Germany: Defense Minister Lambrecht proves incapable. Scholz intervenes directly to ensure supplies of ammunition to the army

1 December 20221 year ago babelfish

In Germany there is no longer a capable defense minister even with a lantern. The army was seen as a secondary element of society and therefore the Defense as a ministry in which to place mediocre ambitious police forces. It is no coincidence that this role was first covered by Von Der Leyen, and now by the mediocre Christine Lambrecht

The recent Wednesday and Thursday defense meeting in a Berlin hotel in Prenzlauer Berg was attended by dozens of NATO ministers, six chiefs of staff, 1,500 miscellaneous attendees, but only two heads of state. The fact that, in addition to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store, Olaf Scholz (SPD) was also among the participants indicates that the German Chancellor has been taking over the reins of defense personally since February.

As finance minister under his predecessor Angela Merkel (CDU), he had joined the ranks of those government politicians who were rhetorically open to the Bundeswehr, but who refused to provide them with the funds they needed to fulfill their missions. Now Scholz has to see how he can get the troops back on track, systematically neglected in the Merkel era.

The chancellor doesn't want to leave it to his defense minister alone. Scholz had himself chosen Christine Lambrecht (SPD) a year ago to be able to fill party quotas in government, and he probably thought she was fit for boring normal times. Then came the war. Lambrecht's status as a Bundeswehr trainee is increasingly proving to be a problem. Your first year in office was dedicated to understanding the Bundeswehr system. His thirst for action was limited to a few corrections to public procurement law, which is the territory in which he is familiar as a lawyer. Otherwise, there were mostly articles in the newspapers about business such as private family trips with the son in the service helicopter of the German armed forces. Practically a second Von Der Leyen .

Lambrecht's approach, born out of uncertainty and objective ignorance of the situation, was to change as little as possible overall the structures of the Bundeswehr, which former military commissar Hans-Peter Bartels (SPD) dubbed the "bureaucratic monster ”, with hundreds of generals leading dozens of soldiers. The Bundeswehr is prepared for foreign missions such as Afghanistan, but the procedures are no longer suitable for national and alliance defense within the framework of NATO, which is now again required. Lambrecht implemented only fragments of a reform concept developed by the Inspector General under his predecessor Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (CDU and always mediocre politics…), but this plan was then shelved because it was written by a CDU politician, despite having some positive elements inside.

This objective operational incapacity of Lambrecht forced Scholz to enter the field. As you well know, it is not just a matter of money, but of a complex reorganization of the German industrial production system which has to face the enormously increased need for ammunition of the Bundeswehr, an army at the moment like a workhorse with a fire capacity of only two days of conflict. Scholz had to scold Lambrecht harshly which, despite being aware of the dramatic situation of the missing supplies, has done practically nothing, not even to procure the funds necessary for the purchases, neither by using the 100 billion special debt fund, nor by asking for new resources from the ministry of finance. Were it not for NATO's nuclear cover, Putin could easily dine on frankfurters and sauerkraut in Munich. Luckily there is the USA because the Germany of the "Traffic Light" seems even less capable than that of the CDU..

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The article Germany: Defense Minister Lambrecht proves incapable. Scholz intervenes directly to ensure supplies of ammunition to the army come from Scenari Economici .

This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/germania-il-ministro-della-difesa-lambrecht-si-rivela-incapace-scholz-interviene-direttamente-per-garantire-le-forniture-di-munizioni-allesercito/ on Thu, 01 Dec 2022 09:00:34 +0000.