Michael Roth, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Bundestag, is prompted to reflect on himself due to the events in Syria.. “We didn’t foresee this, once again we were caught off guard. Our strategic foresight seems to be underdeveloped once more,” the SPD politician told the Tagesspiegel (Monday edition).
“We can expect professionals in politics to be strategically better prepared in this crisis-torn world,” Roth admitted to the newspaper, acknowledging that there was a false assessment of the situation. “We considered Syria a frozen conflict and focused on other crises,” said the Bundestag member. “And what about the intelligence services?”
From Roth’s perspective, the Syrians who have fled to Germany could have been “seismographs of the forthcoming upheavals for us.” He is “concerned” that the politics “are not prepared at all for such a dramatic change in an important region for us.” “Syria should have mattered more to us,” he said.
The SPD politician advised a “rational handling” of the migration policy aspect of the recent events, which should “not be exploited in a populist campaign.” It would be “fatal” to encourage the expectation that all Syrians “could leave Germany within less than a week.”
Certainly, many of them would “want to help in rebuilding a free Syria,” but one should now “exercise patience” until the political situation is clarified: “There is a chance for a peaceful country where the Syrians can return.