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Chancellor Scholz: "Anyone who orders a tour from me will get it"
Photo: image enclosure / IMAGO
On Wednesday morning, Olaf Scholz stood on a podium in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem and said one big sentence: "It is our job to ensure that this war does not continue."
Beforehand, he withdrew for a good hour with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and talked about many topics, including his plans to upgrade the Bundeswehr over the next few years.
Military investments are always sensitive, Bennett said at the press conference in the hotel.
But in this case he would welcome it if Germany became an "anchor of stability in Europe," just as Israel is in the Middle East.
Both delegations later said that Scholz's plan met with great approval from the Israelis.
It is seen as an expression of great leadership.
What a change.
When Scholz first appeared as chancellor abroad, in Paris or Brussels, for example, he seemed reserved, very quiet and quite irrelevant in terms of content. Now he travels the world as a crisis chancellor, with the high aspiration of ending a war.
War - the unimaginable is back, is close, a two-hour flight from Berlin, and with German participation, from boycotts to arms deliveries to militant rhetoric against Vladimir Putin.
The Federal Republic has made itself an actor in this conflict and must reckon with the consequences, in the extreme, but still extremely unlikely, case with a nuclear strike.
The end of history, i.e. the peaceful victory of democracies over other systems, has finally been cancelled.
Now history marches back on its old, highly dangerous path.
And Germany is taking on this challenge.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced this in his Bundestag speech on Sunday.
A special fund for the rearmament of the Bundeswehr, arms deliveries to war zones, a more active role in world affairs - these are program points that go beyond themselves.
You can change the character of this country.
A more pacifist nation should get spikes, should also become a well-fortified democracy on the outside.
A country that saw the world more as a large caravanserai, as a place to sleep and trade, should play a far greater political role than before.
A seemingly obsolete word has also returned: the enemy.
For parts of West German society, that was the Soviet Union until 1989.
After that, the Federal Republic suddenly found itself "surrounded by friends," as the Defense Minister at the time, Volker Rühe (CDU), said.
In 1992, the late sociologist Ulrich Beck wrote an essay on this subject, which is worth reading again, titled "The Hostless State."
In it he writes: "In all previous democracies there have been two types of authority: one comes from the people, the other from the enemy."
Beck thought about the possible problems of a federal republic without an enemy image and expected "deep insecurity."
Conversely, one has to ask oneself what it means for Germany if there is another enemy on its own continent who disregards or fights everything that is important to the West: democracy, freedom, human rights, the ban on aggressive wars.
The sociologist Armin Nassehi recently took up Beck's thoughts in "Zeit Online" and wrote: "We have another enemy who draws attention to ourselves." Who are we, who do we want to be in the face of a Putin?
The answer is not undisputed, as was shown shortly after Scholz's speech.
In the governing factions of the SPD and the Greens, she caused astonishment and sometimes horror.
Scholz surprised them all, at least most of them.
The decision on the 100-billion-euro special fund and the massive increase in armaments spending was made in the very narrowest of management circles. Even the Green Party Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck claimed not to have known this outrageous sum.
Others missed an explanation, missed an intellectual superstructure that takes the Germans along, prepares them for life in another world.
As surprising as the decision itself was, the method is in many ways a typical Scholz act.
Wait, say nothing, leave everyone in the dark - and then make the big serve.
It is a method that leaves potential opponents in the dark and prevents an idea from being either stolen by the competition or talked down by skeptics.
100 billion euros for the Bundeswehr, but then please also 50 billion for the climate or development aid, such demands would have been raised immediately if Scholz had communicated his idea more aggressively.
However, the clandestine method also protects the allies of the decision-makers.
If Scholz had let his green partners Baerbock and Habeck in on everything early on, they should have informed their party and faction leaders.
And if the green leadership hadn't sounded the alarm, didn't demand a debate, or even articulated concerns, a grassroots uprising might sweep them away now.
Instead, everyone can shrug their shoulders innocently: We didn't know it ourselves!
Not knowing can be life insurance, Scholz knows that.
The decision to join the Bundeswehr was a liberating blow for the chancellor, who had already been denied the will and ability to lead politically by allies around the world.
He is proud of his sentence from Hamburg times: "Anyone who orders a tour from me will get it."
Scholz was silent for a long time while his foreign minister was already traveling around the world and to the front line.
He seemed hesitant when Ukraine had already begun its struggle for survival and was being supplied with weapons by other states.
And he even seemed to resist really painful sanctions against Russia because they could also hurt the German economy or gas customers.
