It is currently unclear what US President Donald Trump’s improvised attempts at summit diplomacy, starting with his red-carpet roll-out for Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on August 15, will actually achieve. Whether they will lead to the end of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is certainly debatable.
In Germany, meanwhile, the US engagement has reactivated deep-seated reflexes that don’t seem to have gone away, despite the arrival of the new government of Chancellor Friedrich Merz of the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and his Social Democrat (SPD) coalition partners.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other European leaders, including the chancellor, were still to descend on the White House for their crunch meeting with the US president when German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul (CDU) gave a short interview on August 18. He was speaking on the government plane during his flight to Japan and Indonesia. And when asked about security guarantees for Ukraine, he practically ruled out a substantial German contribution to the “coalition of the willing”—the British- and French-led efforts of about 30 nations to provide military back-up to any armistice that might emerge, preferably with a “US backstop.”
It was a “far-fetched” (“fernliegend”) question, Wadephul told the Table Today podcast of Table.Media. “We [Germany] are concentrating our effort on defending NATO territory in a way that others have not done. We are the only European nation that is stationing a combat-ready brigade in Lithuania,” Wadephul said, adding: “Doing that and, in addition, stationing troops in Ukraine, that would likely push us too hard. My colleague [Defense Minister Boris] Pistorius [of the SPD] will need to look into the details again.”
This certainly wasn’t coordinated with the chancellery and the defense minister. After internal criticism, not least from his own CDU party, Wadephul rowed back a little the following day, telling public radio Deutschlandfunk that while guaranteeing Ukraine’s security in the future was “a common task of the United States and Europe,” Germany “playing a leadership role” always meant “taking on responsibilities.” What those would amount to exactly vis-à-vis Ukraine? Well, he didn’t want to preempt the debate within the coalition and parliament.
Silly Season
This debate is in full swing now, filling Germany’s political “silly season” mostly with frightened warnings against German “boots on the ground” in Ukraine. But Wadephul’s comments are instructive not only for their odd timing. They speak of German foreign policy traits more deeply ingrained than previously assumed.
The prime one being that Germany is never to do anything without Washington. This was already a big problem when Merz’ predecessor Olaf Scholz (SPD) was in the chancellery, always eager to act “in lockstep” with then US President Joe Biden, at least when it fitted Scholz’ own agenda. In this new situation, it is certainly a prudent course of action to try and get Trump behind the efforts to provide Ukraine with post-conflict security guarantees. But such commitments, if in fact forthcoming, are hardly reliable. The Europeans and their international partners of the “coalition of the willing” will need to focus on what they can do, if need be, alone.
Another is the German “exclude-itis” (“Ausschließeritis”), an illness that has strongly inflicted German foreign politicians in the past, leading to the impulse to list, first of all, all the things that Germany is not prepared to do. It is a trait that immediately narrows German foreign policy’s room for maneuver, limits its options, and also makes the country a less useful ally—as in this case. The illness is related to a seemingly deep-seated fear of it all being “too much” for poor little Germany and the Germans at large who in politico-military matters can only be pushed so far before they throw up their arms.
The intervention of veteran former diplomat Wolfgang Ischinger, the president of the Munich Security Conference Foundation, in the “German boots on the ground” debate should be read in this light. Ischinger tried to calm things down by calling it all a “pseudo debate” (“Geisterdebatte”) “because Putin will never agree to it.” Oh, that’s alright then.
Mixed Signals
In fact, Germany’s military planners have been working on these questions for some while, in conjunction with their allies. Germany did not play a full part at the launch of the “coalition of the willing” as its creation took place in the Berlin interregnum, after the Scholz government (which never ruled out sending German troops to Ukraine) fell apart in late 2024 and before the Merz government was voted into office this May by parliament. Germany’s top soldier, General Carsten Breuer, was supposed to visit Kyiv together with his British and French counterparts Admiral Sir Tony Radakin and General Thierry Burkhardt back in March, but due to the political limbo following the German election in February, did not to join them.
Preparations for a post-conflict situation rest on at least four pillars: the further strengthening of Ukraine’s military (turning it into a “porcupine” Russia will not dare to attack again), the monitoring of the post-conflict situation, the provision of strong air cover, and the presence of battle-ready units behind the Ukrainian-manned frontline. That Germany, if it wants to play a leadership role, could opt to stay away, or, as Wadephul put it, “help in other ways,” is simply inconceivable.
It’s all the more ironic considering the fact that Merz and Wadephul had promised a foreign policy “from one cast” (“aus einem Guss”), due to the fact that the chancellery and the foreign office would be in the hands of the same party—the CDU—for the first time since the 1960s. With a (small) National Security Council currently being established in the chancellery to further coordinate foreign and security policy, Germany would henceforth act in a more joined-up, strategic way. But as August’s mixed signals have shown, German foreign policy has still some way to go to really change its DNA.
Henning Hoff is executive editor of INTERNATIONALE POLITIK QUARTERLY.
