Germany’s reluctant U-turn

This genocidal war has catapulted Germany out of its comfort zone

If the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, chose to upgrade Germany’s military assistance to Ukraine last week, it was only as a result of the extreme pressure that had been building up.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has thrust upon Germany the necessity of some serious selfanalysis. It has shattered many certainties, including even that most iron-clad tenet of postwar German history, which maintained that no conflict could ever be resolved militarily. Germany’s creed “Wandel durch Handel”, change through trade, was directly derived from this thinking that had permeated virtually every part of its society.

Keep this in mind when remembering that Germany maintained its lonely support for the highly controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline project until days before Russia’s invasion began, casting aside repeated criticisms from other countries even as Moscow massed troops on Ukraine’s borders.

The events of 24 February 2022 dealt a death blow to Germany’s well-practised refusal to acknowledge the nature of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Up until that point, Russian military atrocities in Syria, its wars in Georgia and eastern Ukraine, and brazenly public crimes such as the assassination of a Georgian national considered an enemy by Putin’s regime in Berlin in 2019 had failed to provoke any meaningful change in Germany’s behaviour.

Considering all that, the country has come a long way over the course of less than a year. Its public has moved from rejecting sending weapons to Ukraine by a nearly two-to-one margin to a majority in favour. And let me be clear: Germany has provided a lot more than anyone following last year’s debates about its contributions could be led to believe.

This confusion is a result of Germany’s Social Democrat-led government’s communication style. The tedious task of staking political claims is left to the likes of the Social Democratic party chairman, Lars Klingbeil, who notably remarked that his country should be a “leading power”. Scholz, on the other hand, has refrained from anything resembling leadership.

By hiding behind Washington and relying on his mantra of Germany not “going it alone”, Scholz has accepted doing considerable damage to the uniquely important transatlantic relationship, not to mention further eroding eastern European trust in Berlin.

Now, the chancellery’s spin doctors are pulling out all the stops to frame a late and politically costly decision as a stroke of political and strategic genius. Scholz’s machinations, they contend, resulted in an even greater number of tanks going to Ukraine.

But this argument conveniently leaves out why this cunning move was never shared with Scholz’s coalition partners at home.

Scholz’s inscrutable political manoeuvring probably reflects the equally unclear positions of many Germans. Germany’s longstanding tradition of antiAmerican sentiment facilitated this move just as it did – and does – inform its almost romantic view of Russia. Putin speaking in German at the Bundestag in 2001 was more than enough for most Germans to overlook the brutality of his methods, which he made no attempt to hide. After his speech, Putin received standing ovations, all while Russian troops were busy levelling Chechen cities.

Russia’s genocidal war in Ukraine has catapulted Germany out of its comfort zone. A charitable interpretation of this would be that Berlin may yet complete its long and arduous journey towards the global west, including assuming responsibilities that go beyond financial and humanitarian aid. In this scenario, Scholz could be understood as a moderating force helping Germans through a profound reality shock while gently moving them towards a point where they can process the changes.

The obvious flipside of this is that Germany can move further west only because it failed to do so before. Thus, Scholz’s tentativeness looks like a desperate attempt to delay, if not fully prevent, decoupling from a Russia that seems unable to deliver anything but death and destruction. A Russia that must lose this war – a simple demand that Scholz, 11 months into this war, has yet to make in public.