That looked like the old German approach to foreign policy: backing into a corner when the going gets tough.
»If our world is different, then our politics must also be different.«
Annalena Baerbock, Foreign Minister
Then came the turning point, abrupt and raw.
Scholz' speech surprised him, says Timothy Garton Ash, British historian and author.
He teaches at Oxford and Stanford and is a profound explainer of Germany and its role in the world.
He is one of those intellectuals who have long called for Germany to regain leadership in Europe and, through Europe, in the world.
A few months ago he criticized SPIEGEL that "a major impetus" was missing in foreign and security policy.
It is crucial for the future of Europe, "otherwise we will be eaten up by Russia, by China, by other powers."
"It was a strong, clear speech," says Garton Ash, "a turning point, as Scholz rightly said." For Germany, it was also the end of an illusion.
The hope for »change through trade«, a modernization partnership with Russia, has been destroyed.
"But if we're being honest, these formulas should have been outdated by the 2014 annexation of Crimea."
So now the reorganization of Europe.
According to Garton Ash, it doesn't just have to be about the EU and Russia, but also about the countries in between: Belarus, Moldova - and Ukraine.
Scholz said little to them in his speech.
"The future of these countries, also within the EU in the long term, is
the
key question for Olaf Scholz's new 'European Ostpolitik'." The chancellor will have to face it if he wants to go down in history as the architect of a new order.
Big tasks, not only for Scholz.
Less than 100 days ago, Annalena Baerbock stood in the World Hall of the Federal Foreign Office and explained the focal points of her foreign policy.
"The decisive question" of how Europe can achieve its strategic sovereignty "is not primarily a military one anyway," said the recently sworn-in Foreign Minister.
That was already a careless statement in December, in view of the Russian deployment on the Ukrainian border.
Since last Sunday it has been one of the quotes from the Green politician that has aged particularly badly.
With the most recent decisions, German foreign and security policy is experiencing the greatest push towards militarization since the end of the Cold War.
"Perhaps it is the case that today Germany is leaving behind a form of special and unique restraint in foreign and security policy," said Annalena Baerbock on Sunday in the Bundestag.
»If our world is different, then our politics must also be different.«
So far, this particular restraint has looked like this: After the Second World War and the Holocaust, the Federal Republic became a fundamentally pacifist country.
With the permission of its western allies, it built an army for itself, but at the same time demilitarized society, in everyday life, in thinking, in politics.
That was possible under the nuclear umbrella of the Americans.
During the Cold War, the Germans did not have to fight.
The romantic hero of this post-heroic period was Willy Brandt, who as Chancellor set Ostpolitik on the rails and became friends with Leonid Brezhnev, the leader of the Soviet Union, although he too was an authoritarian, brutal ruler.
The SPD still loves Brandt today.
He also became one of the guiding stars of the peace movement, which protested against Chancellor Helmut Schmidt's (also SPD) rearmament policy in the early 1980s.
Schmidt also failed due to resistance from his own party.
He wasn't a romantic, he was a realist, but that's not what people love in the SPD.
After the end of the Cold War in 1990, the newly enlarged Federal Republic could no longer stay out of it, but always acted comparatively cautiously in its military operations.
Although Germans now had to fight from time to time and soldiers lost their lives in combat, the basic pacifist attitude continued to sway through the country.
The turning point is turning everything upside down.
For example, the green ideas of a value-based foreign policy.
Until recently, Baerbock emphasized her no to arms deliveries to areas of tension, but now she is saying the opposite to Ukraine.
But what does this mean for similar future conflicts?
Will the Federal Republic also help other former Soviet republics such as Moldova or Georgia when Putin's tanks roll there?
Will it also supply weapons to the internationally recognized government in Libya in the future if it comes under fire?
The traffic light government is being bombarded with questions around the world.
During her visit to New York on Tuesday, Baerbock reported that some of her colleagues had told her: »You now want solidarity for Europe from us.
But have you been there for us in the past?' The Foreign Minister told the UN General Assembly that she was prepared to 'critically question' Germany's earlier engagement in the world.
Turning point, also in Baerbock's head.
But first of all, according to government circles, the traffic light is about defending their own security and that of NATO.
Even then, many questions arise.
In the coalition agreement, for example, the traffic light only accepted the doctrine of nuclear deterrence with difficulty.
Against the will of the FDP, the Greens and parts of the SPD managed to get the Federal Republic to participate as an observer in the so-called Conference of the Parties to the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty.
