On War on the Rocks Ulrike Franke points out that Germans neglected foreign and security policy, however they may wish that Germany should pursue an active foreign policy and a significant role in solving international problems, crises, and conflicts. Nevertheless, they states that their country should be internationally neutral, which points to a rather naïve view about foreign policy. As a consequence, they want to continue to limit any foreign policy engagement to non-military means. This is clearly impossible since while the use of force in international politics is the last resort, it is also a crucial, key, and essential capability that enables to defend its own interests, politics, and allies. It gives credibility to foreign policy.
These two recent articles are focused on Germany, but the political situation is similar in the entire European continent. Italy, for example, has no foreign policy apart from saying “we love immigrants, and we need to host them all” or “we close our borders, we do not want any immigrants”. Both positions are incoherent and not linked to the international situation, both are not able to see a major security problem (uncontrolled immigration) as a security problem and a consequence of security international problems. Why? Because we lack a security culture. We need to return to think about Politics, Security, and we, as Italian and European, need to understand, again, that foreign policy is not an amusement park, but is an environment where force, coercion, interests play the biggest role.