In the Ukraine war, the decision-making process for supplying tanks is progressing slowly.
The Chancellor has to take a risk, comments Georg Anastasiadis.
The federal government is moving on the battle tank question - but it is doing it in slow motion and millimeter by millimeter.
After months of debate, the chancellor and his new defense minister come up with the great idea of having a check on how many of the old things are actually lying around in the Bundeswehr and industry.
A roll call after almost a year of war in Europe?
In earnest?
The manufacturer Rheinmetall is still waiting for an order to repair the tanks stored there.
With all due respect: With so much indolence, one must be scared and anxious – not just for Ukraine, but for Ukraine in particular.
Ukraine war: Olaf Scholz takes risks with every decision
Scholz and Pistorius continue to play for time, but the defenders in Ukraine, who are struggling to survive, no longer have that.
From the spring, military experts say, Russia's newly formed occupying forces will be able to launch large-scale new offensives.
Putin's armaments factories are running at full speed, while clearly visible cracks are opening in the western alliance.
The chancellor isn't the only one to blame for this: unlike Great Britain and France, Germany is not a nuclear power and is therefore more receptive to Putin's nuclear escalation threats than the United States, for example.
That explains Olaf Scholz's urge to only act shoulder to shoulder with the great protective power.
But no matter what he does, the chancellor will always have to take risks.
If he delivers tanks, he annoys Putin.
If he does nothing, he risks the Poles and Balts, who feel directly threatened by Putin, acting on their own and dragging NATO into the conflict.
And if he allows the megalomaniac to win in the Kremlin, security in Europe will be gone anyway.
There is no easy way out of this dilemma.
Only the certainty that things will only get worse if NATO unity crumbles.