Greedy, sanctimonious, irresponsible, and untrustworthy: Germany is getting a well-deserved bashing from its allies. They have plenty of reasons to be cross over many years. Germany’s strategic timeout started with Gorbymania in the 1980s and lasted until 2022. Decades of influence peddling since then have given Russia alarmingly good penetration of German society and economy.
To list just a few problems: Jan Marsalek, the former chief operating officer of the collapsed financial giant Wirecard, once one of the country’s largest companies, has just been exposed as a spy for Russia’s GRU military intelligence. Wirecard had access to a huge amount of private financial data, not least payments for internet porn sites: most useful for spies interested in blackmail opportunities. Wirecard enjoyed extraordinary political protection, even at a time when its fraudulent business model was already apparent. That came from Germany’s then finance minister Olaf Scholz, something for which he has never apologized.
Defense, intelligence, and security structures that should protect Germany from these attacks are all too often vectors for them. The latest spy scandal involves a senior official in the German foreign intelligence service, identified under German media rules only as Carsten L, and an alleged accomplice, Arthur E. Both men went on trial in December for spying for Russia. The pair were arrested not thanks to German diligence but because of a tip from the FBI.
Russian spies, thugs, and crooks have run riot under the noses of the bureaucracy-bound German police and counter-intelligence services. John Sipher, formerly a top CIA Russia hand, describes them as “arrogant, incompetent, bureaucratic, useless.” As a foreign correspondent in the old divided Berlin, I remember a British spy telling me, “If you want the Kremlin to take something seriously, give it to the Germans and tell them it’s a secret. It’ll be on every desk in the Politburo the next morning.” That old joke still raises a knowing laugh.
Carelessness compounds treachery, whether it is Luftwaffe officers discussing the details of donating Taurus missiles to Ukraine, or Chancellor Scholz letting slip the presence of French and British military personnel there.
Ukrainians and their friends are justifiably furious about all this. The Zeitenwende [seachange] that the German leader announced after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 has proved deeply disappointing. Germany’s military remains underequipped, ill-led, cash-strapped and overstretched.
Germany’s self-indulgent aversion to hard thinking about security lies partly in its two catastrophic defeats in the last century and its role as a potential nuclear battleground during the Cold War. That stokes anti-Americanism and anti-militarism. “Even the worst peace is better than the best war,” said a leading German think-tanker as Ukraine began its struggle for survival. The idea that freedom might be worth dying for counts for nothing.
Greed, by contrast, counts for a lot.
For all the frustrations that allies feel with the German government right now, they should remember when it was worse. The era of Gerhard Schröder, when Germany was Putin’s most reliable European ally, seems unimaginably distant. Germany backs sanctions on Russia. It is the second-largest donor to Ukraine, with a hefty €27.8 billion ($30.4 billion). It has played a huge role in humanitarian assistance, from refugees to medical care for wounded soldiers. Foreign minister Annalena Baerbock is pitch-perfect. (A shame she doesn’t run her country’s foreign policy). Germany confounded expectations in ending its dependence on Russian natural gas.
Western allies can work around toxic decision-making in small countries such as Austria, Hungary, and Slovakia. But Germany is too big to ignore. Germany clearly needs a new security policy. But the rest of us need a new policy toward Germany.
Edward Lucas is a Non-resident Senior Fellow and Senior Adviser at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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