough, which has caused an even wider rift with Paris than was it before, which were things were already bad beforehand. So rather than falling falling victim to this self-congratulation, the group of experts and politicians that we convene really see the need to finish the job. When we look at what that means in practice, a lot of the discussion does still focus on defence, and I'll return to that in my last part of my remarks, but we from the very outset have taken an integrated approach to understanding what the Titan Vendor is, what it could and what it should be. The need to look beyond that security and defence focus to other policy fields was pretty apparent pretty quickly. The knock on effects of the security shift and caused by Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine were most apparent in the need to get off Russian gas and quickly. And that had further implications for Germany's climate policy. So understanding energy and climate policy in this mix and putting energy and climate policy firmly in their geopolitical as well as ecological context, I think it's a very important shift of the discursive frame and of the political frame that has taken place as a result of the Titan Vendor. We also saw that where there is political will, there can often be a way found. The building of the two large LNG terminals, liquefied natural gas terminals, within nine months saw a lot of shots actually boasting of a new German speed, the Neue Deutschland Schwindigkeit as he called it or Neue Deutschland Tempel. Though it must be said less evidence of that in other fields. And the mix of suppliers that Germany has replaced its Russian gas with has also raised some eyebrows. So as well as Norway, which is getting gas from an ally that shares values like minded country or well and good, there is also gas being supplied by Qatar and Azerbaijan, who no one would hold up as symbols or flag bearers for democracy and liberal values. Some in Germany point to this diversification of supply as itself the solution and say that that was actually the problem in the first place there wasn't enough diversity. Others myself included see it as more inherently problematic to continue dealing with authoritarians and enriching autocrats through that kind of trade relation. And I think this this comes to a particular point with the energy and climate aspects of the Titan vendor when you consider that Germany's renewables, which are particularly comprised of solar energy and wind energy are highly unstable and depend on even then actually depend a lot on Chinese technology, Chinese processed critical minerals, etc. So Germany's green transition is itself subject to significant geopolitical risk, even if it seems being the solution to getting off fossil fuels in the medium to long term. And we don't think that that geopolitical risk has been properly priced in at the moment. Of course, this raises questions about nuclear power and the very controversial decision to continue the so-called inner gear vendor, the last vendor before this one, and to abandon nuclear power. And what this did was put some of the political dogmas within the coalition under the spotlight with the Greens in particular coming in for critique there with their preference to go back to high polluting coal rather than give up on the their opposition to nuclear power. All of these questions about energy also pertain to Germany's economic competitiveness and its economic and trade model came under the spotlight a lot, partly because of the failure of the so-called Wandel-Durch-Handel or change through trade approach that it had taken to Russia in particular. That was in a way a symptom of a really lazy reading of the end of history period after the end of the Cold War, where it was assumed that there would be an auto-Western automatic process, a convergence wager whereby neoliberal economics would help spread liberal politics. This clearly didn't work and still Germany was clinging to this for far too long after it had become clear that that wasn't going to work. The recent China strategy in the country has certainly put an emphasis on de-risking rather than decoupling, has emphasized the need for companies to engage in risk monitoring and risk management, but has not properly given the kind of guidelines that the businesses we speak to in Berlin and elsewhere around the country would like to see in terms of actually incorporating geopolitical risk calculation into what their business models are. Moreover, on the other side of this, there's not seem to be as much support as there could or should be for businesses seeking alternative markets to replace their dependencies on China. And that's something that we work on, to try and bring business and government a bit closer together as allies for security as well as for prosperity. Another factor from this aspect of the Titan weather that's worth considering is the degree of alignment between the interests of the German state, the German people and of smaller and larger German companies. And there's clearly an oversized influence or outsized influence of the larger German companies in policymaking. This is increasingly coming into conflict quite interestingly, we think, with smaller medium-sized enterprises who want more geopolitical protection, what more geopolitical guidance, which goes directly against what, for example, the CEO of Mercedes-Benz said recently when he gave a statement that's now become quite infamous, saying that for them de-risking from China means more exposure, not less. And that's not a sentiment that's shared widely around the security community at least. But it does show the extent of work that is still needed to be done to properly factor in geopolitical risk. All of this, of course, implies the need for change in Germany's economic model. And that is coming at a time when there's significant discontent within society, there's significant feelings of too-conflict loss, if you like, or futurelessness, which are manifesting themselves in various forms of discontent. So it is indeed a very difficult political nettle to grasp, but the cost of not doing it we think is much higher than of letting it actually go unchecked. So last part on security and defence, as I said, the Germany has come a significant way. It has broken through its own taboos, but that's something that it's rather inordinately proud of, rather than actually looking at what needs to be done to address the external situation, what needs to be done to reassure allies and to meet its alliance commitment, it's still focused on the fact that it came from the infamous 5,000 helmets to sending truly lethal aid to Ukraine. But what we've seen in recent months is a switch back to a focus on defensive weapons, such as air defence. Air defence is something obviously extremely useful in protecting infrastructure, protecting civilian lives, but you're not going to win a war with air defence. The Ukrainians have put some of the air defence