“Can peace still be saved?”

That is the question you asked me to respond to in my speech today.

A drastic question. An unsettling question.

A question that up until a few years ago none of us would have voiced in quite that way.

But also a question that right at the start I want to answer with “Yes”.

So yes, peace can still be saved.

The confident hope of being able to work with others to make a difference is the starting point for all democratic politics.

Anyone who is active in politics does so out of the conviction that we do not have to let ourselves be swept along by the course of fate.

That our destiny is in our own hands.

That is my understanding of politics.

And it is an understanding of politics that is closely related to Protestantism. Each individual has a responsibility before God.

If we apply that to the foreign-policy challenges of our times, it means that war is never inevitable. Peace is possible. The future is open.

And yet the question you have asked me is an indication of the dramatic times we live in.

We are witnessing horrific human suffering in our neighbourhood, in Ukraine, in the Sudan, in the Gaza Strip – and at the same time at home we are being confronted with a situation in which the binary order of war and peace has dissolved. We are experiencing how the lines are being blurred.

The Russian doctrine, incidentally, no longer distinguishes between war and peace.

And that is why we are seeing exploding packages in German logistics centres. Spy drones over airports and Bundeswehr barracks. Drones that have to be shot down in Poland. Russian fighter jets in Estonian airspace. Blatant and covert disinformation. Attempts to sabotage our democratic discourses.

Yet we also have “real”, conventional war in Europe, after Russia invaded Ukraine with tanks, with aircraft, with soldiers, and opened fire on 24 February 2022. And it is still continuing.

That means that for Ukraine, which has given Russia absolutely no excuse to start this war, the question “Can peace still be saved?” is now irrelevant. The country is at war – whether people wanted it or not.

Now, in Germany we can respond to this like the deputy Tino Chrupalla from the AfD and say: “Putin hasn’t done anything to hurt me.”

But that would ignore the fact that this attack contravenes the UN Charter, the Charter of Paris and also the so-called Budapest Memorandum, in which Russia, when it received Ukraine’s nuclear weapons, specifically affirmed its commitment to respect the sovereignty of Ukraine in 1994.

And thereby contravenes everything that is precious and important for maintaining peace, also to us in Germany, everything that was painstakingly built up by means of diplomacy after the removal of the Iron Curtain.

Responding to that simply by shrugging one’s shoulders and saying “Putin hasn’t done anything to hurt me” would also ignore the fact that Russia, alongside the war it is currently conducting, is implementing at breakneck speed a rearmament programme that began years ago.

The modern Russian economy is a war economy.

It is predominantly tanks and missiles that are being produced – there is no longer any real value-added. A tragedy for the people.

The recruitment of new soldiers is being driven forward as the highest priority – and with merciless pressure.

The goal is clear: nearly every month, Russia wants to recruit new forces in division strength.

Every rational analyst is bound to be asking themselves what purpose that should serve. It stands to reason that at the very least the option of expanding Russian aggression is being created here.

German security authorities therefore reckon that Russia would be in a position to conduct a large-scale war against NATO by 2029 at the latest, so by the end of the present legislative term.

We are now in a situation that requires answers from politicians. Answers to the following questions: How can we protect ourselves? Do we have what we need in order to do so? If we had to fight, who should fight for us?

In recent years we as policymakers have responded to these questions.

With a special fund for the Bundeswehr. With a National Security Strategy. With a change to our constitution.

With a National Security Council. With new commitments for defence expenditure. With the return to a modern military service. No compulsory military service yet, but the option of reintroducing it.

And, something that for me as Foreign Minister plays a particularly central role, with the intensification of our diplomatic endeavours.

With a focus on our missions abroad and with consistent efforts to promote understanding and relax tensions.

Yet, ladies and gentlemen, these efforts could be unsuccessful.

We are dealing with a Russia that we can no longer really get through to via these channels.

And that is why we have to ask ourselves these questions – how can we protect ourselves? what do we need in order to do so? – time and again.

But these are, of course, not just political questions.

They enter the realm of highly personal convictions, the realm of ethics: What should I do? What can I do? What can I believe?

Those are also religious questions.

