Germany's Mission Future and the Dynamic World of Tomorrow:
Why we need a more effective foreign policy with heart and mind

By Dr. Hubertus Hoffmann*

Geostrategist and founder missionfuture.com and loveistolerance.com

Speech at the CdAS Autumn Academy 2022 of the Hanns Seidel Foundation

Banz Monastery, Germany

October 22, 2022

Hans Joachim Morgenthau was born in Coburg, just 22 kilometers from this impressive Banz Monastry, where we meet today in Franconia in Bavaria. As a Jew, he had to emigrate to the U.S., where he became the founder of Classical Realism in foreign policy.

His major work, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, published in 1948, sees the world as a great stage of power struggles, dominated by national interests, with the struggle for supremacy. Only a balance of power could contain the eternal dynamic evil of excessive nationalism and ideologies. Needed is fresh realism in politics.

His most prominent student, and later friend at Harvard, came from Fürth, only 92 kilometers from here. Henry Kissinger’s credo is the necessity of realpolitik instead of moralpolitik and a balance of power.

His best German friend, Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, successfully implemented this theory in with the NATO Dual Track Decision in 1979.

From 1977, in the middle of the détente phase, the USSR implemented the most comprehensive modernization program for its nuclear weapons aimed at Western Europe, without any consultations. With the Backfire nuclear bomber, new short-range missiles SS-21, SS-22 and SS-23. Above all, the new mobile medium-range missiles with triple warheads of the type SS-20. An outrageous provocation. Combined with the Kremlin’s simultaneous conventional arms buildup, Schmidt recognized a new threat to stability, a balance of power and peace by credible deterrence in Europe. After the failure of the neutron bomb in 1977, new U.S. Pershing II missiles and Ground Launched Cruise Missiles, stationed in Europe in the UK, Germany and Italy, were to fill this deterrence gap. At the same time, he offered a zero solution, i.e., mutual renunciation of intermediate-range weapons. This became the golden reality with the INF Treaty in 1987. Thus, the double decision became NATO’s most successful strategy. Helmut Schmidt was right.

But Schmidt was ousted for his clear realpolitik and courage by the pacifist naïve majority of the SPD in 1982.

Henry Kissinger’s thinking was shaped by his first mentor, Dr. Fritz Kraemer, who took him under his wing as a 19-year-old in the U.S. Army in 1944.

Although an evangelical Christian, Kraemer was Jewish according to the Nuremberg Race Laws and was forced to leave Germany in 1939. His father died in Theresienstadt in November 1942.

Fritz Kraemer was also my mentor for 25 years and, as a geo-strategist in the Pentagon, preached again and again, “No provocative weakness” In 2002, I founded the World Security Network with him.

Today these three Jewish-German-American masterminds are again of great relevance. Germany and the world have awakened from the naïve Bullabü Dream of eternal peace for all people into a real nightmare of realpolitik in 2021 and 2022.

The overall record of Western foreign policy in the 21st century is not only disappointing, but disastrous.

Russia’s involvement via North Stream 2 and peace by economic cooperation: failed.

The deterrence of an attack on Ukraine: failed.

Building a democracy with women’s rights in Afghanistan: after 20 years with billions of investments and many dead: failed.

Containing totalitarian Iran: failed.

A better peace order in Iraq, Libya or Syria: failed.

Fighting the causes of migration of millions in Africa and Asia: failed.

The integration of the Chinese dragon into a free world order: failed.

There is something rather rotten in the woodwork of Western peace and security policy – only what exactly and how can it be changed?

One thing is certain: our foreign policy cannot and must not continue as in the past.

We need a more effective foreign policy with heart and mind, a World 4.0.

Lenin asked at the end of each Politburo meeting, “What to do?”

Which brings us to my first thesis for a more effective foreign policy with heart and mind:

Rule 1 Realism

Germany (and Europe) need realism instead of dreaming.

We should clearly define, express and defend our national interests.

We need clarity and truth.

An end to all the nice speeches instead of making.

