Trump to the rescue!

Dear Reader,

There are few things as nauseating as listening to German politicians lecturing other countries on the sanctity of the Ukrainian cause.

Our chancellor of the past three years has never been able to bring himself to say the word “win” in relation to Ukraine’s war effort. But he still thinks he has the right to remind the US about the importance of "standing at the side of" the “heroic Ukrainian people.”

With lawyerly precision, Olaf Scholz always asserts that Russia “can’t be allowed to win” the war. This nuance is revealing of Germany’s strategy. It is happy to provide defensive weaponry such as the IRIS-T air defence system. But, when it comes to offensive weaponry, it only does so under massive pressure (as was the case for Leopard 2 tanks), or digs its heels in and says 'nein' (as is the case with Taurus cruise missiles).

In reality, the German promise of support for Ukraine for “as long as it takes” means it is prepared to keep sustaining the war until it grinds to a halt on the battlefield.

Indeed, given the largely static state of the fronts over the past two and a half years, one could argue that the only difference between Berlin's tepid strategy and Donald Trump’s desire to push Ukraine into agreeing to a ceasefire is a hundred thousand or so lives.

Trump’s strategy might be about naked self-interest, but Germany has been little better. Berlin wants to inflict maximum damage on Russia without risking a wider war. The ones who pay the price for that caution are Ukrainian soldiers on the front line.

According to common perception, Germany's Ukraine policy is down to Olaf Scholz’ personal cowardice in the face of threats from the Kremlin. The chancellor has often had to defend himself against attacks on his character, even from lawmakers inside his own coalition. However, it remains to be seen whether the German strategy will change significantly when the CDU come to power. I, for one, am sceptical that much will change.

After all, Friedrich Merz, Germany's chancellor-in-waiting, had the chance to use Trump's outburst against Volodymyr Zelenskyy as an opportunity to rectify Germany’s stance and to save Ukraine in its hour of need. He could have announced that he would supply Kyiv with cruise missiles.

Instead, he decided to use the public outrage over Trump's treatment of Zelenskyy to cynically justify a domestic U-turn that had been made necessary by his party’s poor showing in February’s election. After he didn’t even manage to win 30 percent of the vote, Merz doesn’t have the mandate to cut spending elsewhere to fund an increase in defence spending that was looming on the horizon long before Trump lost his temper with Zelenskyy.

So, his only other option is to take on public debt, something he ruled out throughout the election season.

And Trump just gave him the perfect excuse for doing so.

“The general election took place just ten days ago, but events around the world, and in Europe, are coming thick and fast,” Merz said in a hastily arranged press conference on Tuesday. "Due to the threats to our freedom and peace on our continent, when it comes to our defence we will do whatever it takes.”

Specifically, he announced that he would exempt defence spending from the debt brake rules. That wasn’t all though: the reverberations from Trump’s Oval Office outburst were evidently so violent that they destabilised the foundations of German bridges, schools and hospitals. In addition to military spending, Merz announced a €500 billion pot to spend on infrastructure - again all of that money would be borrowed on the bond markets.

This is by far the largest debt plan in German history and would increase the country’s liabilities by approximately 50 percent in one fell swoop.

The idea that either of these decisions were forced on Merz by Trump’s erratic behaviour is patently absurd. Although it was little discussed during election campaigning, NATO has been negotiating much larger defence commitments for months. Equally, the full costs of repairing German infrastructure are well known.

After Olaf Scholz' government collapsed in November over the issue of how to manage the public finances, Merz told voters that he would be able to fund all the county’s spending obligations by finding money in the regular budget. Now that he has won the election - and he refuses to go into coalition with the only other party that wants to stick to debt rules, the AfD - he has little choice but to break this promise.

As if that wasn't scandalous enough, Merz is planning to drive these new debt measures through the old Bundestag before new lawmakers replace them later this month.

To understand why, you need to know a bit about German debt rules: borrowing on this scale isn’t strictly kosher - federal debt rules only allow large debts to cope with a natural catastrophe or a major economic shock. Merz needs to write an exemption into the constitution to make sure his plans aren’t struck down by the constitutional court.

However, updating the constitution requires a two-thirds majority in the Bundestag, something Merz won’t have once the new parliament assembles due to the success of the AfD on the hard right and Die Linke on the hard left.

In other words, the CDU leader is so desperate to use unparalleled levels of debt to paper over the potential conflicts between his party and the SPD that he is prepared to break with decades of democratic convention by using a defunct parliament to pass a major bill.

To you and I, this behaviour may seem like an egregious erosion of democratic norms. But the German press have lapped it up - and even praised Merz for his deviousness.

The clue to why lies in the fact that, starting with Vice-President JD Vance's address to the Munich Security Conference last month - and accelerated by Zelensky's disastrous Washington visit - both the German press and the political class have worked themselves up into a frenzy about Trump's intentions for the future of Europe.

It is now common for newspapers to report that Trump sees Europe as "an enemy". Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock even suggested on national television that Middle Eastern dictators are more trustworthy allies than the USA.

There is zero nuance to the public debate.

The most logical explanation for Trump's behaviour - that Washington wants to cut and run from an expensive war which its ally isn't winning - is ignored. That would hardly be out of character for our friends across the pond: just four years ago, a different US president unilaterally decided to desert Afghanistan, leaving NATO partners looking impotent and stupid.

Instead, Germans are convinced that Trump is laying the groundwork for an alliance with Putin. There was fevered speculation on Tuesday that he might use his State of the Union address to announce he was walking out on NATO. Yet, not a single newspaper reported that, earlier on the same day, Trump's nominee for NATO ambassador described Washington’s commitment to the alliance as “ironclad.”

This is an atmosphere that practically begs an opportunist like Merz to perform all sorts of logical gymnastics and then claim they were forced upon him by the orange man over the sea. He may be able to rely on most of the press to act as cheerleaders, but it is still too early to tell whether the German public will believe that Trump is responsible for the fact that “Mister Debt Brake” has suddenly announced the biggest borrowing programme in the country’s history.