When the Berlin Wall fell, on November 9, 1989, Olaf Scholz was already 31 years old, sported his hair and had been a young leader of the left wing – and pacifist – of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) for a long time. He had been born in a country, the FRG, on the front line during the Cold War, with several hundred thousand US troops on its territory and a neighbor of a communist Germany, the GDR, with hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers. Emmanuel Macron, on the contrary, was an 11-year-old boy growing up in a France proud of its forced nuclear deterrence and without foreign bases on its territory.
To understand the current Franco-German dispute about the words of the French president, on Monday, about the eventual sending of troops to Ukraine, it is necessary to take into account the generational gap between the two statesmen and, above all, the disparate geopolitical culture between its societies because of its historical experience since 1945. Today’s France is still the heir of De Gaulle, who managed to join the club of the important after the Second World War, including a permanent seat on the Security Council of the ‘UN. This gives him more autonomy and self-confidence. Germany, despite its economic power, is still under the protective umbrella of the United States and is conditioned by Washington in many strategic decisions. Her story, moreover, invites her to humility and prudence.
Scholz, therefore, said a categorical no, a nein without nuance, to the possibility that Kyiv’s allies will one day send troops into the field to prevent a Russian victory. The chancellor’s rejection came after Macron recalled, with ironic indifference, that some countries – in clear allusion to Germany – have always been reluctant and at first wanted to offer Ukraine only helmets and sleeping bags. It was not the tone that could be expected from two partner countries that have always been the indispensable tandem for European construction to move forward.
German commentators reacted with alarm at the lack of coordination. The weekly Der Spiegel spoke of “disaster” and lamented the battle of egos between the leaders. “Putin’s most powerful weapon is the dispute in Europe”, wrote the economic magazine Wirtschaftswoche. The popular newspaper Bild described the “dangerous ice age” between Paris and Berlin. And ex-ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger, who led the Munich Security Conference for years, warned that “champagne bottles are being uncorked in Moscow” because of the bickering between the allies.
Faced with this crisis, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Stéphane Séjourné, assured in an interview with Le Monde that “there is no Franco-German clash; we agree on 80% of the issues”. From the Berlin chancellery, the spokesman, Steffen Hebestreit, also tried to draw iron and said that “it is not dramatic” the difference regarding the troops.
Bilateral tension was exacerbated, in any case, by Scholz’s refusal to supply Ukraine with Taurus cruise missiles, a high-precision, anti-bunker weapon that could be used to destroy the Kerch bridge, the umbilical cord between Crimea and Russia. The chancellor angered the French and British when he suggested that they have staff in Ukraine to advise on the management of its Storm Shadow and Scalp missiles, but that Germany cannot afford them.
To finish complicating matters, a few days ago the interception – supposedly by Russian espionage – of a half-hour conversation between German officers about the hypothetical use of the Taurus by Ukraine was published on Russian social networks. Here it became clear that Scholz was not telling the truth and that the surrender of the missiles would not require the on-site presence of the German military. The recording has been a scandal in Germany and another reason for mistrust and friction with the French partner.
