Der Zeitgeist

Nah, no way. Neither the Greens nor the FDP have any interest in setting up a new coalition or even elections.

Easy. Let the Germans pay. I'm not even really joking, this might be one of the easiest ways out of this mess. Scholz would be happy to just send a cheque if that makes the Leopard 2 problem go away.

Yes, that's him, one of our few real military historians. He's getting a lot of air time these days, obviously. "Deutsche Krieger" is his magnum opus of sorts, where he shows certain cultural continuities of German armies from 1871 all the way to the modern Bundeswehr. One of his main themes is that every successive German state always tried to shape its military politically with its own ideology, but never really succeeded in doing so.

I don't want to drag this too far off-topic, but about the issue of military capabilties and readiness of the Bundeswehr up until 1990, you might want to read this relatively recent title by Sönke Neitzel.

I think in these cases, it's always helpful to remember that we're not here as representatives of our respective governments. I feel no need to support or defend Scholz's behavior simply because I'm not the one being adressed when people here are criticizing Germany. I find that providing some context especially on domestic political realities in a country can be quite important to understand what's going on, especially since these things are often lost in translation through the international media.

Maybe that's because a behaviour in military matters that is characterized by visible slowness and restraint is exactly how most Germans like their country to approach these matters. I've said it before, many pages ago in this thread: The Federal Republic of Germany is not a country with any kind of military decisiveness, whatsoever. Military restraint has been the guiding principle of our foreign policy since the country existed. Sure, other countries might wish that we should finally "grow up" or "become normal" or whatever, but the idea that someone looking for leadership in military policy would ask Germany, of all places, is entirely naive. That's just the way it is.

Germany was first with IRIS-T.

I'll admit it's less exciting than the Kompromat narrative you guys here seem to prefer.

Good thread putting some context into the Leopard saga:

If you ever worked in the German ministerial bureaucracy, you'll know that rule #1 for subordinate units is to only report good news upwards and never tell the ministry anything.

Interesting concept. I would argue though that the "Hunter" vehicle seems overengineered and you'd get more bang for the buck by mostly substituting it with lots and lots of Toyotas and quad bikes carrying portable missiles, small loitering munitions and micro UAVs.

Careful what you wish for. Schmidt wasn't exactly a friend of Ukraine.

Helmets! Don't forget the helmets!

Reposting this here from "that other place" I frequent... What I find interesting is that if you leave out all the theatrics and simply look at the packages that were announced at each Ramstein meeting, you get very distinct phases of weapons shipments that were highly coordinated across NATO and partner nations: Handheld AT weapons/ATGMs/MANPADS Ex-Soviet MBTs & IFVs Artillery (tube and rocket, self propelled as well as field-artillery) APCs & MRAPs (M113, Dingo, etc.) Western medium-range SAMs (NASAMs, IRIS-T, SAMP/T) Western IFVs <---We are here This poses the question if the entire thing is actually more coordinated than it might seem and how much of the public hysterics about the "next step" of weapons shipments is simply a useful theater play to make the West look weak and fragmented, possibly to manage escalation risks vs. Russia. Some article I read recently called it "boiling the frog". You gradually heat the water, just like you gradually escalate weapons shipments, instead of sending everything at once and risk Putin doing crazy things.

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It seems quite fitting how we're on page 1938 of this thread.

The thing is, Scholz scholzing it like this makes complete sense for him and the SPD because it doesn't alienate the leftist base of his party, it doesn't make the electorate go crazy (remember, Scholz was only "forced" to send the tanks by the evil warmongering Americans ), and it also manages overall escalation risks with Russia by showing the West as weak and fragmented. In the worst case of direct NATO-Russia military escalation, Germany will have the least responsibility for it. That's Scholz's thinking, in essence.

The most plausible thing for Russia to shake things up would probably be launching a dozen or so missiles at Rzeszów airbase and see if NATO dares responding in kind.

I wonder what that does to real estate prices...

The big fallacy in these discussions is the assumption that German behavior on the issue of weapons shipments for Ukraine is somehow strange or unusual. It's not. Reluctance and restraint in military matters has been the single constant in German foreign policy for both CDU and SPS-led governments essentially since our current version of the country existed.

Thanks! I think my favourite ones so far were these two:

Scholz's impulse is supporting Ukraine only to the level where they can barely hold and not outright lose the war. Everything else, like actually providing Ukraine with the means to go back to pre-2014 frontlines, is completely out of his comfort zone. It's the classic post-90s German mindset, where military power is a means to "protect" and "stabilize", but not something to achieve anything that could be seen as a military victory.

Do you know if Poland has already formally requested German permission to export Leopard 2 to Ukraine?

It was essential to be the last. Like I said many times before: It's the fear of Alleingänge all the way down.

Just wait until they find out that the Russian government has to notify the US of any strategic bomber losses there, as stipulated by the New START treaty.