German contender needs more durable stance on China, Russia – KIRO 7 Information Seattle

BERLIN – (AP) – A leading candidate to succeed Angela Merkel as German Chancellor this autumn has called for “dialogue and toughness” against China when it comes to defending democratic values ​​and human rights.

Annalena Baerbock, the Chancellor candidate of the environmentalists of the Greens, told the weekly Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung that Europe should use its economic power to block Chinese goods made with forced labor and avoid communication technologies that endanger European security.

“We are currently in a competition between systems: authoritarian powers against liberal democracies,” she said in an interview published on Sunday.

Baerbock described China’s investments in infrastructure and energy networks from Central Asia to Europe as “brutal power politics”.

“We Europeans must not fool ourselves,” she said, adding that the European Union of 27 nations must act accordingly in order to defend its values, for example by using a recently concluded investment agreement between Brussels and Beijing to make China’s problem stronger to tackle the Uighur minority in forced labor.

Baerbock, a graduate of international law, also targeted Russia, particularly its support for rebel groups in Ukraine and the recent rally of Russian troops along the Ukrainian border.

She supported Ukraine’s right to apply for membership in NATO and the EU, but said: “The most important thing at the moment is to increase the pressure on Russia to ensure that the Minsk Agreement is respected.” This agreement aims to peacefully end the conflict in eastern Ukraine with Russia-backed rebels who have left at least 14,000 dead since 2014.

Against the background of Moscow’s aggressive behavior, Baerbock criticized the German government’s support for an underwater pipeline that brings Russian natural gas to Germany.

“I would have withdrawn political support for Nord Stream 2 for a long time,” she said.

The Greens have called for closer cooperation with the United States to defend liberal values ​​around the world, but Baerbock suggested that the goal of NATO members spend 2% of their gross domestic product on defense, given the urgent need to invest large sums, to reconsider mitigating climate change. She also suggested that Europe’s defense contribution could also take the form of a cybersecurity center.

“A blanket 2% target, on the other hand, will not achieve greater security,” she said.

The Greens emerged from the pacifist and environmental movements of the 1970s and 1980s, but have supported limited military missions abroad in recent years, provided they are bound by UN resolutions.

Baerbock said the future of US nuclear weapons stationed in Europe could be reopened as part of the nuclear disarmament negotiations between Moscow and Washington.

A survey published on Sunday by the weekly newspaper Bild am Sonntag brought the Greens just ahead of Merkel’s center-right Union bloc.

The Germans will elect a new parliament on September 26th, which will then decide who will be the country’s next chancellor. Merkel is not running for a fifth term.

The poll carried out by the Kantar election office showed that 28% of those questioned wanted to vote for the Greens, compared with 27% for the Union bloc. The center-left Social Democrats are expected to receive around 13% support, while the far-right alternative for Germany would receive 10%. The poll of 1,225 voters found that the business-friendly Free Democrats would get 9% and the Left Party 7% of the vote.