We must end the endless ideological standard phrases, the talk-show art of self-absorbed and vain phraseology.

An end to superficiality and banality in thinking, speaking, planning and acting.

An end to endless declarations of intent without deep plans and necessary action.

An end to the chewing-gum-like management of problems instead of fresh design.

Rule 2 Mission Future

In foreign and security policy, we need courage for the future with an active Mission Future.

We need a more effective foreign policy in the 21st century with a thinking heart and loving mind.

We can save the world with the trilogy of humanity, creativity and effectiveness: our Mission Future.

If we want to, rethink and just get much better.

Humanity is also indispensable in a realpolitik.

For it is the heart and soul of our democratic states.

Freedom is our oxygen. Tolerance is the lubricating oil for a good coexistence of so many different people.

Diversity is God’s DNA. It forbids ideologies of any kind, whether brown, red, blue or green. Because they limit the happiness of people. There are also too many totalitarian seducers running rampant within.

The people need freedom for happiness, not state paternalism. 

Without freedom, everything is nothing, the citizens are only puppets of the government.

The soul of a new foreign policy World 4.0 is human rights, tolerance plus freedom. We must stand up to the icy wind of unfreedom by actively protecting human rights. The torch of freedom no longer stands only in New York, but wherever free people stand up for our global values.

In this respect, we must defend the gold pieces of humanity, tolerance and freedom worldwide. Because where these virtues dry up in totalitarian thinking, there is always the threat of international disaster, and ultimately war with the outside world – see Russia, Iran or China.

Therefore, we need a Western dual strategy: we can trade and also cooperate with dictatorial states, but at the same time we must actively promote the forces of humanity, freedom and tolerance. In other words, not an either-or, but a both-as well, a dual strategy as in the Cold War. This is just as true today for Russia as it is for Iran or China.

The well-intentioned concept of “change through trade” has failed: with North Stream 2 with Russia in February 2022 and with more and more imports and exports with the People’s Republic of China since 2012, when the nationalist Xi came to power.

I therefore reject the comfortable, short-term capitalist silence, the ducking away and adapting, which many lobbyists, politicians and the business community advocate. This is bourgeois appeasement, which has already failed miserably in Russia and China.

The management boards of the global companies are primarily concerned with making more profit during their short tenure and thus receiving higher bonus payments in the millions. In reality, these supposedly German companies are only 30 percent owned by investors from Germany. International capitalists dominate, not German patriots.

There is a second important reason for our commitment to human rights:

Only if we promote the progressive forces of humanity will we strengthen this good yeast in these difficult countries and contain the aggressive ideologues already there on the ground. That is our national interest, before they become violent to the outside. So no appeasement, but early containment in our realpolitik and national interest.

Example People’s Republic of China:

A strong group within the communist party believes President Xi’s aggressive Red Dragon course is wrong. If we now simply ignore the military threat to Taiwan, the occupation of Hong Kong in violation of the treaty, the prevention of the clarification of dubious incidents at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Beijing’s imperialism in the South China Sea or the massive industrial espionage, we weaken these good panda-bear politicians and strengthen Xi’s dragon warriors. By doing so, we encourage the aggressors in the Chinese Communist Party to launch a red-hot invasion of Taiwan. Moreover, to cut off our sea lanes to Japan and South Korea. Indeed, after an invasion, Beijing would control the 180-kilometer-wide Taiwan Strait alone, and from the island another 200 nautical miles to the east through an expansion of Chinese territorial waters. Naive capitalist-motivated appeasement toward Xi is pure provocative weakness.

Schröder, Merkel and Scholz have already made this geostrategic mistake in their disastrous Russia policy:

Turning a blind eye, talking down, insufficient armaments, North Stream 2 despite annexation of Crimea in violation of international law, no provocation of Moscow by defensive weapons for Ukraine – eight years of German mantra until February 2022. The bloody result was a misjudgment by Putin and war in the middle of Europe. A gross mistake of German foreign policy.