Shortly after the government was formed, NATO allies found this decision in need of explanation.
Now that the Russian President is putting his nuclear force on increased alert, Germany's commitment against nuclear missiles seems downright unworldly.
The FDP will come back to it.
The question of how many soldiers the Bundeswehr is sending to the eastern NATO states also has to be answered anew.
The NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997 offers sufficient flexibility for this.
This also means that the Balts or Poles can really be sure that the Germans will react militarily if Putin attacks these countries.
Fight for Riga, die for Tallinn?
There can only be one answer to this question, terrible as that is.
When he took office, the traffic light promised to develop a national security strategy.
She wanted to define security broadly, and climate policy in particular should play a central role.
The question of how Europe can defend itself against the threat posed by Russia will probably take up more space in the report than originally planned.
The security strategy should be available by the end of the year.
In addition, Europe would have to agree to become a real security union and to grow closer and faster together in this area than in other areas.
This has been talked about for a long time, but not much has happened.
Don't rely on the Americans.
Although Putin has strengthened the transatlantic axis, that could change dramatically if Donald Trump were to win the next presidential election.
It's not just about Russia.
In relation to authoritarian China, the Federal Republic has become deeply entangled in economic dependency.
Here, too, dangers lurk if China reaches out to Taiwan or aggressively seeks world dominance.
Europe must then be very strong, preferably alongside the Americans, of course, but not dependent on the Americans.
In 2002, the US thinker Robert Kagan wrote in an essay: »When it comes to important strategic and international issues today, the Americans come from Mars and the Europeans from Venus.« Here the red planet, which is named after the god of war, there the Planet of Love, which Germans in particular like to colonize in foreign policy.
Scholz's speech was a call to move.
This also poses organizational problems for the federal government.
In the case of the FDP, the question is therefore once again being raised as to whether the Russian crisis does not offer grounds for institutional reform.
"An even stronger dovetailing of diplomacy, development and defense beyond the networked approach would be well established in a body similar to a national security council," says the foreign policy spokesman for the FDP parliamentary group, Ulrich Lechte.
"This is where the threads of the secret services could also come together."
However, changing planets will not be easy.
Resistance is already building.
Tuesday afternoon, the SPD parliamentary group gets together.
The first to speak is by parliamentary group leader Rolf Mützenich.
For the SPD, the multi-billion-dollar military plans mean a culture break, for Mützenich they are an inner torment. He fought for peace and disarmament for almost his entire political life.
Now he is showing his loyalty to Scholz: Participants quote him as saying that such decisions are "not only the right, but also the duty of the chancellor".
In his doctoral thesis, Mützenich once wrote about "nuclear weapon-free zones," a favorite project of the peace movement in the 1980s.
Now it's about money for planes, rockets, even for combat drones - a taboo for many in the SPD.
Also an undead stirs again, the military service.
The debate has started, even if Mützenich opposes it: »It is superfluous to discuss it now.
In such disturbing times, we shouldn't invent new topics every hour, but concentrate on what is feasible.«
One can feel how much it all weighs on him, it is said from the people close to Mützenich, the situation is sapping his strength.
Scholz not only forced a 180-degree turn on him and the party.
The Chancellor has literally rolled over his Social Democrats.
Only half an hour before Scholz's historic speech in the Bundestag, Mützenich is said to have found out about the planned special fund for the Bundeswehr.
Almost all MPs hear about it for the first time when the Chancellor speaks.
Faction members immediately exchange incredulous chat messages.
It is a programmatic shock for the SPD.
Can she take him?
On the Monday after the speech, the mood is explosive.
The »Parliamentary Left« meets, the most powerful group in the parliamentary group.
Later there is talk of an appointment "to cry out".
Several MPs express their frustration.
But the next day, the situation is different.
The party left spoke to Chancellor Wolfgang Schmidt.
It's about technical issues, budget and debt.
No sign of a riot.
Not even when the faction comes together a little later.
After Mützenich it's the chancellor's turn.
Scholz vividly describes the threat situation.
Group members later described his speech as unusually emotional.
There is talk of a "second government declaration inwards".
Scholz and Mützenich try to take away the concerns of the MPs.
In the end, parliament still has the say over individual military projects, was the tenor.
There are hardly any critical tones.
SPD leader Lars Klingbeil caresses the party soul.
According to reports, nobody should be ashamed of being a social democrat and of having worked for peace.
And yet: not everyone wants to leave Venus.
The day after the parliamentary group meeting, the left-wing SPD group »Forum Demokratische Linke 21« (DL21) published a statement together with other organizations.
