It was hard not to wonder what they were all still doing in the same government when, on Thursday, March 14, speakers from the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens and the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) took to the podium at the Bundestag. On the agenda was a motion by the CDU-CSU conservative group calling for the delivery of Taurus missiles to Ukraine. Coming from an opposition group, no one expected the motion to be adopted, so it was no surprise when it was overwhelmingly rejected, with 188 votes for, 494 votes against and 5 abstentions. But although the governing coalition voted as a block, with only two FDP members voting in favor of the CDU-CSU proposal, the debate served as a reminder of the extent to which Chancellor Olaf Scholz's stance on military aid to Ukraine has been contested within the three-party alliance.
The first to speak was Green group Vice President Agnieszka Brugger, who set the tone. Germany "must do everything to ensure that Ukraine can win the war," and that means "delivering long-range weapons like the Taurus," said Brugger. "As Greens, we are aware of the scope of such a position, but we won't let anyone challenge it, not even the chancellor," she explained, 24 hours after Scholz had reiterated why he was opposed to sending Taurus to Ukraine: "It is out of the question to deliver large-scale weapons systems that cannot be responsibly used without the deployment of German soldiers. Yet as chancellor, I have a responsibility to prevent Germany from participating in this war."
More broadly, Brugger offered a sweeping critique of Scholz's method. "It is hesitation and procrastination that can lead to escalation because by showing that we are afraid of the unscrupulous war criminal that Putin is (...), he himself will think that he can go even further with his brutality," she said, before criticizing the chancellor for imposing his views in an authoritarian manner rather than seeking to win others over: "Gerhard Schröder's era is over. This is true of his policy toward Russia, which failed, but also of the 'Basta Chancellor' approach," she said emphatically, referring to the nickname Schröder was given when he led the country (1998-2005).
Alexander Müller, who is in charge of defense issues for the FDP party, was equally unsympathetic to the chancellor. "Faced with Putin, you have to stake out clear positions. Everything else, in his eyes, is submission," he said, decrying the "secrecy" and "smoke screens that lead nowhere" − an allusion to the reason given by Scholz to justify his position on Taurus. "Take Spain: That country has Taurus [missiles], and yet there are no German soldiers in Spain to handle them," said Müller. "In short, we have to stop looking for arguments to justify not taking action. If we really want to do something, we give ourselves the means to do it."
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