We should be more active than before in openly promoting the forces of human rights:

Governments and the EU could set up a Human Rights and Freedoms Fund that would spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year abroad supporting groups fighting for freedom and human rights.

In addition, each country should submit a report to parliament once a year on the global human rights situation.

Governments could also establish a documentation center for human rights violations.

Creativity is our Ferrari engine for better politics.

Our foreign and security policy makers should take Albert Einstein as their role model.

He preached:

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

“We can’t solve the world’s problems at the same level of thinking that we created them.”

Only with the engine of creativity can we win in the global struggle for power and influence. But political creativity has atrophied, even been frowned upon as a kind of majesty insult to the ruling politicians.

If we don’t change that, democracies will lose this world.

Curiosity, imagination and new thinking are essential for the preservation of peace and freedom and for global progress.

We must constantly question what is known, copy from the world’s best, quickly think up better solutions, say goodbye to illusions.

This is where democracies fail – unfortunately, time and again for a long time.

Diplomats and officers also conform too much to the political leadership and remain silent.

Where, then, were the warnings from the Bundeswehr’s inspector generals about too little money for needed weapons, unserviceable submarines and helicopters?

When did diplomats in Moscow or Kabul warn of the disaster?

When did the Munich Security Conference address, critically discuss and make proposals on the lack of arming NATO in the Baltics, the link between North Stream 2 and energy security, or the need to arm Ukraine after the occupation of Crimea?

On the contrary: at the 2015 Munich Security Conference, the then host, Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, defamed the deployment of weapons to Ukraine as an ‘Fire accelerant’. When I protested vehemently against this to her two military aides, I was all alone. Everyone else kept silent out of opportunism.

What to do?

We need a new fresh and creative mindset:

No one should be promoted to ambassador or general anymore who has not proven at least once that he proposes creative solutions. It is not the soft-spoken careerist who should be promoted, but the creative thinker. A paradigm shift that will work wonders.

Units for creativity and problem solving should be created in the planning staffs.

Each proposal in the ministries must include a section on creative solutions.

The institutes and conferences should not only describe the problems but show creative ways to solve them.

Effectiveness is completely underdeveloped in foreign and security policy.

This is our second Achilles heel.

We are almost always too late, burn too much money, accomplish too little.

How can we become more effective?

Endless diagnosis of problems prevents the start of therapy. We have to turn this around:

We need lots of fresh ideas, intelligent options and unconventional solutions, as well as concrete plans and more courage to act on the part of politicians.

We need a broad public discourse before politicians take action.

Up to now, decisions have too often been made in the small circle of the executive branch without in-depth analysis and extensive debate, and only then quickly pushed through in parliaments.

Controversial discussions are no longer welcome, even though they are at the core of every democratic opinion-forming process.

The best thing to do first is to ban the use of hollow prayer wheel words, such as “we advise prudence and dialogue.” These are rhetorical smokescreens.

We must rid ourselves of the superficial PR show foreign policy of the pompous G-7 and G-20 summits and conferences. They merely gimmick action. Big conferences are very popular, but usually bring nothing but pretty pictures. They are colorful media illusions.

Moving away from staging foreign policy in the media to actively implementing concrete, well thought-out plans that make us stronger.

Much better are 500 pages of analysis on every important issue, annual progress report in parliament, critical discussions instead of hurrah diplomacy.

We should establish a more effective cost-benefit management system in which the total cost of a crisis is listed and reviewed annually.

We cannot formulate good foreign policy in a sleeper car. The overly vague time management needs to be revised on a regular basis. We need a more precise idea of when we want to and can achieve what. Everything must be implemented and monitored more quickly.

We need to comprehensively and critically analyze what didn’t work and why, and where there are global best practices.

We must not continue to jump frantically from one crisis to the next, like frogs in a hot pot of water, but must actively defuse all potential conflict bombs as a preventive measure.

We should play our own game, like soccer world champions, and not just react to others.

We are supposed to think about our foreign policy locally from the bottom up, not impose our worldview on others and fail, like in Afghanistan or Iraq or Libya.

