Germany’s Zeitenwende, the historic shift in its defense and foreign policy, has not lived up to its promises, says Dr. Benjamin Tallis. Tallis, who spent nearly two years advising top German policymakers on making Zeitenwende a success, argues that Chancellor Olaf Scholz has failed to deliver real change. In this interview with RFE/RL’s Georgian Service, he explains why Germany is stuck in its old ways, why Merkel’s legacy still weighs heavily on Berlin, and what the future may hold under a new government. Can Zeitenwende be revived, or will Germany slip back into business as usual?
How is the Zeitenwende coming along? Has it proved to be everything it was cracked up to be when it was announced?
The opening line of my book is “Germany’s Zeitenwende died on the second of July, 2024 at 3:32pm, or thereabouts, in Warsaw, when Donald Tusk publicly demolished Olaf Scholz’s refusal to contribute to common European defense.” It has not been a success across all of the five main areas that were promised as a sea of changes in German strategic positioning and foreign security policy. It has failed. The five areas included supporting Ukraine struggle for freedom and democracy, finding a geopolitically as well as ecologically viable energy fix, taking a tougher approach to authoritarian states, playing a stronger role in a stronger EU and a stronger NATO, and the last one: rearming Germany to actually be able to live up to its defense responsibilities. Across none of those areas has the policy succeeded to the extent which it needs to. The only one where it partially succeeded is on energy, where Germany did get off Russian gas. It was Moscow that turned the taps off, let’s not forget that. But they did actually find substitutes quicker than many people expected them to. They haven’t found that long term fix, though.
What were the reasons behind those failures?
Fundamentally, policy has been driven by the Chancellery. The strategic vision of the Chancellery, well, lots of people say they haven’t got one. It’s not true. It may not have been outlined, but it’s been revealed over the last couple of years, and even stated in parts, on occasion: a multipolar world, and pursuing this multipolar vision, that would lead to not wanting Ukraine to win the war, not properly confronting Russia and China, because that would seem to be accelerating systemic rivalry and systemic competition, rather than this multipolar vision. Why is the multi polar vision appealing? Because it doesn’t require Germany to change as much. It’s a way of preserving the world of yesterday, a world in which Germany did well.
And since it’s the Chancellery that’s behind the policy, how much blame can be put at the cabinet door of the man that has been leading it?
Well, most of it lies with him. He promised the Zeitenwende and didn’t deliver. He and his team are the ones who are primarily to blame for not delivering this change. However, the need for that change in the first place can’t be blamed only on Scholz. There is 25 years of strategic, geopolitical, military, security neglect. There’s 25 years of neglect of Germany internally as well. Under the good part of the Schroder government, but also particularly the Merkel government, 16 years- that’s what led to Germany being in the situation where it needed this total transformation and change. So, for the failure to deliver the change that was promised, Scholz is primarily responsible, although others helped. The responsibility for getting into the mess is shared across the governing class of Germany.
Since you mentioned Merkel, what do you make of her unrepentant attitude towards her time in power, and her political legacy?
She has become a symbol of that arrogant complacency that has done so much damage to Germany, so much damage to European security, and which has put both her country and our continent in the position where we are now geopolitically extremely vulnerable. Her “period of stability” was actually a period of stagnation, and she did not address the thoroughgoing fundamental issues that our societies need to grapple with if we’re to renew ourselves for the coming century. So it’s not one failure: it’s a list of failures, a massive list of failures.
Where does the 2008 Bucharest Summit and the role she played rank in that list?
It comes pretty high, because it’s symbolic of the attitude to security politics, but it also had very practical consequences. So it’s not just another symptom in the list of many that we could point to as showing the malaise. This was an active opposition to something that would have improved European security, that would have damaged the interests of Vladimir Putin and Russia, and instead, had the opposite effect of empowering and emboldening him. And I don’t need to tell your Georgian readers the consequences that came shortly after that.
And, similarly, how high are the Normandy format and Minsk negotiations?
Again, that would be very high, because of the practical impact it actually had in terms of empowering the dictator and empowering a threat to Europe. This rewarding of Russian aggression has only emboldened the Kremlin. And this is something Merkel clearly did not understand. Whatever she says now, there is no way of looking at that time and thinking, “Yeah, we got that right.” It was a huge failure.
So why is she so adamant that she did everything right?
