.....and present industrial, economic and political expansion as a natural good (i.e. a manifest destiny), as something to be taken for granted.

Notice how in this Tageschau article the Western expansionist mentality, its drive to dominate, and control everything (nature, people, brains) around it, pops up to the surface in Scholz speech:
"I am campaigning for the expansion of the EU. The fact that the EU should continue to grow eastward is a win-win situation for all of us."

Scholz fails to realize that his urge for more and further is a direct consequence of (derives entirely from)(is produced entirely by) his own societal dynamics namely that his consumption-sick and energy-addicted population produces so much mutual threat, coldness, bitterness and grudge, and so little meaningfulness, satisfactions, experiential value and social cohesion that no limitation can be organized by and with them.

If you do not stabilize people in terms of basic living conditions, they continue to search, stare at horizons and project promises onto the unknown. And so then a palace full of equipment and other superfluous junk, a SUV, every weekend to Majorca, and a migrant worker to take care of the parents, gradually becomes everyone's wish list.

So Scholz foreign power-seeking is just a small link in the much larger chain (positive feedback loop) to keep this compulsion-neurotic societal dynamic going.