[Skybird]

Neue Zürcher Zeitung:
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The ditherer: one year of German foreign policy under Olaf Scholz

The chancellor talks a lot about turning the tide - but it remains unclear where he wants to position Germany in the new geopolitical landscape.

When Olaf Scholz was sworn in on December 8, 2021, he may have already sensed that his first year would not go according to plan. The Russian troop deployment on Ukraine's borders already caused irritation. But the new chancellor may still have hoped at that point that a warlike confrontation could be prevented through negotiations.

This was probably brought home to him by his foreign policy adviser, Jens Plötner. Plötner, who was a diplomat stationed in Israel, Sri Lanka, Tunisia and Greece - not in Russia or the post-Soviet space - had been involved in the Minsk negotiations with Russia and Ukraine as a close associate of Steinmeier during his time as foreign minister back in 2014. When the tensions with Russia came to a head, Scholz focused entirely on diplomacy.

As late as Feb. 10, Plötner invited a Normandy-format meeting (Russia, Ukraine, France, Germany) to Berlin, which was unsuccessful. With the attack of February 24, it then became clear to even the last person that the efforts to find a diplomatic solution since 2015, driven primarily by Berlin, had had only one goal from the Russian perspective: To buy time to weaken Ukraine's and the West's will to resist.

War dominates the agenda

The start of the Russian war of aggression also made it clear that the red-green-yellow federal government would have to put aside its carefully crafted program for the time being. The Greens in particular had set their sights high: the climate-friendly restructuring of the market economy not against but with industry. Habeck, who had established a strong position for himself as Minister for the Economy and Climate Protection and as Vice Chancellor, stood for this. His rival within the party, Baerbock, had secured the foreign ministry - where little can be achieved, but sympathy points can be gained.

Scholz himself had chosen the classic social democratic "social justice" as his trademark. His motto "You'll never walk alone" signals continuity with the old social democracy before Gerhard Schröder - the all-encompassing state is supposed to regulate it, not the active civil society. The FDP was then left with only the trademark "economic reason": As finance minister, party leader Lindner would ensure that debt did not get out of hand.

The leisurely structural change that the "traffic light" had set out to achieve was then pushed aside by the staccato of crisis mode. Every day there are new problems to which the government must conjure up a quick answer.

Scholz, who had been able to study the merits of sitting out with Kohl and Merkel, was immediately put under considerable pressure by the Russian attack. After a few days of hesitation, he decided to strike a liberating blow: The "turn of the times" speech in the Bundestag put an end to Germany's old Russia policy, opened up the prospect of arms deliveries to Ukraine and made the promise that the Bundeswehr would be decently equipped.

Primacy of domestic policy

A chancellor who had begun his career in 1985 in the "old" Federal Republic as a labor lawyer and had distinguished himself for decades in domestic politics suddenly found himself thrown into a world where issues of war and peace dominated the agenda. Instead of being able to focus on Germany's transformation, within a stable international framework, Scholz now had to help ensure that this framework was not blown apart.

However, even when dealing with international issues, Scholz's focus was primarily on their domestic dimension: stability and prosperity at home were his first concern. Thus, the chancellor opposed tough oil and gas sanctions against Russia - keeping in mind not primarily the consequences for the Russian war, but the reaction of the electorate at home.

In his first year in office, Scholz, a domestic, social and economic policy expert, has not developed into a geostrategist. The pool of his ideas remains very limited; for the most part, he draws on the old familiar.

Scholz responds to the new global geopolitics, in which power conflicts are at the center, with the doctrine of cooperation between different centers of power, which Merkel has repeated over and over again - as if there were no competition between ideas of order and no conflicts over supremacy.

Sticking to the old line

At its core, Scholz's thinking on world politics revolves around globalization, which he sees as threatened by a division of the world into different spheres of power. However, one hardly hears anything from the chancellor about the causes of this division and how to deal with the reality of tension and conflict.

Scholz has no answer to the central global political challenge of the present, the power and system-political conflict with Russia and China. There is no sign of a conceptual realignment of German foreign policy. Instead, the former mayor of Hamburg is almost stubbornly sticking to the old line, as can be seen in particular in his dealings with China: economic interdependence while ignoring the changed situation in China under Xi - a country that is developing in the direction of totalitarian dictatorship on the inside and aggressive revisionist power on the outside.

The strategic gap is filled by maximum leaning on the Biden administration. When the chancellor declares he is in line with the White House on Ukraine, that is true - Team Biden is also trying to calibrate Ukraine support to achieve two goals: Ukraine is to hold its ground, but Russia is also not to be cornered in such a way that Moscow might escalate further.

The difference, however, is that the U.S. is far more aggressive about getting weapons to Ukraine - and leading the way. Scholz, on the other hand, is careful to stay on the Western "convoy"; his fear of escalation often seems greater than his concern that the war will drag on endlessly and that Russia might feel vindicated in its neo-imperial approach by gaining considerable ground.

In terms of foreign and security policy, Berlin has, with great relief, ceded leadership of the West back entirely to Washington. This allows Scholz to turn his focus to domestic policy - the "comfort zone" of a chancellor who was still politically socialized in the old Federal Republic.

More than friendly diplomacy

In the long run, however, that won't do; not even for four years. Even in a good transatlantic partnership, a player as central as Germany should also position itself strategically and assume co-leadership responsibility. The U.S. will foreseeably focus more on China, which means that Germany will have to take on a greater share of the support for NATO's "eastern flank" - defense and deterrence against Russia. And whatever the outcome of the war in Ukraine, Berlin will have to play a central role here as well, including in military affairs.

Germany must learn that security policy is more than just support for the main allies, the United States and occasionally France, and that foreign policy cannot be limited to friendly diplomacy with challengers to the liberal order.

In a global landscape shaped by geopolitical competition, a strategically oriented foreign and security policy must itself compete and work to shape the international regulatory framework-with partners such as the United States, other Europeans, and key countries in Asia such as Japan and India, and against challengers such as Russia and China. The hope that a focus on economic interests would lead to a dissolution of geopolitics has not been realized; the dramatic proof of this is Putin's attack on Ukraine.

Germany, as the central power of Europe and a global player, must draw the consequence and enter the geopolitical game itself - not only with the carrot, but also with the stick. This learning curve still lies ahead for many in Germany, including the chancellor.
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