Frank-Walter Steinmeier spoke out against recent NATO military exercises in Poland and the Baltics, describing them as “sabre-rattling.”
“The one thing we shouldn’t do now is inflame the situation with loud sabre-rattling and warmongering,” the minister told Bild am Sonntag newspaper.
“Anyone who thinks a symbolic tank parade on the alliance’s eastern border will bring security is wrong,” he said in excerpts released ahead of a longer interview to be published on Sunday.
“We would be well advised not to provide a pretext to renew an old confrontation.”
Mr Steinmeier was speaking after NATO staged its largest war game in eastern Europe since the end of the Cold War earlier this month.