“Make sure that more than half of all Germans have fears about the future.”

That was just one of the targets given to the Russian propaganda agency SDA which was disclosed last month.

While other, normal businesses here in Germany and around the world set targets for the production of screws or the number of client visits per month, companies in Putin’s Russia set themselves the goal of sowing division in German society and thereby causing our country to falter.

This goes to show that when we talk about peace nowadays, we must not consider military issues alone. Security, and with it peace, involves all areas of our society.

When Putin began his war in February 2022, he not only attacked Ukraine with tanks, missiles and drones. He also declared us Europeans, us democrats, the supporters of the rules-based international order and freedom worldwide, to be his enemies.

Ensuring security for the freedom of our lives was thus what drove our work on the first German National Security Strategy – to make our country robust, resilient and sustainable.

On 24 February 2022, it would have been easy to say “What’s the point of investing all this work in a new strategy? We should focus on crisis management and on the war in our neighbourhood.”

But instead, we – meaning all democratic parties represented here – took a conscious decision to tackle this first National Security Strategy for the Federal Republic of Germany not with tunnel vision, but looking at security as an integrated whole, involving multiple ministries, and taking a long-term view for the benefit of our society as a whole.

We attach vital importance to our support for Ukraine and protection against threats beyond this specific war.

As a result, we are giving attention to supply chain vulnerabilities. We are finally viewing destabilisation and fake news as attacks on our society.

We view the climate crisis not only as the biggest security disaster affecting the world, but also as a driver of conflict.

Building defensive capabilities and strengthening our democracy are therefore at the heart of this strategy.

It is also clear that a National Security Strategy isn’t an instruction manual that provides a clear answer in any given situation. You can’t look up “Problem A” and find the answer on page 38. What it does is provide guidance. It serves as a compass on security policy issues.

This is apparent when you look at what we have already implemented – and we the Government are grateful that we were able to take these steps together. Two percent of our budget is now earmarked for defence, NATO has been strengthened, there is a brigade in Lithuania, a new form of national service has been proposed and enhanced deterrence is in place with medium-range missiles based here in Germany – putting that issue back on the agenda for us – for our protection and that of our eastern partners.

It is absolutely vital that we face up each day to the vulnerability of our society, our industry, and above all our democracy.

I’d like to make this point here, absolutely unambiguously. As we are realising, this hybrid threat of war hasn’t emerged by chance. It is a strategy. And it is getting more dangerous by the day because one of Putin’s key aims has not been achieved.

He had intended not only to capture Ukraine, but also to attack us as democrats, as the free world, relying especially on the narrative that NATO is to blame for this war.

He wanted to put NATO, and with it us Europeans, at odds with the Global South.

One of our greatest successes in the last two and half years – and it’s not had much attention, which is why I’m emphasising it now – is that the unity of our free, liberal Europe and of all countries in the world that believe in the rules-based international order – no matter where we come from, no matter how many differences we have on other issues – has not been destroyed. Instead, this united support for a rules-based world has grown.

This is a great achievement; we must not forget that.

Those were two and half years of strenuous peace diplomacy. In our first talks with South Africa our interlocutors were still asking us why, and saying we were the ones who had started the war. It took us about six months to dismantle these false narratives, these lies, even using various fields of diplomacy, even reflecting on our own history and what we had done wrong.

The same was true vis-à-vis Brazil and India. We saw how important this diplomacy was, and that it was our best form of protection.

We have seen – immediately after the outbreak of war and later – how over 140 states made it plain that regardless of their views on Europe and NATO, they were for the rules-based international order, and voted against Russia.

We saw this at the climate change conference last year, when Putin, with the support of China, tried to divide those countries who wanted to work together for the good of the planet. That didn’t work, and more than 140 states jointly adopted a decision in Dubai.

And we saw this mechanism at work again in New York. This was the most compelling sign of how strong countries are when they work together, regardless of what else may divide them.

When the Pact for the Future was being debated, the issue was whether the world stands behind the UN, behind our conception of international law. This Pact was duly adopted in New York. 17 countries, led by Putin, tried to prevent this outcome.

Under the leadership of Germany and Namibia, and together with all the others – including more than 170 countries – we demonstrated that the world sticks together, especially in these times of war and crisis, when the protection of our rules-based international order is at stake.

It is clear that because Putin has now understood this, he is much more committed to sowing division in our democracies and our societies in Europe. That’s why these hybrid attacks are increasing. That’s why he is trying to divide our society on the issue of migration, by getting poor people from other countries to the Belarusian-Polish border, because he hopes to split Europe by so doing. But Putin doesn’t determine who can enter Europe. Putin doesn’t decide what stance we Europeans adopt. It is us, as Europeans, who can make it plain that this is our free Europe, where we believe in humanity.

That’s why it was so important for us to have finally started tackling the issue of hybrid attacks. In the event of a cyberattack on a hospital, for example, it is no longer adequate to consider that a problem for the hospital. We must look at the situation as a whole.

That’s why we are transforming the Federal Office for Information Security into a central hub for federal and Länder efforts, and seek to create a comprehensive cyber situational awareness picture. I’m mentioning that here as an issue on which we’ve begun to make ourselves more resilient in the face of attack.

However, it is clear that that’s not enough. For nine days recently, a drone circled over Brunsbüttel. There’s a chemical park there, and nearby an interim storage site for nuclear waste. When we started work on this strategy, we kept on discussing what it means when internal and external security become intertwined. These are the open issues that we urgently need to continue work on.

And thus, it is not only my thanks that I extend to all democratic parties, to the Länder, to businesses, to local government, but also an invitation from the Federal Government: we can only jointly ensure everyone’s security if we all work together.

As companies that are not susceptible to extortion should autocracies disable their systems. As universities that know that joint research projects can be fertile ground for espionage. And as politicians who know that at the crucial moment when autocrats and dictators seek to extort us, we must stand together, whatever else divides us.

That’s how we will make our country and Europe secure for the future.