DThe SPD will not be able to avoid initiating party exclusion proceedings against its former chairman and federal chancellor. Saskia Esken committed her party to this by asking Schröder to leave the SPD. If he no longer has a place in the SPD because he is causing damage and the party leadership wants to remain credible, there is no other way.
Schröder himself has been providing the SPD with more than enough justifications for this for weeks. His Putin-blinded and almost sneering interview from the weekend was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The bottom line: you can all do me. The SPD and the federal government can no longer put up with that.
For the federal government, the sanction options are limited. There are statutory provisions on how a former chancellor is to be treated. That’s a good thing, because he shouldn’t become a plaything for political revenge.
Stubborn obstinacy
But Schröder’s case is different. He violates the interests of Germany. He shouldn’t also be financed with taxpayers’ money for a stubborn love-serving of a warlord, which is unprecedented. The Bundestag could see to that.
For the SPD, the exclusion is a sharp sword. But to believe that with the end of the SPD membership she will also be rid of the Schröder phenomenon is a mistake. In doing so, the SPD is only adding a new illusion to the Russian-political illusion that led to this phenomenon in the first place.
Schröder justifies himself with all the fragments of Russia policy that until recently were part of the mantra of the SPD strategists. They are foreign policy life lies. However, he is entirely in line with the line that has shaped the party’s Ostpolitik since the 1970s and has survived the Russian aggression since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Schröder only shows the SPD how in the “change through trade” trade became an end in itself. This cannot be wiped away by a party exclusion procedure.