Securing peace is not a utopian ideal, but a realpolitik necessity. Global security requires cooperation, justice, and ecological responsibility. To achieve this, Europe must strengthen its resilience.
This text is based on a speech given by Jürgen Trittin, former federal Minister for the Environment and former foreign policy spokesperson for Alliance 90/The Greens, on the occasion of the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s 25th Annual Foreign Policy Conference in September 2025.
25 Years of Defending a Value-Based Foreign Policy
For 25 years, the Heinrich Böll Foundation has been discussing the state of the world once a year. It has always done so in a special way. The annual foreign policy conferences have always focused on a values-based foreign policy based on democracy and human rights. On a policy that recognises the planetary limits of our world for the sake of present and future generations. Here, the concept of security has never been narrowed down to purely military terms – but neither has the necessity of the military as a last resort been disputed.
Value-based foreign policy is often accused of idealism. Recently, Germany's leading historian Herfried Münkler claimed that international law was something for the "arts pages". Here, the view has always been different. This year's annual conference is entitled "Reclaiming Peace – Peace and Security in a Fragmented World". How naive is that in view of the wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan, one might ask? Securing peace is not naive. It is a real political necessity. Not only because the people in Ukraine, Gaza, Israel and Sudan long for it. The security of us all, the future of planet Earth, depends on sustainable peace.
Realpolitik reloaded
A value-driven realpolitik has no reason to hide, especially against the backdrop of the wars mentioned above. On the contrary, Russia's imperialist war against Ukraine in particular proves the failure of the traditional realpolitik school. This is less due to the supposed contradiction between values and interests. When in doubt, even hard-nosed realpolitik politicians invoked values to assert their interests. Think of the US fight against communism in Vietnam or Latin America. Or witness how Russia's Wagner mercenaries in Mali or Burkina Faso style themselves as fighters against Western colonialism.
Conversely, proponents of a values-based foreign policy are very much aware of the interests of powers and corporations.
Focussing Domestic and Foreign Policy
The weakness of the traditional realpolitik school is its blindness to the interior dynamics of societies. It is almost exclusively focused on the actions of state actors and ignores civil society. That is why traditional realpolitik has overlooked one thing: In a world of globalised crises, the boundary between foreign and domestic policy is disappearing. No country can escape the climate crisis alone. And no country can solve it alone. Limiting it requires global cooperation and fundamental transformation in individual countries. The financial crisis of 2008 and the coronavirus pandemic have shown the limits of unregulated globalisation. But they have also underlined the need for global cooperation to overcome such crises.
But with the legitimisation of domestic rule, foreign policy changes. Europe's old realpolitik politicians failed to see that Putin, who came to power with a staged state of emergency, was not a stabilising factor simply because he ended Yeltsin's chaos. A state of emergency calls for escalation, both domestically and internationally. That is why both the German Christian democrats (CDU) and social democrats (SPD) were so surprised by the war in Ukraine. Even the great Henry Kissinger was blind to Putin for a long time. The Greens, on the other hand, had been warning about Putin for a long time. They knew what to expect from Putin from their work with Russia's opposition civil society. The Greens were not idealists, but the better realpolitikers.
Kissinger's negotiating partner Deng Xiaoping had demanded that China renounce all pretensions of being a great power. But the narrative of the Chinese Communist Party has changed since Deng. China's promise of prosperity is now underpinned by nationalism. Under Xi Jinping, the message today is: Mao liberated China, Deng made it rich. Xi is making China strong. China's power projection continues to be strongly economic – for example, with the Belt and Road Initiative. China's neighbours, the Philippines, Vietnam and also India, have recently had bad experiences with the new Chinese superpower politics under Xi.
Balancing Internal and External Peace
However, in the wake of the financial, coronavirus and climate crises, global cooperation is not the order of the day. Globally, the retreat into nationalism dominates. Right-wing, nationalist movements are on the rise worldwide. Even the motherland of democracy – the USA – is threatened with a systemic shift towards an authoritarian oligarchy.
All autocrats, from Putin to Orban to Trump, share a dislike of the separation of powers. They hate an independent judiciary. They claim that because they have a majority of votes, they are above the law. This has global consequences. Those who destroy the rule of law in their own country also rely on the power of the strongest when dealing with other countries. And vice versa. A permanent violation of international law also undermines democracy internally – as we can observe in Israel. Authoritarian rule and lasting peace do not go well together.
A New Order is Emerging
We are witnessing a disruption of the international system. The world is moving towards a new multipolar order. Thirty-five years ago, many believed that the implosion of the Warsaw Pact had made the triumph of democratic capitalism unstoppable. However, the unilateral era of the United States prophesied at the "end of history" (Francis Fukuyama) came to an end in the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. The US had overstretched itself as a global power.
The End of the West
The West lost its political and economic dominance – and is now in the process of losing its military dominance as well. The West is not a positive concept, and certainly not an innocent one. Democracies are no guarantee of peace. The colonialism of England and France was organised in parliamentary democracies. The wars waged by the United States, from Vietnam to Grenada to Iraq, were started by democratically elected US presidents. The dominance of the West was not based on its values – rather on its betrayal of them. Its dominance was based on its "superiority in the use of organised violence" (Fukuyama). Europeans may forget this. The Global South does not.