The special fund and the increase in the defense budget are “an unprecedented paradigm shift that we vehemently oppose”.
Can Scholz' coup d'état still pose a threat to the SPD?
Group leader Mützenich wants to look ahead.
"My priority is humanitarian aid for the Ukrainian people and trying to end the slaughter and barbarism," he says when asked.
»Further appointments and help must arise from this.«
The special session of the Bundestag on Sunday is also a shock for the Greens.
The camera captures disbelieving faces, parliamentary group leader Katharina Dröge keeps turning around, apparently wanting to see how colleagues react.
Even the arms deliveries, decided on Saturday, were a paradigm shift for the former peace party.
On that day, party leftist Jürgen Trittin spoke out against it in a SPIEGEL interview, and Baerbock also publicly stuck to the old party line for a long time.
And now this. A whole new security policy for the country.
According to SPIEGEL information, Habeck and Baerbock had informed the party and faction leaders in a switch about the planned special fund in the morning.
But the amount was not mentioned.
On Monday, the Greens will meet in a hastily convened digital parliamentary group meeting.
Did the Vice Chancellor and the Foreign Minister know about the 100 billion?
"I was surprised by the number," says parliamentary group leader Britta Hasselmann.
But government circles say that Vice Chancellor Habeck knew of the planned volume.
The Greens tell a different story.
Habeck said a remarkable sentence on Deutschlandfunk: "The arms deliveries, which have now been decided, might also have been a measure to prevent war." Last spring, Habeck had proven himself to be a man from Mars and demanded arms deliveries to the Ukraine.
For this he had been badly beaten.
Also from Baerbock.
On Deutschlandfunk he now makes it clear to her and everyone else who the better strategist is, but admits that Putin would have been difficult to stop in any case.
The Greens come from the peace and environmental movement.
They fought simultaneously against nuclear missiles and nuclear power plants.
Government responsibility already created many pragmatists in the red-green coalition from 1998 to 2005.
The party painfully agreed to a combat mission in Kosovo.
It's like this again.
The pictures from the war zone do the rest.
Many Greens struggle with their previous positions on foreign policy.
NATO, which just a few weeks ago was viewed with a certain distance by parts of the party, is suddenly acting like a necessary protective shield.
At the beginning of the week there were first indications that the parliamentary group would probably agree to an amendment to the Basic Law on the special fund.
Some say they want to ask for something in return.
More money for climate, social affairs, a reform of the debt brake.
They don't know if they will get anything from it.
There has long been concern internally that cabinet members will not be able to assert their party's interests against Scholz and Lindner.
Haßelmann says: »When we talk about the special fund and more investment in security, we also have to talk about energy security, humanitarian aid, civil crisis diplomacy and civil protection.
Security must be thought of broadly.
We're negotiating that now."
But what should they do?
It's war, the power of images is great - and so is the pressure to act.
A feeling of discomfort remains, which is usually only expressed in a whisper.
Left-wing MP Andreas Audretsch was the first to openly criticize Scholz's military plans.
There is also a little resistance at the base.
"We feel alienated," says Gazi Freitag, member of the Greens from Kiel, "Putin would have attacked the Ukraine even if we had delivered weapons beforehand." Marcus Neumann, Grüner from Erfurt, says it's "absurd." that Scholz would not have included the Greens in the decision about the 100 billion.
"Even though we'll provide the vice chancellor." Dozens of members signed a letter calling on the government to halt arms sales to Ukraine.
But the officials keep quiet.
The Union parties are much more relaxed about the U-turn of the federal government.
In his reaction to Scholz's speech, CDU leader and Union faction leader Friedrich Merz offered "comprehensive help and support" in upgrading the Bundeswehr.
"We will support that and not complain about it on a small scale."
But maybe it is.
"We will not issue a blank check to traffic lights," says Thorsten Frei, first parliamentary secretary of the Union parliamentary group.
The CDU and CSU would like to have a say in the details.
Is it really necessary to change the basic law for the special fund, as Scholz and Lindner are striving for?
Some in the Union leadership are skeptical about that.
And does the 100 billion euros for the Bundeswehr really have to be exclusively financed by debt?
There is a refugee reserve of almost 50 billion euros.
They could be approached, according to the Union faction.
At least you want to have a say.
In the tour, some half-jokingly speak of the “black traffic light”.
A war makes many things possible.
The 180-degree turnaround in German security policy does not come as a complete surprise to Germany's professional Martians, the Bundeswehr.