assets to offensive use as we've seen in very imaginative ways, but it doesn't come with the quantity to actually expel Russia. And so Germany's shift to focusing on that very much is over peace with Schultz's refusal to say that Ukraine should actually win. Where there is more concrete progress is on the deployment of the permanent deployment of a German brigade to Lithuania. I was in Vilnius quite a few times of late, but I was there in December for when Boris Pistorius, the defence minister, actually signed disagreement and that is warmly welcomed by all NATO allies, especially by Lithuania and the other Baltic states, who see this enhanced forward presence being bolstered on the ground in a meaningful way. The catch is that brigade at the moment is ill-equipped. It doesn't have its tanks. Those are some of the tanks that have been sent to Ukraine. Boris Pistorius, the defence minister, is using this brigade as a battering ram to try and drive through the changes that he wants to see in the Ministry of Defence and in the German procurement system. And it will be very much a litmus test if he can do it, then it does show there has been some progress in that regard. If he can't, then it really shows the failure of that change. And still, again, more should and could be done. In the national security strategy, which has great shortcomings as a strategy, it is claimed nonetheless that Germany has a quote-unquote special responsibility for European security. But as a recent analysis by my colleague Christian Merling and Tobin Schutz noted Germany still needs a quantum leap to get its military into the kind of state that would make it ready to deter or even to defend against a Russian attack. Now Christian and Tobin put their time frame for that. It's between being six to ten years after the cessation of hostilities in Ukraine. Most of the analysis on the Eastern flank put that time scale a lot shorter, as low as two or three years. And it doesn't seem to me and many other analysts in Berlin that that sense of urgency has penetrated to the highest levels of decision-making. And the buck really does stop in the chancellor and in the chancellery with shots who has made very clear from the beginning that this is a matter of so-called chef's sucker, the boss's things, the boss's business. He's calling the shots and indeed he's calling what not to do. That's a matter of increasing frustration for the coalition partners, particularly for the Greens who are pushing to do more. And what we see at the moment in Berlin is an extremely fractured situation where its coalition decision-making is extremely difficult. There's a lot of infighting. There's a lot of different answers coming from different ministries to the same questions when asked by international partners, which makes it difficult for allies to actually deal with with Germany in a meaningful way. That seems to be coming to a head, perhaps over Taurus in the vote that will take place on the 24th of February in the Bundestag. There's another chance to approve the Taurus delivery, even if shots can still veto that. It's seen as a symbolic moment for the Greens in particular to ask what is it we're actually getting from this coalition and why is it worth staying in or not. So, across the board, therefore, while there has been some change, it's not enough for what Germany needs. It's not enough for what Germany's partners needs, need. And there's a lot of work that remains to be done. What I think is really positive about the Titan vendor is it's opened up a different space for conversation about these issues. Things that were really definitively off the table before February 2022 are now discussed as a matter of course. And German people have actually been consistently ahead of the chancellery in particular on wanting to do more and wanting to change more. Just one small example, but back in April 2022, just after the checks and the polls have become the first to deliver main battle tanks to Ukraine. 64% of Germans were in favor of Germany doing the same. Now we know that it took until January 2023 for that to be actually agreed upon because the chancellery and others weighed into that debate on the negative side. And we can see consistently that the lack of clear leadership, the lack of clear vision for a German future is hindering the possibility for political action. And Schultz is actually, he often claims that he's guided by public opinion, but he's been actively shaping it in directions that mitigate against change. The last thing to highlight, and I'm happy to talk more about this and the questions and answer specific or general points on this. Is that even if Germany did finish its site and vendor it's not ambitious enough. So even if it fulfilled the promises that were made in the 27th of February speech, it wouldn't again be enough. So what we conclude from our year and a half now of deliberations on this and of active engagement with decision makers as well as decision shapers in Berlin and elsewhere is that Germany really needs a true grand strategy and needs something that could bring together its policy across geopolitics, geoeconomics, ecological change and technological change, and get them working in coherent ways rather than against each other as has been the case in the past and as is still the case to a degree in the present. And think particularly of the reliance on the US for security and how reliable that is reliance on the Chinese market as well as Chinese materials. And how that plays with its ability to conduct its green transition in the context of geopolitical shift and geopolitical uncertainty in the Taiwan Strait and elsewhere. That notion of grand strategy, bringing this together a unifying point for the nation if you like is obviously extremely controversial in Germany given the relation Germany has had to ground strategy geopolitics and so on in the past and it's not our proposals swimming along without any resistance let's say there's quite a lot of who are about it. But the conversation is now being had in a different way and to have that conversation and be able to move it beyond the old cliches about Carl Schmidt, his kind of geopolitics. Others we could think of from the German School of geopolitics, which really put a lot of Germans off this kind of stuff for obvious reasons, but to be able to have the conversation and say, Our enemies are actually they have strategy that they're using against us. This is not the time for us to be strategie loss. That is a space that has been opened up by the Titan vendor and that's the space that politicians who do want to make that change, as well as experts such as myself and my colleagues who think it's necessary are moving into an operating in. I'm very much looking forward to your questions about that, as well as to if you have anything on grand strategy or on new idealism which is one of the ideas for that grand strategy that I've been proposing along with some others. Thank you all very much.