Turning point talk on “Anne Will”
“Nothing will ever be the same again”
By Ingo Scheel
03/20/2023, 01:40 am
The Scholz buzzword of the turn of the era has been under its belt for over a year, but what has happened since then? The situation has deteriorated, according to the military commissioner Högl. When asked what lessons Germany should learn from this, “Anne Will” answered: It must be communicated more clearly.
Defense Minister Pistorius said there were no defensible armed forces. There was not enough of everything, added the military commissioner Eva Högl. Right at the beginning of Anne Will’s talk, the compilation made it clear that these sobering appraisals are anything but new insights. There was, for example, Wilfried Penner to be seen and heard, from 2000 to 2005 Parliamentary Commissioner for the Armed Forces, with a similar declaration of bankruptcy 20 years ago. “Time warp instead of a turning point”, the anticipated conclusion of the round of talks.
André Wüstner, chairman of the Bundeswehr Association and colonel, then provided the political context by referring to the failures of the past two decades. “It can’t be what shouldn’t be,” is how one would have reacted to Putin’s moves. Crimea, Donbass, Syria – “you just didn’t want to see it”. Gerhart Baum, former FDP Federal Minister of the Interior – recently turned 90 and therefore someone who knows what war feels like – underlined this. The dangers had been underestimated. “We are at peace and it always goes on like this”, that was the mindset.
“It’s all taking a long, long time”
While Putin “dismantled democracy bit by bit”, people in Germany closed their eyes and instead opted for Nord Stream 2 on their own. “You didn’t want to believe it,” said Wüstner again. The 2016 white paper already extensively addressed the structural problems, but no change was made, “a fatal mistake”.
According to SPD politician Ralf Stegner, MdB and member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the fact that one year after the proclaimed turning point was not only stagnating, but according to Högl even more precarious, the procurement situation in the Bundeswehr is partly due to the time factor. For 80 years you have relied on the USA. Meeting the new requirements would not happen overnight.
According to Nicole Deitelhoff, professor of political science and peace and conflict researcher, the willingness, the political will for change, is already there, but what matters is that decisions are implemented at all. That’s the sticking point: “It all takes a very, very long time”. Old attitudes, the tendency to wait and see, that is deeply rooted and difficult to reverse. Stegner countered that it was easy for the “wise-ass” to criticize in retrospect that the war had been reacted to in a reasonable manner.
While Gerhart spoke of “staying out” as a German special way, Wüstner asked the decisive question with a view to the turning point, moving metaphorically in compatible images: “Did we hear the shot or haven’t we heard the shot yet?” He immediately gave his answer: “You haven’t heard the shot yet!”
“Finally getting over WWII”
The group agreed that the Germans are hesitant about their own history, that this “never again” is always a question of their own guilt, but at the same time this credo, 80 years later, also needs to be put to the test. “Finally getting over the Second World War,” was a quote from Kersti Kaljulaid, the former President of Estonia, from the March 11, 2023 Tagesspiegel. “The sooner that happens, the better it is. It may take time to reflect on one’s own history, but we don’t have that time.”
Playing for time, “driving on sight,” as Deitelhoff put it — also for Hedwig Richter, professor of modern and contemporary history at the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Munich, one of the roots of the evil. Tactics, debates, glossing over a party-political dilemma, but: “Democracy is not opinion polls!”.
Not only the acute situation in the case of the Russian war of aggression requires open discussion, but also the failures of the last three decades across the board – energy, education, construction, climate et al – should be clearly named, with a view to what the Bringing the future, in relentless openness, said Richter: “We will be faced with unreasonable demands. Politics is not a 300 euro subsidy here, 200 there. Completely different challenges await.” The last 30 years, they’ve been “an exception”.
“Nothing will be the same again,” Willy Brandt predicted at the beginning of these 30 years, on November 10, 1989, during his speech on the balcony of Schöneberg Town Hall the day after the Wall came down. What was meant was the end of the GDR, the opening to the West, the approaching end of the Cold War.
It was not entirely clear whether André Wüstner deliberately quoted Brandt. However, the fact that the meaning of these words came out of his mouth in March 2023, more than a year after the start of the war in Ukraine, sounded little hopeful, can hardly be denied: Nothing will be the same again, a perspective that too after a year of the so-called turning point in most people’s minds it still doesn’t seem to have arrived. The clock is ticking, as Gerhart Baum emphasized once again at the end. Never in his long life has he experienced a break in an epoch so intensely: “The free world order is in danger.”