But pretty much.
As early as 2014, the Russian annexation of Crimea shattered some pacifist visions.
Since then, the defense budget has risen from a good 32 billion to around 50 billion euros.
Until then, the Bundeswehr had only gone on missions abroad with small and lightly armed units.
Now the troops should be ready again for home defense, for a conflict with opponents who are militarily equal.
But armed forces are cumbersome large organizations.
It takes many years to realign them.
The first course has already been set, but so far there has not been enough money for comprehensive modernization.
There are hardly any troop units that are so well trained and equipped that they could be transferred to NATO's "eastern flank" without hesitation.
And there is a lack of practice in operating in brigades or even divisions, which would be necessary in a large-scale land war.
The 100-billion-euro rain of money hits an organization that has dried up so much after decades of financial drought that it is questionable whether it can absorb the enormous sums in a meaningful way.
The Federal Republic must also upgrade when it comes to defending itself against cyber attacks and disinformation campaigns.
In 2015, Putin's hackers stole Bundestag data.
Apparently, attackers from the Russian secret service GRU recently tried to break into the e-mail accounts of German MPs, probably to start a smear campaign.
Shortly before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Federal Office for Information Security declared the second highest alert level, Orange.
In response to the sanctions and the arms deliveries, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution warns that there is an “increased risk of cyber attacks against German authorities”.
According to an internal paper, the Russian services had the ability to "substantially and permanently sabotage" critical infrastructure as well as military facilities and political operations.
Violent cyber attacks can even trigger the NATO alliance.
Experts doubt that Germany is prepared for the new digital battlefields.
Countless authorities are busy on the field, and responsibilities are not always clearly defined.
"We finally need a National Cyber Security Council that is worthy of its name and that is really relevant with a clear mandate and new powers," says Sven Herpig from the Berlin think tank Foundation New Responsibility.
"We need to harden all of our systems."
Stephan Thomae, FDP interior expert
The last federal government wanted to regulate cyber defense, but got bogged down in the question of whether the authorities could penetrate foreign servers in the event of an attack in order to switch them off.
The traffic light ruled out this most stringent measure ("hackback") in the coalition agreement.
In the course of the Ukraine war, she has to deal with the question of how robust the cyber defense is.
"We have to think more about countermeasures in the event of cyber attacks," says Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD).
It is about “specific measures to identify perpetrators and criminal structures abroad, to uncover their cover-up measures and to prevent attacks from being carried out.”
The politicians are also arming themselves.
On Monday, the parliamentary directors of the coalition met the deputy head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution - and received tips on how to prevent attacks on their computers.
"We all have to harden our systems," says FDP interior expert Stephan Thomae, "including the Bundestag."
So far, finance minister Christian Lindner (FDP) has done the best with the plans.
He was instrumental in formulating it.
The special fund allows him to mobilize 100 billion euros for the troops in addition to the regular federal budget and still comply with the requirements of the debt brake.
It only allows the federal government to take on minimal new debt, but it is suspended anyway this year due to the burdens from the corona pandemic.
Instead of the planned 99.7 billion euros, Lindner will have twice as much debt this year.
The new special pot is designed to last at least five years.
Depending on the outflow of funds, it could also exist until the end of the decade, Lindner signaled to his chancellor.
According to the current status, the federal government also wants to set a repayment plan for the new auxiliary budget.
Future finance ministers will be required to repay the additional debt in equal annual installments over a set period of time.
The repayment period has not yet been determined.
Since the special fund is to be anchored in the Basic Law, the funds cannot be misused for other projects.
The new fund also gives Lindner leeway in the regular budget, because he can now use the increases in defense spending for the coming years for other purposes.
Government experts estimate that the operation will give him a good three billion euros in 2022 alone, and even around ten billion euros by 2026, at the end of the financial planning period.
The turning point also means that Germany must quickly eliminate its dependence on Russian energy supplies.
It has only gotten stronger over the decades.
A "fatal mistake," says the Federal Minister of Economics Habeck.
Seine Aufgabe ist es nun, einen Kurswechsel zu vollziehen, der in seiner Radikalität der außenpolitischen Wende nicht nachsteht. Es seien »zwei Seiten derselben Medaille«. Mit dem Stopp des Genehmigungsverfahrens für die Gaspipeline Nord Stream 2, das Symbol deutscher Abhängigkeit, hat Habeck begonnen, schon vor dem Angriff. Das hätte er auch gemacht, behauptet der Grüne, wenn es nicht zum Krieg gekommen wäre.
