From Foreign Policy, June 20:
The chancellor is hugely unpopular—and a popular minister is waiting in the wings.
At a glance, Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and his defense minister, Boris Pistorius, share much in common. The two longtime members of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), both in their mid-60s, were born in the same city, namely the old market town of Osnabrück in northern Germany, at the height of the Cold War. While Scholz moved on to become mayor of Hamburg, Pistorius took the post in Osnabrück’s city hall. From there, Scholz entered the federal government as then-Chancellor Angela Merkel’s finance minister, Pistorius to interior minister in the state of Lower Saxony. And Pistorius, like Scholz—in fact, like their party overall—long saw chummy relations with Vladimir Putin’s Russia as the best means to ensure stability in Europe, even well after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.
But today, at the center of Germany’s painful debate on defense and security, the two men offer starkly contrasting styles and priorities—and the German public’s estimation of them is rapidly diverging, too. The tough-talking Pistorius, a hawk on rebuffing Russia and rebuilding Germany’s armed forces, is currently basking in the glow of being Germany’s most popular politico (by a long shot). His self-styled image is of a doer who says directly what he wants—and does it. What people like about Pistorius, opined the Süddeutsche Zeitung on June 13, is that he’s a “straight shooter” who trusts Germans to understand complicated issues when explained in plain language.
The dispassionate Scholz, on the other hand, comes off as indecisive, conflicted, and equivocal. Scholz understands himself as both Germany’s “peace chancellor” (Friedenskanzler) and at the same time as a cornerstone of NATO’s bulwark against Russia. As for the public eye, Scholz has plummeted—becoming one of the least popular of all of the country’s leading politicians—after his party bombed spectacularly in the June 6 to 9 European Parliament elections. It garnered a miserable 14 percent of the vote, which landed the SPD behind the fiercely far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Scholz’s dire numbers and the fiasco of the bitterly divided three-party coalition have fueled speculation that Pistorius, rather than Scholz, would make the better chancellor candidate in 2025. Were elections today, the SPD, liberals, and Greens would fall woefully short of a parliamentary majority. Germans are distinctly unhappy with the coalition’s work and Scholz’s bland leadership. Leading Social Democrats, including Pistorius, adamantly deny any musings about replacing Scholz (they have to, of course). SPD member and deputy minister for economic cooperation and development, Niels Annen, told Foreign Policy: “There is no talk of this in the higher levels of the SPD. It would not have been the first time that people underestimated the chancellor. The autumn 2025 elections are much too far away to write off Olaf Scholz.”
And yet, so poorly is the current government faring, there is a real chance that Scholz may not run again—and if not, then who better to step into his shoes than Germany’s new favorite politician?
By any account, Pistorius’s turnaround of the defense ministry has been impressive. Scholz called Pistorius to the position to replace Christine Lambrecht, a senior SPD official who failed to step up to the mammoth job of overhauling the dysfunctional, underfunded, and understaffed German military in the aftermath of Russia’s February 2022 attack on Ukraine. Within the armed forces themselves, said insiders, confidence in Lambrecht was next to zero. In Lambrecht’s defense, the post had long been a thankless one in Germany—hobbled by meager budgets and German inhibitions. Yet, nevertheless, she, a non-expert with no military background, appeared particularly ill-suited to steer an unprepared armed forces suddenly obliged to respond to a full-scale war on the EU’s eastern border.
Pistorius took over in January 2023 and was tasked with fleshing out Scholz’s declared Zeitenwende (turning point) for Germany’s military, his response to the 2022 Russian invasion. Pistorius was made responsible for no less than turning the German armed forces into a military actually capable of repelling a threat to Germany’s security. Although Scholz announced shortly after the beginning of the invasion that a special one-off 100 billion euro fund—more than double the annual defense budget—would bankroll the endeavor, he didn’t go into specifics or say what would happen when it ran out. But Germany, Scholz promised, would no longer fall short of devoting 2 percent of its budget to defense, as NATO had long insisted its member states do....
....MUCH MORE
I wonder if I can get a bet down with that British guy?
