Germany finds itself in a predicament of its own making

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The writer directs the Center on the US and Europe at the Brookings Institution

Even when Germany holds highly unusual snap elections, some of its political laws seem etched in stone. Incumbent Chancellor Olaf Scholz faces a bubbling groundswell of revolt in his SPD, where some want him to step aside for defence minister Boris Pistorius, the country’s most popular politician. Both men were born in the town of Osnabrück; both have law degrees.

In 2020, the three men competing to succeed Angela Merkel as the next conservative chancellor were all from the same state and had all gone to the same law school. One of them, opposition leader Friedrich Merz, could become the country’s leader next year.

The other thing that appears to be immutable in Berlin is the chancellor himself. Scholz’s densely imperturbable self-righteousness grows more astounding (some would say disturbing) by the day given the rapid deterioration of circumstances: for him, for his coalition, for Germany, for Europe and for Ukraine.

Scholz is currently limping on in a minority government with the Greens, having sacked his finance minister, Christian Lindner, on the day after the US election in a fight over the constitutional debt brake. He has reluctantly agreed to call a confidence vote on December 16 (which he is projected to lose), clearing the way for elections on February 23. In a new survey, two-thirds of his own party faithful rate Pistorius over him. Yet Scholz insisted in a recent hour-long television interview that he was the best candidate, and that he would win.

How that might transpire is his secret. The polls have his SPD at 16, the Greens at 12, and the Free Democrats (FDP) languishing at or below the parliamentary threshold of 5 per cent. When this “traffic light” coalition came into power in 2021, its programme of progressive transformation felt like a rush of fresh air. Its forceful initial response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — becoming a major supporter for Kyiv and Nato, agreeing on “watershed” defence spending and decoupling from Russian energy imports — was admirable.

But since then, it has become mired in policy failures and public bickering. The economy is hovering just above recession. The far right has surged, together with the new left-nationalist BSW led by the firebrand Sahra Wagenknecht. Key reform promises are left unfulfilled, and unfunded. One senior politician has been heard to say that Lindner relished vivisecting his colleagues’ projects at the cabinet table.

In much of Europe, the coalition is viewed with emotions that run the gamut from disappointment to dismay and distrust. It prioritised the largest countries over smaller ones; but even relations with Paris and Warsaw are at a nadir. Too often, it took unilateral decisions — on migration, on subsidies for fossil fuel substitution, on tariffs for Chinese electric vehicles — resulting in beggar-thy-neighbour effects beyond Germany’s borders. Scholz’s phone call with Vladimir Putin last week aroused particularly severe contempt and anger.

On Ukraine, the German government was sharply divided. The Greens and the FDP wanted to give Kyiv more lethal weapons — like the Taurus cruise missile — more quickly. The chancellery saw itself in a mind-meld with the Biden administration’s concerns about escalation and being pulled into a war with Russia. But now that the White House has decided to let the Ukrainians use US-made Atacms missiles for limited long-range strikes, pressure on Scholz to deliver the Tauruses is growing again, including in his own party. His adamant refusal only increases Berlin’s isolation.

Meanwhile, Merz has his eyes on the chancellery, an office he has been chasing all his life. His CDU currently polls at 34 per cent, so, barring an electoral miracle, he will need to partner with the SPD and possibly the Greens as well. He will have to keep the extremists at bay, make the economy competitive again, re-centre Germany in Europe and Nato, manage a vindictive Donald Trump, face down a Russia hell-bent on subjugating Ukraine and fend off Chinese assertiveness.

He should expect little sympathy abroad, since Germany has very largely brought these dilemmas on itself — through complacency, denial and deliberately cultivated dependencies. But Merz could do worse than remember what his arch-nemesis Angela Merkel did in a time of national crisis. At the height of the pandemic, she went on television and told Germans the stark truth: “It is serious. You should take it seriously.” That would be a start. And perhaps a new beginning.