What are the priorities for Germany?

1. Africa is Europe’s geopolitical destiny.

Migration pressure will more than double. Three things are crucial: birth control, better governance on the ground, help and hope for the youth. Here I propose an EU mentoring program for hundreds of thousands per year and a complete shift of development aid to these three pillars.

We need a sensible migration policy with heart and mind – proposals for this in my 2020 study.

2. 2. Russia remains Ukraine’s neighbor and part of Europe.

Will a successor to Putin really be friendlier to us? Germany would be well advised to apply the winning dual strategy of NATO’s 1967 Harmel Report and NATO’s 1979 Dual Decision to Ukraine and to Moscow as well: i.e., both sufficient weapons for Ukraine and a meaningful offer of fair negotiations.

Today, both are missing: Kiev does not receive enough weapons and there are no negotiations.

Since July 2014, my World Security Network has been promoting a peace plan in the form of the “White Paper Ukraine”. It envisages the South Tyrol solution for the Donbass, i.e. autonomy within Ukraine, and a kind of Saar referendum of 1955 for Crimea under UN supervision. At some point, this war must end.

3. China is the Great Dragon – totalitarian, aggressive, nationalistic-egoistic.

One fights with all means according to the rules of Sun Tzu “On the Art of War”. This is alien to us. We are naive.

We need a readjustment, a “Fair Partnership with China” with 14 elements:

1. More unity of Europe, the U.S. and Japan makes strong enough.
2. Overcome division in Europe and launch a self-confident China policy.
3. A long-term de-risk and containment plan.
4. Dialogue at eye level.
5. Transparency and honesty. Openly saying what is, what one wants and what is forbidden. Looking the other way is not an option. Clearly address lies.
6. Support the Chinese forces of humanity and freedom, strengthen Taiwan, invite the Dalai Lama. Show the flag.
7. Chinese company shareholdings under government reservation.
8. Building large international IT and AI consortia from the US, Europe, Japan, South Korea.
9. Building up strategically important production capacities outside China.
10. Radical reduction of industrial dependence on China.
11. Punish abuse consistently with a zero-tolerance policy.
12. An EU Silk Road concept as an alternative.
13. Establish transparency of the China lobby.
14. Above all, the implementation of radical reforms in the Western democracies. To make them fit for the future with a Mission Future (www.missionfuture.com).

Otherwise, China wins.

Germany and the EU are currently losing out due to too high energy prices, inflation, education deficits, too few new patents and too much bureaucracy. Too little growth. Too little digitization and AI.

The far too ambitious green zero-emissions policy and the renunciation of nuclear power or fracking in Germany pave the way to world domination for CP China. We are weakening ourselves.

Those who are weak in the real world, their interests, including humanity, are simply ignored. Hence my proposals for 200 reforms in my book “Mission Future.”

4. A sufficient defense capability is indispensable.

Because otherwise the democracies will stand naked before their enemies of freedom and make wars even more likely through provocative weakness.

Without sufficient defense capability, everything is nothing.

We should all thank Olaf Scholz for finally providing sufficient funding for the Bundeswehr with his 100-billion-euro special fund. Why not before, when the FDP, CDU and CSU were in power?

World 4.0 is based on a smart dual strategy of hard and soft factors. Only the two together create a secure foundation for more effective foreign policy and security.

It is not up to Putin or Xi – it is up to us what we make of the crisis and how we democracies position ourselves well and strongly in the real world.

Optimism is called for, less cynicism and resignation. The dismantling of the SS-20 from 1987 – which hardly anyone had expected before – or the fall of the Berlin Wall, German reunification and the liberation of the Eastern European countries in 1990/91 show: Anything is possible. We need optimism.

We can, indeed we must, implement a better policy 4.0.

With heart and mind, with much more realism, humanity, creativity and more effectiveness.

Let’s be bold with our fresh Mission Future!

*Dr. Hubertus Hoffmann is founder of missionfuture.com and loveistolerance.com.