Leopard tank dilemma as Germany tears itself in two over Ukraine
For the past week, all eyes have been on Germany. Would Berlin allow its allies to send German-made Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine? The answer could be decisive for the outcome of Putin’s genocidal war.
Yet the only answer that new German Defence Minister, Boris Pistorius, could give was “maybe”. He could not say when a decision would be made on the tanks, he told Friday’s meeting of 50 defence ministers at the US airbase in Ramstein.
Pistorius said he had ordered an inventory of Leopard 2 tanks so that he could act immediately if a green light came from his government. “I am very sure that there will be a decision in the short term,” he said. However, he admitted: “I don’t know how the decision will look.”
Pistorius’s shilly-shallying was in defiance of Volodymyr Zelensky, who had earlier appealed to the meeting to “speed up” on the question on tanks, but also US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
“This is not a moment to slow down,” General Austin said. “It’s a time to dig deeper. The Ukrainian people are watching us. History is watching us.”
At a press conference later, he refused to comment on Berlin’s refusal to release its Leopards.
The wrangling over tanks for Ukraine is emblematic of the identity crisis gripping Berlin as Germany shifts from decades of relative pacifism to a war-ready footing. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is talking the talk, but struggling when it comes to walking the walk.
Clearly, neither Austin, nor the other NATO defence ministers, could break the deadlock on tanks. Germany seems determined to ignore appeals not only from Ukraine but from the entire Western world. The indecision of Scholz, it seems, is final. Does he even know there’s a war on?
Scholz has not only refused to give German Leopard 2s to Kyiv, but has so far refused permission for any of the 2,000 German-made Leopards owned by other NATO members to be sent. Those who ignore this contractual obligation put future military trade deals with Berlin at risk.
This prospect does not trouble Poland’s Mateusz Morawiecki, whose relations with Scholz are in deep freeze anyway. The Polish PM has dismissed the German veto as irrelevant and threatened to send 14 Polish Leopards to Kyiv.
The spectacle of Germany stymying not only Ukraine but its allies too is deeply damaging, both diplomatically and morally. Olaf Scholz doesn’t seem to care that Germany is now seen as the sausage dog in the manger.
Despite the fiasco in Ramstein, a blast of realpolitik is blowing through Berlin. Almost a year ago Putin’s onslaught on Ukraine forced Germany to rethink its role as the West’s leading “civilian power”.
Today, the debate has moved on from the days when Scholz seemed to dither about taking sides at all. But the painfully slow shift to a war footing is tearing the country — and its centre-Left coalition — in two.
“We are living through a watershed era (Zeitenwende),” Chancellor Olaf Scholz told his petrified compatriots within 48 hours of the invasion last February. “The issue at the heart of this is whether power is allowed to prevail over the law… whether we have it in us to keep warmongers like Putin in check. And that requires strength of our own.”
This sounded like fighting talk. Yet Scholz’s much-vaunted Zeitenwende has bitterly disappointed the Ukrainians. Early in the conflict, Volodymyr Zelensky told the German Parliament that a new Berlin Wall had been erected in his country. By now it is clear that the German government has no desire to tear down that wall, as long as the Germans are on the right side of it.
What Ukrainians thought they heard from Scholz last February was a commitment to help them to turn the tables on the Russian invaders. Instead, the Zeitenwende turned out to be yet another chapter in the endless debate about German identity that has raged since 1945 — fascinating for pundits and academics, but hardly relevant to a people fighting for their lives.
Now, after eleven months and up to quarter of a million dead on both sides, the Ukrainians have been disappointed by the Germans yet again.
The phenomenon that has prevented Scholz from authorising the use of Leopards has already acquired a characteristically German moniker: “escalation angst” (Angst vor der Eskalation). This term denotes the fear that military assistance to Ukraine risks “provoking” Russian escalation of the war, potentially including the use of nuclear weapons — a fear shared by a majority of the public in the Federal Republic.
The latest poll shows that 46pc of Germans oppose sending Leopard 2s to Ukraine, with 43 per cent in favour.
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