The goal of the government is “to ensure that as few refugees as possible set off for Germany,” and to “make large parts of the world a better place,” the Spiegel authors write. The article quotes Federal Defence Minister Von der Leyen: “We need to restore state power and stability in countries such as Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.”

The article leaves no doubt that this will be achieved by a massive expansion of German militarism abroad. “German military missions are being planned, expanded or extended from Mali to Iraq to Afghanistan — to a degree that nobody could have imagined just a few short months ago,” the authors write. The government was currently reviewing “the possibility of making Tornado reconnaissance planes available on the periphery of the Syrian conflict.”

In other words, following in the footsteps of the United States, France, Britain and Russia, Germany is preparing to intervene directly in the Syrian conflict with its air force. At that time Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) had declared that Germany has to “lead more often and more decisively in the future” to pursue its global interests. Specifically, he listed “Syria, Ukraine, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Mali, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Afghanistan, tensions in East Asia” as part of an “incomplete list of hot spots in the coming year” for German foreign policy.

This doctrine is now to be put into practice. On 18 September, at a conference of the Alfred Herrhausen Society and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in Berlin, Ursula von der Leyen declared: “Leading from the centre is no longer a vision; it is now an actual description. It is no longer a question of whether, but of how.”