THE OBSERVER – EDITORIAL:
German timidity is driven by self-interest as much as caution
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz addresses a press conference following a meeting with the state leaders on Ukraine in Berlin. Photograph: John MacDougall/AFP/Getty Images
Days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began, Olaf Scholz delivered a bombshell of his own. Addressing an extraordinary session of the Bundestag, Germany’s chancellor
declared his government would boost defence spending by €100bn (£84bn), suspend the prized Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia and reverse a long-standing ban on transferring arms to conflict zones in order to help Ukraine.
The shock announcements, termed a “revolution”, were seen as evidence that Germany, and especially Scholz’s centre-left Social Democratic party (SPD), was definitively turning away from its postwar pacifist tradition. The fact Scholz also pledged to meet Nato’s 2% of GDP defence spending obligation was cited as further proof of a historic shift in Berlin’s thinking about its role in the world.
The resulting satisfaction, bordering on smug self-congratulation, evident in Washington, London and Warsaw, was compounded by the ensuing German debate about how to deal with Russia. Leading figures on the left and right conceded the post-Soviet policy of
conciliating Moscow, rooted in the SPD’s famed cold war era
Ostpolitik, had been fundamentally misconceived.
As millions in Ukraine flee merciless bombardment, and incontrovertible evidence emerges of war crimes by Vladimir Putin’s troops, this changed belief that Russia cannot be treated as a normal country with which it is possible to do business as usual is now widely accepted. Yet at the same time, Scholz’s revolutionary fervour
seems to be waning.
» | Editorial | Sunday, April 24, 2022
