“With the attack on Ukraine, we have entered a new era,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in February. Declaring the Russian invasion a Zeitenwende – a turning point – his bold words seem to usher in a new era of German confidence and decision-making.
Yet four months later, Scholz’s great ambitions began to lose momentum as he and his party seemed mired in a deep identity crisis, leaving the country trapped between the soothing notions of old and the promise of a new Germany.
Nowhere is this conflict more visible than within the Chancellor’s own Social Democratic Party (SDP). Take, for example, Scholz’s ally and ally Lars Klingbail, who recently called for Germany to become a “leading power” in the world, pleased with the idea of having military power as a “legitimate political tool.”
Klingbail also acknowledged that Germany’s policy toward Russia was a mistake. It is therefore imperative, he argues, that “Germans never again fall into such a strong energy dependence.” It was time to say goodbye to the old security.
But a day earlier, another voice emerged from the Scholz camp: Jens Plotner, the Chancellor’s chief adviser on foreign and security policy, condemned what he saw as the “feverish nature” of the debate over Germany’s response to the war in Ukraine. claiming that they miss “big issues” such as “our future relations with Russia.”
He also called the idea that it was obvious who was the perpetrator and who the victim of the war in Ukraine “Eurocentric” and called for caution regarding Ukraine’s EU membership: “Being attacked”, says Plotner, “does not automatically improve the state of the state adhering to the rule of law ”.
With so many different voices in his inner circle, all eyes are on Scholz. Yet the Chancellor’s instincts seem to be colliding with new ideas. He was quick to respond to Plotner’s remarks, arguing in parliament the next day that “partnering with Putin’s aggressive imperialist Russia is unthinkable in the foreseeable future.”
On the other hand, the appointment of Plotner by Scholz in December 2021 is indicative. His new foreign policy adviser previously led current President Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s strategy for Russia, who then as foreign minister negotiated the Minsk agreements after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Ukrainian ambassador to Berlin Andriy Melnik accused Plotner of being part of a “web of contacts with Russia”. And it was Plotner who asked Scholz to “take care of this” as more than 100,000 Russian troops gathered near the Ukrainian border.
Scholz’s instincts in the past also tended toward Russia. He had previously defended the Nord Stream 2 pipeline as a “private business venture” without a political dimension. But his desire to look to the East, not the West, goes further. As vice-president of the Young Socialists, the SPD’s youth wing, in the mid-1980s he worked closely with the youth movement in socialist East Germany. His delegation told comrades in 1988 that they were not “the real enemies of peace” – which could rather be found in the “US military-industrial complex.”
This may have been youth idealism (although Scholz was 30 at the time), but the basic instinct to view Russia as a partner and the Anglosphere with suspicion has not disappeared from the PSD. Both have no pacifist instincts. Today’s young Socialists, led by Jessica Rosenthal, are distancing themselves from party leader Klingbail and his vision for a new Germany. Ambitions for world leadership are wrong, Rosenthal says, “because of our history.” Instead, it would like to return to more “diplomacy”, “exchange” and “disarmament”.
This type of mood is not limited to SPD. While (West) Germany looked seamless in the West, the country remains skeptical of military power and has never looked away from Russia. Germany’s position in central Europe and its complex and traumatic history mean that the chancellors, from Bismarck to Scholz, viewed the East as the West.
But in light of Russia’s constant threat to the nations of Eastern and Northern Europe, now is the time for this Zeitenwende, a real shift in orientation in which Germany agrees more firmly with those countries that share its values.
Germany can and must play a leading role in global security. But it remains to be seen whether Scholz, his party and his country can resolve the identity crisis before it is too late for Ukraine.
Katja Hoyer is an Anglo-German historian and visiting research fellow at King’s College London
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