It’s not nice being wrong, is it? And it’s not nice being so spectacularly wrong on the biggest stage in the world, that of geopolitics, when you basically endangered your country and your continent. There was this jarring lack of strategy that she did nothing to address, a rupture after 1989; a fundamental misunderstanding that many Germans tell themselves. It is a selective reading of history. So this notion, for example, that Germans are pacifists after their experience of having wreaked havoc across Europe twice with the world wars and having committed mass genocide: not true. In the 1950s, Germany was armed like a frontline state. In the 1960s and 70s, you get up to half a million people under arms, 5000 Main Battle Tanks, between three and a half and 4% of GDP, a worldview fit for the kind of power they were and appropriate to the threat from the Soviet Union that we all faced in Europe at the time, and they could do strategy. So this myth that came up after 1989 that Germany is not capable of doing hard strategy, hard politics, hard security- forget it. It was invented by people who wanted a holiday from history, and there was a mixture of motivations. Some, I think, genuinely thought, “Okay, now we can do well by doing good.” Others were just concerned about doing well off the Wandel durch Handel (“change through trade”) approach. It was very easy for Germany to then make a lot of money, you get the Chinese market, Russian oil and gas, and you get American security. And that’s awfully convenient.
Back to the Zeitenwende then – is it truly put to the grave? Or is there a chance for resurrection with the new government coming in?
Olaf Scholz’s Zeitenwende is dead, but Germany’s change will come. The next government will be the last in Germany that has a chance to change on purely liberal and democratic terms. If they don’t deliver the change Germany needs, then the barbarians are at the gates already. They will be coming in. Germany’s changes will either be delivered by forces such as the AfD in four and a half years’ time, or in this time window- if Germany gets its change right and it delivers on what matters for people. Germany will change, one way or another.
Could there be a [Friedrich] Merz-led Zeitenwende?
I don’t see a huge amount of hope for it. What I see is probably more defense spending, which is a good start, but it’s not enough on its own. Will it be enough? It’s looking increasingly unlikely, especially if he goes into a coalition with the SPD. Do I see a big change on Russian policy? It’s difficult to say overall, because Merz has been so all over the map on this. When he says things like, “we will only send peacekeepers to Ukraine if the UN Security Council approves,” that doesn’t speak to me to be a very robust attitude.
Unless there’s a substantial change in the Security Council’s structure, which could alleviate some of the need to send peacekeepers at all.
Exactly so. So that’s problematic. Nonetheless, I do suspect there is a chance that at least he could be tougher. But again, if he governs with the SPD, it’s not going to be a massive change. There is a chance he could change in terms of the role in NATO and role in the EU, where Germany became an unconstructive blocker. That may change under Merz; he may seek to align Germany’s position a bit more with some of its key allies, but if he doesn’t make those other changes we’re talking about, the question is, how far would that really go?
Might we see changes in the opposite direction? Like more support towards lifting sanctions on Russia or returning to Russian energy?
So back to business as usual? The pretense of continuity, which is the opposite of Zeitenwende, is exactly what most of the German political establishment want. I think there is a danger that that could happen, and it’s a danger that’s driven by the AfD and by those who see Germany as a great power that’s been kept down, and see Germany’s natural role as being on par with Russia, with the US, with other great powers.
AFD’s approach could bring unexpected changes, with Zeitenwende driven by the “barbarians,” along with increased defense spending and AFD’s cultural values, including a pro-Russia stance.
That’s the nightmare scenario, that a strong Germany rises in an illegal form. But that’s again, what many Germans are looking at and saying, “no, we absolutely don’t want this.” The problem is, they haven’t got their act together to oppose it. So until the mainstream parties find real solutions, the AFD can continue to talk about the problems and the failure to deal with them. I think there is still a latent Imperial mindset and a great power mindset there, which could activate a lot of Germans, for good or for bad. There is a reason no one uses the slogan “Make Germany Great Again,” right? But, actually, a notion of a proud Germany that played its part in securing the democratic order would be great, and that’s the kind of thing they should be looking to do.
What might Ukraine expect from the new government, especially if it’s Merz-led? Would the Taurus missiles be on the table?
Merz has talked about this, about using Taurus as a leverage against Putin. But then he sort of walked it back and then walked in again. It’s a shame, because there was a chance for clarity, and he brought confusion to it. And it’s not of the good strategic ambiguity kind: it’s dithering, and that’s really unfortunate. We genuinely don’t know what is going to happen, though, because of the coalition that will be needed to be formed. If he governs with the SPD alone, that brings one set of constraints and one set of opportunities. He’s unlikely to govern with the Greens alone, unless the Greens get a really good result, which I’m not foreseeing at this stage- there’s too much entrenched opposition between the two parties on cultural issues and so on. But if they ended up with a three-way coalition, of CDU, SPD, and Greens, then you would have one party in there, strongly pressuring for more on Ukraine. And there are a lot of people in the CDU who want that, who would be able to overwhelm the opposition in the SPD, I think. But it’s too hard to say at the moment. My best guess would be, we don’t get Taurus. My best guess would be that you won’t get a strong upgrading of support for Ukraine.
Interview by Vazha Tavberidze