Zuerst geht es darum, die Erdgasspeicher bis zum nächsten Winter zu füllen. Bis Ende September muss das weitgehend abgeschlossen sein, weshalb Habeck nun per Gesetz die Betreiber der Kavernen zu Mindestfüllständen verpflichtet. Das Gas soll künftig unter anderem aus Katar per Flüssiggastanker kommen.
Auch bei Kohle und Öl dominiert Russland die Importe in Deutschland, weshalb Habecks Beamte nach Standorten suchen, an denen eine nationale Kohlereserve aufgeschüttet werden kann, und nach Unternehmen, die diese Aufgabe übernehmen. Am Kohleausstieg bis 2030, wie er im Koalitionsvertrag anvisiert ist, will er festhalten. Doch Habeck wird auch im kommenden Jahrzehnt Kohlekraftwerke als Back-up im Land stehen lassen müssen. Beim Thema Erdöl versucht er, zusammen mit anderen Ländern, die steigenden Preise zu drücken, indem er Teile der nationalen Ölreserve verkauft.
Die Energiewende, die bislang dem Schutz des Klimas galt, erhebt Habeck zu einer Frage der nationalen Sicherheit. »Unter tragischen Bedingungen«, sagt der Vizekanzler, werde der Ausbau der erneuerbaren Energien beschleunigt werden.
Der grüne Minister beweist dieser Tage ein hohes Maß an Pragmatismus und muss fürchten, deshalb Teile seiner Partei zu verlieren. In einem Punkt allerdings bleibt er grünen Glaubenssätzen treu: bei der Atomkraft. Er lässt zwar prüfen, inwieweit die drei verbliebenen Kernkraftwerke über das Jahr 2022 hinaus laufen könnten. Eine Vorprüfung habe jedoch ergeben, sagt er, dass dies für den Winter 2022/23 nicht helfen würde. Zudem seien die Vorbereitungen des Abschaltens bereits so weit fortgeschritten, dass die Meiler nur »unter höchsten Sicherheitsbedenken« weiterbetrieben werden könnten.
FDP und Union werden ihn dafür kritisieren. Aber Habeck kann davon ausgehen, diese Debatte zu gewinnen. Die Betreiberkonzerne hätten bereits abgewunken, beteuert er.
Eine große Frage ist nun, ob die Deutschen bereit sind, auf den neuen Planeten zu ziehen. Der gesellschaftliche Trend entwickelt sich eher venushaft in Richtung Achtsamkeit, Empfindsamkeit, Inklusion. Ein Feindbild passt dazu überhaupt nicht.
Im Moment zeigen die Umfragen zwar hohe Zustimmung für die neue, robuste Außenpolitik. Dies sei eine Folge von Angst, sagt Christian Mölling, Forschungsdirektor der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik. »Ein Krieg in Europa ist nicht mehr abstrakt, die Bevölkerung sieht ihn live im Fernsehen.« Aber das sei eine Momentaufnahme. Für eine langfristige Unterstützung müsse die Regierung die Sorgen ihrer Bürger ernst nehmen und ihr Vorgehen klar begründen. Im Alltag werde die Bevölkerung den Krieg vor allem an der Ankunft vieler Flüchtlinge bemerken. »Die Solidarität wird sich am Umgang mit den Geflüchteten messen«, sagt Mölling.
Gustav Gressel, Osteuropaexperte des paneuropäischen Thinktanks ECFR mit Sitz in Berlin, sieht noch andere Veränderungen auf die Deutschen und Europäer zukommen: »Persönliche Vorratshaltung, Evakuationspläne, all das muss wieder Teil des Alltags werden.« Möglicherweise müsste man die Deckenstärke von Tiefgaragen zukünftig mit dem Gedanken planen, dass sie als Schutzräume taugten.
Da kommt viel auf die Deutschen zu. Man hüpft nicht so einfach von einem Planeten auf einen anderen. Pendeln wäre vielleicht die beste Lösung. Nicht alles aufgeben, was die Bundesrepublik geprägt hat, aber offen sein für die neue Welt und ihre Herausforderungen.
In many respects, however, Scholz's response to the war is also a diversionary maneuver, an only apparent way out of a hopeless situation.
Because by the time the billions really show consequences for the military capability of the Bundeswehr and foreign policy has switched to its new role, this war should be over.
In the best-case scenario, Putin won't even be in the Kremlin.
But because there is no way of knowing, Germany has to be prepared for the fact that he will remain an enemy of the West in the long run.