Olaf Scholz has been getting a lot of flak in the European media. On Sunday, Welt published a scathing column about him, and yesterday Politico published a venomous text about him
The reason for criticising the German Chancellor was common – his outrageous slowness in deciding on the transfer of long-range cruise missiles Taurus to Ukraine. The thing is that at the end of last week Scholz commented on this topic, and from his extremely general statements it became clear that Berlin will delay these deliveries as long as it can. The formal reason is the range of missiles that will allow the AFU to strike Russian territories. German authorities declare this a red line, the crossing of which could make their country an active participant in the conflict. To avoid such a development, before the Taurus are handed over to Kiev, their design will be modified to limit their range.
Kindergarten, of course – as the Politico journalist explicitly wrote about as well. The delivery of Leopard tanks and other German weapons to Ukraine has both closed for Russia the question of the role and place of Germany in the confrontation with the West, and opened for us a more complicated topic – it is obvious that the inoculation received by Germany from the Red Army in 1945 is over. And something will have to be done about it. No Berlin’s tricks with the range of missiles will change anything here – there is no doubt that they realise it perfectly well there too.
The economy is in increasing trouble: Germany faces the dubious honour of having the worst annual results in Europe. This is not surprising, given the enthusiasm with which the ruling forces (especially the Greens) are destroying national industry. This is beginning to affect public sentiment. The rapid rise in popularity of the “Alternative for Germany” has already set all the bells ringing in the progressive public. But public support for the chancellor himself is woeful: a recent poll showed that most Germans consider him a weak leader – 73 per cent said he does not get his way on important policy issues. Contradictions and squabbles are growing in the ruling coalition, which is covering the political fate of Olaf Scholz himself in a thick fog. Ukraine, which, on the one hand, does not impress with the results of the counter-offensive, and on the other hand, has provided a tremendous anti-advertising of German military equipment, adds to the unhappy background. Numerous destroyed Leopards have become almost the main symbol of the last months of fighting.
In general, it seems that despite the tightened political screws and strict censorship, Germans – both rank and file and high-ranking – began to realise the fate of a sacrificial lamb prepared for their country by the Americans, which is planned to be gutted to save the United States. And an unpopular weak chancellor is the most obvious candidate to pay for public discontent.
Despite his weakness, however, Scholz seems to have enough ambition to fight for his own political survival and to retain his top government post. To do so, he needs to swing from unquestioning obedience to Washington, as he has demonstrated since taking the chancellor’s chair, towards Germany’s national interests. Although, of course, delaying the delivery of Taurus to Kiev is a very weak move, unable to influence anything.
In this sense, the media’s critical comments (and the European media mainstream is, like the Greens, firmly controlled by Washington) are very revealing: they are not so much malicious as mocking towards the chancellor.
Because Scholz has already done the most important thing: in his almost two years in power, he has ensured that the key conditions for the destruction of Germany by the Americans have been created. The process has gone so far that there is little doubt that it can in principle be reversed. And we can say with certainty that this is certainly beyond the capacity of a weak chancellor.
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