In autumn 2022, just a few months after the outbreak of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, the Protestant Church in Germany decided to review its positions on peace ethics from the year 2007,

in a participatory process which has now culminated in a new Protestant memorandum on peace ethics.

I personally am delighted to have the privilege of acknowledging and discussing this here with you today. I think we will have to read it several times and will keep discovering new insights that we can glean from it.

In this document, I can identify two important shifts.

On the one hand, a stronger orientation towards a Christian anthropology that does not turn a blind eye to the evil of radical violence in a world in need of redemption.

To put it in secular terms, an anthropology that recognises that not everyone desires or is interested in a comprehensive peace.

Page 118 of the memorandum states that Christians must face up to the possibility that human beings potentially have the capacity to destroy any regulatory order.

And the memorandum also draws conclusions from this insight – that every legal order, every state based on the rule of law, to formulate it in my own words, has to be in a position to defend this order with its own strength if necessary.

On the other hand, the new memorandum redefines the dimensions of Protestant peace ethics that were established in 2007.

It recognises that they do not stand alongside one another in isolation, but that protection against violence forms the basis – that it is a necessary, if not an adequate requirement – for freedom, justice and plurality, the other three elements of Protestant peace ethics.

I am convinced that these positions need to be understood above all against the backdrop of Ukraine’s fight to defend itself.

Against the backdrop of a war which embodies the impact of these ethics in a more or less archetypical fashion.

For the mindset of the Russian dictator is not shaped by any concern for his own people.

Rather, it is driven by an imperial greed to rule over another nation. Vladimir Putin does not recognise Ukraine’s right to freedom. For him there is no justice, no possibility of plurality among Ukrainians and Russians. But only the subjugation of Ukrainians to Russian domination. Their assimilation into the “Russkiy Mir”, the Russian world.

And he deploys violence to rob the Ukrainians of their freedom, their equality and their plurality. To this end he has unleashed the biggest war in Europe since 1945.

In light of this, the Protestant Church in Germany is conducting a reassessment.

Which perhaps also corrects certain positions.

Now, some may ask publicly whether ethics can actually change. Are fundamental Christian convictions not written in stone? Should the church speak out on political issues at all?

To that last question I want to respond with: Yes it should.

And I believe that the memorandum offers wise answers to these questions.

It confirms the obvious: that the basic coordinates of faith remain unchanged. And at the same time, it notes that the concrete significance of these fundamental convictions must be defined afresh for every generation.

I think every Christian is aware of the difficult balancing act that the church has to perform in this context.

Today in Germany, it lives with the consciousness that it must never again become the lackey of the ruling power, as it was in part under the National Socialist regime.

At the same time, it cannot now follow every trend that day-to-day politics spark.

And what is more, it has to offer to those people who, despite the increased drift away from the churches, still look first and foremost to them to provide an ideological anchor, guidance which reaches them where they currently stand in their lives and in their understanding of the world today.

The new peace memorandum of the Protestant Church in Germany recognises that the use of violence in response to violence by a nation under attack is justified not only in international law but also from an ethical perspective.

It accepts that a pacifism comprising the categorical renunciation of violence cannot be legitimised as a universal political ethic. And it justifies violence used to uphold the law as an ethical form of defence.

As a Christian and as Foreign Minister I am grateful for these carefully considered but ultimately clear positions from the Protestant Church. My church.

They are positions which – with various nuances – have been shared by a stable majority in our democracy since 24 February 2022.

I have been a career politician for almost three decades now. And I can tell you that during this period I have rarely experienced popular majorities that have been so stable over several years, particularly on a foreign-policy issue.

For these are ethical positions with which I think almost everyone who calls to mind the situation of the people in Ukraine can empathise.

We are standing on the brink of the fourth winter of war. In a country in which temperatures at this time of year often drop to double minus figures.

In these days, Russia’s tactics more than ever before involve destroying electricity and heat generation supplies and leaving people to endure cold, darkness and despair.

Russian drones and missiles randomly attack civilians in order to break the Ukrainians’ desire for freedom and their will to resist.

We as the Federal Government are taking a stand against this.

By providing assistance with energy supplies, by providing support with the almost daily repair of the destroyed and damaged facilities.