Today, the West has reached an end. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the overextension of the US as a global power became apparent. Donald Trump has drawn conclusions from this. If the US can no longer be a global power, then it no longer wants to be one. Instead of relying on a global order, Trump relies on blackmailing the weak and making deals with the strong. Trump's order follows the pattern of turf wars between mafia gangs.
Who Are Europe's Rivals?
In Europe, the conflict between the democratic European Union and the imperialism of a revisionist Russia is intensifying. It has become more than doubtful that the US will continue to side with Europe. There is a global systemic rivalry between the states of democratic capitalism and the authoritarian state capitalism of China. Currently, there is a threat of authoritarian oligarchy emerging in the US. It would be a new systemic rival for a democratic Europe – no longer a friend and partner.
When democracies become autocracies, this has consequences for foreign policy.
Governing a Multipolar World
The new order exacerbates existing problems. Worldwide, funding for combating poverty and hunger is being cut while military spending is rising. The nuclear arms race is expanding. A series of wars – from Congo to Sudan to Gaza and Ukraine – threaten to become endless wars. Global governance in the institutions of the UN has been massively weakened. The result threatens to be an international order in which empires secure their spheres of influence by force. It would be an order more similar to the world before the First World War than to the world after the Second World War. The new order is the opposite of sustainable peace.
Europe has Homework to do
If Europe wants to become an effective pole in a multipolar world, it must strengthen its resilience.
The new multipolar world presents Europe with new challenges. First, it must answer the question of whether it wants to be a global pole at all. Those who are not poles will have to submit to one of the other poles. The current choices are the US, Russia or China. I can’t recommend none of them.
Strengthening Resilience
If Europe wants to become an effective pole in a multipolar world, it must strengthen its resilience. This applies militarily, economically and politically. If war is to be kept away from Europe, it must invest in deterrence. Its air defence capabilities, the use and defence of drones – these are just the first items on a long list of things to catch up on. The industry required for this must be European. Europe can no longer shop where Greenland and Canada are threatened. This also applies to its own critical infrastructure, whether satellites, cloud services or Artificial Intelligence. They must no longer be exposed to access by the NSA. Nor should they be exposed to Chinese monopolies on rare resources. Such resilience is a prerequisite for other actors to be willing and interested in negotiating with Europe on arms control or even arms limitation. Resilience is more than just military resilience.
Securing strategic industries in Europe is the lesson to be learned from broken value chains. Industrial resilience comes at a price. Europe must no longer depend on fossil fuels. Trump spoke more about his wishes and fears than about reality when he told the UN General Assembly that Germany is returning to nuclear energy and oil and gas.
Resilience means accelerating the expansion of renewable energies instead of slowing it down.
Last year, 585 gigawatts of renewable electricity generation were connected to the grid worldwide. That was 92.5 percent of all new capacity. Fossil fuel and nuclear plants shared a niche of 7.5 percent. Half of the 585 GW were connected to the grid in China. There are two reasons for this. Renewables are unrivalled in terms of cost. And China no longer wants the US to dictate its energy costs. Europe has the same interest. Europe has no interest in allowing itself to be blackmailed by China's monopolies on rare earths. That is why Europe must diversify its raw materials strategy and organise more circular economy. China’s and Europe's interests in energy policy are aligned. The interests of the US and Russia are diametrically opposed. Both Trump and Putin see their control over fossil fuels as a means of power politics.
Resilience means accelerating the expansion of renewable energies instead of slowing it down.
Europe's Capacity to Act
In a multipolar world, despite all the nationalist rhetoric, there is less national sovereignty. Ireland, Italy, Poland and France carry no weight. Neither does Germany. Only Europe carries weight. That is why Europe's capacity to act must be strengthened. This applies to all players. Then Germany must not once again push for a tariff deal with Donald Trump because of its automotive industry, which will ultimately end up 0:15 against Europe and, in the case of steel and aluminium, 0:50. Appeasement does not help against autocrats.
Then, in the case of the EU free trade agreement with Mercosur, the interests of French cattle farmers must take a back seat to the interests of a strategic alliance between the EU and the democracies of Latin America. The Greens in the European Parliament should also take note of this.
Germany must no longer block a European Middle East policy aimed at achieving a just peace. Germany's deafening silence and its inconsequential appeals are not only a moral failure in the face of war crimes and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank. The war waged by the Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir government against the Palestinians cannot be justified by the massacre of 7 October. It must be ended. However, a policy of ending the war is being blocked in the EU by Germany.
My party, Alliance 90/The Greens, sees itself as a party of peace, a party of human rights. It remains silent on Germany's blockade of European peace policy. That is bitter. It is also strategically foolish. Those who want to uphold the rule of law globally must not practise double standards. International law applies universally – in Ukraine as in Gaza.
Time to Build Strategic Alliances
Anyone who wants to create lasting peace must enforce the rule of law against the law of the strongest. In a multipolar world, this can only be achieved through alliances that are as pragmatic as they are strategic. Alliances that exploit common interests – but do not negate values. Europe is investing heavily to prevent Ukraine from being overrun by Putin. It is in our own best interests. Presidents Lula and Modi are currently demonstrating how not to be blackmailed by Trump. If Europe, India, Brazil and China jointly resist his tariff war, it may be possible to set limits on the US oligarchy. Strengthening cooperation with South Korea, Vietnam and Japan sends a strong signal against China's power claims in Asia. A value-based realpolitik is the foundation for sustainable peace in a multipolar world.
