For Germany, debates about the evolution of the country’s foreign and security policies are hardly new, and the ‘modern’ era of those deliberations can readily be traced to the end of the cold war in Europe, and the completion of German reunification in 1991. Since then, there have been numerous Wendepunkte (turning points) in Germany’s European and international policies. However, as with the rest of Europe, and indeed the entire Euro-Atlantic region, the full Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 had been widely seen in Germany as the start, or at least a start, of the ‘post-post-cold war’ era in the region.
After decades of concentrating on economic and political cooperation as the vanguard of German foreign affairs, then-incoming Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced in the wake of Moscow’s aggression that there would be a stronger focus on bolstering German security. This would later include a stronger commitment to NATO, with the protection of the alliance’s eastern borders, military assistance for Kyiv, and reaching the Alliance’s spending target of two percent of GDP in February of this year.
Where the Arctic fits into Germany’s strategic concerns was illustrated earlier this month with the publication of the country’s latest White Paper on the far north, ‘Germany’s Arctic Policy Guidelines: Germany and the Arctic in the Context of the Climate Crisis and the Zeitenwende’ (German: Leitlinien deutscher Arktispolitik: Deutschland und die Arktis im Kontext von Klimakrise und Zeidenwende).
Zeitenwende is likely to become another example of a German word which is difficult to directly translate into English but nonetheless enters mainstream discourses. Meaning literally ‘times-turn’, the word more specifically refers to an historic turning point. Chancellor Scholz used the term in his February 2022 speech, and since that time the word has dominated discussions about the directions in which German international concerns should turn.
Germany has a long history of polar engagement, and was one of the first observer governments in the Arctic Council, signing on in 1998, only two years after the group was formed. The country also co-maintains a research station (AWIPEV), with France, via the Alfred Wegener Institute, in Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard. As with other observers, Germany’s activities in the Arctic were dominated by scientific inquiry, including on matters related to local climate change. The two previous Arctic policy documents published by the German government, in 2013 and then in 2018-19, detailed the country’s commitments to addressing climate change, developing scientific and research expertise in the far north, as well as fostering stronger regional cooperation both via the Council and the European Union.
Mention of security in the 2013 paper was light, including a call for the Arctic to be used for peaceful purposes only. The 2018 document did go further in that area, however, by noting the environmental changes in the Arctic which were leading to greater possibility of competition for resources and access to regional sea lanes. In other words, promoting ‘non cooperative behaviour’ by some governments, which were not named. That paper also stressed its opposition to the militarization of the Arctic, while also calling for ‘quiet zones’ in the region with restrictions on human activity.
At that time, this document was an outlier, as other like government policy papers by non-Arctic states tended to eschew direct mention of local security concerns in favour of detailing support for environmental, scientific, and developmental cooperation.
(Japan’s 2015 Arctic policy document was also somewhat of an anomaly at the time, as the far north was specifically cited in that paper as a matter of national security. This inclusion reflected Japan’s status as a maritime state, with distinct sensitivities over whether emerging Arctic sea routes would be subject to military interdiction).
As relations between the West and Russia deteriorated since the release of the 2018 paper, debates over the hardening of Arctic security, and potential German responses, soon emerged. The 2024 Arctic policy paper cemented this shift in thinking by directly identifying Russia as having ‘fundamentally changed the geopolitical environment of Germany’s Arctic policy’, upending regional exceptionalism, and challenging regimes and laws. While the two previous papers placed the challenges of climate change in the Arctic first, this new policy document left no doubt that climate change and military threats were assuming equal importance in German Arctic strategies.
Reflecting shifts in thinking within NATO itself, Germany no longer sees the Arctic as being on Europe’s strategic periphery. Instead, the far north is perceived as an area of geopolitical contestation by Russia as well as China, with concerns expressed in the new document about the possibilities and consequences of closer northern cooperation by both powers.
The ‘international rules-based order’ in the Arctic was portrayed as a framework which needs urgent defending via Germany efforts with NATO and the EU, in addition to the United Nations and its relevant agencies such as the International Maritime Organisation and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Acknowledging that the Council is facing a considerable slowdown in its efforts due to the distanced relationship between Russia and the ‘seven like-minded Arctic states’ (all of which are now NATO members), the 2024 paper called for deeper German engagement within the Council, and a strengthening of regional cooperation initiatives.
From an environmental viewpoint, the document describes links between Arctic security and the issue of ‘resilience’, including the need to maintain local environmental regimes and to combat specific threats not limited to methane emissions, black carbon deposits, and sea ice erosion. Human security both within the Arctic and in adjacent regions such as continental Europe were also viewed as being affected by altered Arctic weather patterns, links which were also elucidated in the German government’s June 2023 National Security Strategy. Applying German research capabilities to addressing these challenges in the Arctic was also a major theme [video] of the Arctic Circle’s Berlin forum in May this year.
Germany will be heading into an election next year, and it is likely that much of the debate will be centred on domestic issues such as economic uncertainty, immigration debates, and voter discontent leading to a lurch to the right in recent state elections. However, the upcoming vote will likely also include much debate about Germany’s strategic concerns, reflecting the country’s moves away from a traditional ‘civilian power’ (Zivilmacht) stance which had prioritised multilateralism, the promotion of democracy and civil society, and positive change through trade, and towards a foreign policy more closely aligned with the Atlantic security environment. The Arctic, and its own geopolitical changes, are now being acknowledged in German government circles as a part of this new turning point.
Over the Circle 