German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has offered the president to dissolve the parliament, which expressed lack of confidence to his government. Scholz needs this move to try and keep his power after 2024. It will be a challenge for him, but Germany has the hard lessons learned at wars with Russia, which puts the odds in the Chancellor’s favour.
The parliament voted to express lack of confidence to the government and the cabinet head asked the president to dissolve the parliament.
In most countries, such a scenario would indicate a fierce political fighting on the edge of a coup d’etat. However, in Germany, where politics is one of the most boring things in the world, this is just bureaucratic foot-dragging. This is how their ‘anti-Hitler protective device’ works.
To prevent a radical party from causing havoc with resignations and thus blackmailing the executive authorities, there is only one way for MPs to replace the old chancellor: to vote for a new one. At the same time, the incumbent chancellor can call for a confidence vote at the parliament and, in case no-confidence is expressed, ask the president for an early dissolution of the Bundestag (the president cannot dissolve anything on his own).
So, for Olaf Scholz all this is just about running across offices to collect stamps and signatures to get his severance pay and return his work record book. He needs this ‘no-confidence’ in himself from the parliament to hold a snap election on February 23.
Technically, Scholz could have remained in the Chancellor’s seat until the next autumn and the regular election, but he would not have had real power and would have had his hands tied: almost everything to be approved by the Bundestag, would have not been accepted. He launched a new election campaign instead, which his party, the SPD (social democrats), could win, in theory, at least.
This can appear unlikely today: the Chancellor and other social democrats, except for the defence minister Boris Pistorius, have a totally poor reputation, as Germany’s population blames them for issues in the economy (well, Germany has quite a few of them now).
However, Scholz has an ace up his sleeve and he made it quite clear before the voting in the Bundestag announcing that Germany will not help Ukraine if this causes critical damage to its own security. ‘We do not supply cruise missiles, long-range weapons, which can be used for strikes deep inside Russia and, most certainly, we will not send German troops to this war. Not while I am the Chancellor’, he underscored.
Actually, Scholz is the only ‘systemic’ German leader who is against Germany being completely dragged into a direct military action with Russia when German officers would target German missiles at aims within Russia. This is what Germans are supposed to be afraid of. And they are or, at least, the majority of 65 to 80 per cent are against such steps.
While other ‘systemic’ leaders of parliamentary parties are supporting it. This is also the case with the CDU/CSU prime force Friedrich Merz and also still with the Greens allied with the SPD (Scholz was the one regularly taming the temper of Annalena Baerbock representing this party), and with liberals from the FDP, because of which the ruling coalition led by Scholz was destroyed.
Formally, the reason for the collapse is that the FDP’s leader Christian Lindner ignored the Chancellor’s decisions about new loans and financial commitments. Because he believed both measures would be destructive for the country’s economy.
The conflict in Ukraine is directly related to this matter, as Germany is bearing the heaviest burden in EU in supporting Vladimir Zelensky’s regime. And it is important to underline that Lindner was not going to refuse from this burden. He wanted to redistribute the load: to give Kiev less money, but to provide the Ukrainian army long-rage Taurus missiles as a compensation (of course, with the specialists to maintain them but they try to omit this).
Scholz is promising to continue financing Ukraine causing damage for Germany’s economy but without taking the risk of a direct military conflict with Russia.
Merz is willing to take this risk and is trying to appear ‘a tough guy’ like Ronald Reagan. Baerbock and the Greens, albeit not having left Scholz alone after Lindner, are taking the most ‘hawkish’ positions. While Lindner himself, together with his liberals, has asked the Bundestag to give Ukraine long-range missiles for strikes deep inside Russia.
And Scholz is calling these initiatives dangerous and irresponsible. And however bad things are in the national economy, this is a good reason to vote for SPD for those Germans who do not want to be involved in a war with Russia.
So, it turns out Scholz is not that bad if we compare him with others seeking the power. He is the same Scholz whom they blamed for being softball, simple and lacking character when they distracted from counting Germany’s losses during the time of his chancellor office.
Well, there is also ‘non-systemic’ Alternative for Germany and the ‘semi-systemic’ Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance. They are against Germany’s participation in the conflict in any form, both by contributing money, like Scholz, and, certainly, by giving long-range missiles like all others. AfD’s rating is around 20 per cent, SSW has 6–8 per cent but almost all parties do not accept a coalition with the AfD, including Sara Wagenknecht (she is pacifist with leftist positions).
It turns out the election on February 23 will result in the chancellor role going to Merz who intends to talk to Moscow with ultimatums and has actually promised to give Kiev Taurus missiles or in the cautious Scholz keeping his office promising that the worst (a war with Russia) would not happen while he is in office. ‘Not with me as Chancellor’
He used a similar move in 2021 campaign won by the SPD when the CDU/CSU bloc had to go into opposition for the first time in Angela Merkel’s sixteen-year era. German voters liked Scholz personally, but disliked (most of) social democrats. The message Scholz’s team could put forward for German people was that ‘if you want Scholz, vote for the SPD and not try to guess the composition of the coalition’. Now this formula looks like ‘vote for the SPD if you do not want a war with Russia’.
If Scholz had stalled the election until autumn, the ‘me or war’ dilemma could have become irrelevant (what if Kiev and Moscow started negotiations, which the U.S. elected president Donald Trump is promising to organise). But today things are tense, so the resignation of the government is a chance for Scholz to hold on to power and keep a role in the next political season for himself.
This tactic is already giving results, albeit quite modest ones. The SPD rating has increased a bit and the CDU/SCU rating has dropped a little, but the gap between the two is still double-digit. The two months remaining until the voting day could not be enough for Scholz to intimidate Germans with a prospect to be involved in a third world war with Russia in a row. But it is certainly worth trying.
The election campaign in Germany will become a battle of Germans’ historical fears with their own ‘sophisticated fridge’, which has lost a lot in the recent four years and is calling to vote against Scholz.
The fridge will lose the final duel in any case. Germany’s economy will face the pressures of the break-up with Russia, fiercer competition with China, a high probability of ‘a tariff war’ with U.S. during Trump’s office. Berlin admits that the export-focused model has exhausted itself in such circumstances. And no one has ideas how to fix it.
It will be even harder going forward. However, a world war, being the most dreadful option, can be avoided and Germany and Scholz have a role to play in this.
If it was not the case, the Ukrainian army would have received Taurus missiles already back in 2022.