Germany’s foreign-policy orientation prioritises European integration, transatlantic security, multilateralism, economic interdependence, and restraint in the use of military power. The AfD’s foreign and security policy positions and broader worldview differ substantially from this established cross-party consensus.

On 6 September 2026, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) won a remarkable 43.8 per cent of the vote in the state election in eastern Germany’s Saxony-Anhalt. A fortnight later, AfD continued its electoral momentum, emerging as the largest party in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania with 38.2 per cent of the vote on 20 September. The AfD’s rise could be attributed to a ‘Rechtsruck’ in German society, i.e., a societal shift to the Right, particularly in Eastern Germany, owing to socio-economic grievances and collective identities (shaped by post-unification experiences) of disadvantage and subsequent political alienation.[i]

The domestic intelligence service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), had designated the AfD as an ‘in May 2025, citing the party’s ‘ethnicity and ancestry-based conception’ of the German people and noting that its xenophobic, anti-minority, Islamophobic and anti-Muslim orientation is incompatible with the free democratic order of the German state.[ii] Beyond implications for domestic politics, AfD’s electoral consolidation could also affect Germany’s post-war strategic orientation. The brief highlights some of the AfD’s key foreign and security policy positions, given Germany’s centrality to the EU and European security architecture.

AfD’s Political Ascendance

Emerging against the backdrop of the Eurozone debt crisis, the AfD opposed then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Euro policies, particularly her advocacy for fiscal austerity and structural reforms aimed at preserving the integrity of the Eurozone. Interestingly, her apparent insistence that the reforms were ‘without alternative’ (alternativlos) paved the way for the AfD, which translates as Alternative for Germany.[iii] The AfD participated in its first federal elections in 2013, securing merely 4.7 per cent of the vote, thereby falling below the 5 per cent threshold required to enter the Bundestag.

In the years that followed, growing conflicts within the party, between the economically liberal leadership and more radical forces, culminated in the departure of party spokesman Bernd Lucke and other moderates in 2015. Against the backdrop of Europe’s refugee crisis and Merkel’s open-door refugee policy in 2015, and under the new leadership of spokespersons Frauke Petry and Jörg Meuthen, the AfD underwent a programmatic shift, moving well beyond its Eurozone-centred agenda.

It was from this point on that the AfD adopted extreme anti-immigration and anti-refugee stances, and sharp Islamophobic rhetoric.[iv] This, in turn, laid the groundwork for the party’s entry into the Bundestag in 2017 with a 12.6 per cent vote share, and it eventually became the third-largest party in the German parliament. AfD’s electoral stronghold, however, stems primarily from its enduring support base in the Eastern German states. Drawing upon the public discontent in East Germany rooted in the post-unification experiences of socio-economic deprivation vis-à-vis West Germany, political alienation and culturally embedded narratives of exclusion, the AfD has tactfully advanced its most controversial policy demands of ‘remigration’ (return of non-ethnic German citizens, particularly those from Muslim countries, to their country of origin), expansion of mass detention facilities, legalising homeschooling, school curriculum reforms, and establishment of separate classes/schools for children of asylum seekers.[v]

Barely a decade after its founding, AfD’s consecutive electoral victories have transformed it from a newcomer party on the fringes of the German party system into a formidable political force. However, it remains too early to predict whether AfD’s electoral triumph will translate into real executive power (i.e., forming the government), owing to post-war Germany’s political principle of ‘Brandmauer’, i.e., a ‘firewall’ against the far-right, representing a non-negotiable consensus among established parties, namely the Christian Democratic Union and the Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU), as well as the Social Democratic Party (SPD), to refuse any cooperation, coalitions or legislative coordination with the far-right.[vi]

AfD’s Foreign and Security Policy Positions

The Federal Republic’s foreign-policy orientation prioritises European integration, transatlantic security, multilateralism,........

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