And, indeed, also by providing weapons.

What is currently protecting the people in Kharkiv, in Kyiv, in Odessa from these attacks, night after night and as well as is humanly possible, is not the categorical renunciation of violence.

It is the Ukrainian army, which is holding out in the east amid the most difficult circumstances.

And it is modern weapons systems, the names of which we are now all familiar with: PATRIOT and IRIS-T.

I know that the question of weapons supplies has been the subject of heated debate within the church.

And I suspect that the formulation “examination on a case-by-case basis” used in the memorandum strikes, as it does with us in a political context, a conciliatory note. Particularly in a process in which various different legitimate positions need to be taken into consideration and incorporated.

The formulation “examination on a case-by-case basis” probably also contains a high degree of ethical justification. And yet I want to state frankly

that on this issue I would have liked to see greater clarity also from a church perspective in applying this approach to the individual case of Ukraine.

After all, it is plain, to me at least, that here, in Ukraine, the conditions for the case of the use of violence to uphold the law are fulfilled more convincingly than in any other conceivable constellation.

For the alternative to resistance is clear. It is Bucha.

Murder, rape, torture of civilians, abduction of Ukrainian children to Russia.

Anyone who opposes this is, in my view, entitled to our support.

And for ourselves the consequence must be that we are willing to effectively train and equip our own soldiers, our armed forces.

To be honest, in my opinion whether we call that ready to defend ourselves or ready for war is not a categorical question.

For me, both mean being ready to uphold the law. Capable of providing deterrence. And part of the logic of deterrence, in the situation in which we currently find ourselves, unfortunately also involves signalling to the aggressor that we could defend ourselves. In order that we do not have to do so.

I am also pleased about other key points of the new peace memorandum. About the discussion of climate policy as a contribution to a Christian peace policy. As an act to preserve the integrity of Creation.

About the openness to a new form of military service and the wise weighing up of military and non-military engagement for the good of society.

About the thoughts of the church on a general form of compulsory civil or military service.

About the fundamental position that political activity must serve the rule of law, not the law of the strong. And above all the clear commitment to the United Nations that contains.

For me, this reflection in the memorandum is a twofold challenge.

On the one hand, a challenge to take an active stand against those in our country who would like the law to be subject to their inhumane political despotism.

Who want to divide us as a society into those who have been here for a long time and those who have recently come to us.

On the other hand, also a foreign-policy challenge to promote the rule of law in the world. To promote a rules-based global order. To promote international law.

Next summer, we as the Federal Republic will be standing as a candidate in the United Nations and applying for a non-permanent seat in the UN Security Council for the 2027/2028 term.

A difficult body in a more than fallible institution. And yet, of this I am convinced, the preservation and protection of this institution is in our deepest interests as a democracy and a state based on the rule of law, in spite of all its failings, which the memorandum also mentions.

Ladies and gentlemen,

In the wake of the watershed, after the epochal shift of 24 February 2022, many in our society looked for new answers.

Answers to questions which many of us had hoped we would never again need to pose.

“Can peace still be saved?”

This question is being posed by parties and unions which have abandoned positions that in some cases they had held for many years. Decision-makers in the business sphere. Culture professionals who have reconsidered their programmes and content.

And last but not least, it affects the churches, of course, which have reviewed their ethical and religious standpoints in light of the current state of affairs.

In my view, these processes are not a sign of weakness. On the contrary, the ability to undertake self-reflection, self-correction, to implement societal, participative change, is the greatest strength of democracy and of its perception of humanity. It is at the heart of our ability to hold our own in the future. That is valuable. That is worth protecting.

Because, ladies and gentlemen, peace can indeed still be saved.

But to do so, we need to act. To act responsibly.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about responsible action in his work “Ethics”: “There is ... no law behind which the responsible man can seek cover, and there is therefore also no law which can compel the responsible man to take any particular decision ... ... one must make one’s decision as a free venture ... in either case one becomes guilty.”

Living with this dilemma is the reality for all those who shoulder public responsibility today.

And it is a reality that the memorandum on peace ethics that we are discussing today does not seek to avoid.

That requires courage.

And I am grateful for this courage.

As a Protestant. And as Foreign Minister.