Leopard case: will the German government jump under US pressure?
Yesterday Chancellor Scholz confirmed that, for the moment, there is no go-ahead for the export of Leopard 2 battle tanks to Ukraine, not even a go-ahead for the export of the product from other countries such as Poland or Spain. In reality, the green light would have been a decision with a more formal than practical effect: as we have written in other articles, there are few Leopard 2 tanks available, they need to be overhauled and would only be available in several months. With 50 Leopard tanks cobbled together you won't change a war that sees thousands of armored vehicles between both sides, just as the issue of about fifteen British Challenger 2 tanks won't change it. To be clear, only the USA, if they wanted to, could supply times a significant number of wagons, but all attention was focused on Germany.
Because? Because evidently the goal is more political than military: the SPD was Russia's closest political ally, together with Merkel, so either it adapts by showing even more anti-Russian fervor than the others, or it must be overthrown. To understand the pressure Chancellor Scholz is under in these hours, it is enough to read any mainstream German newspaper, from Faz to Welt , where attacks on Scholz follow one another, invitations to the new defense minister Pistorius to change tactics, and threats from secondary but indispensable members of the governing coalition. Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, president of the defense committee of the Chamber, told ZDF's "heute journal" on Friday evening: "History is watching us, and unfortunately Germany has just failed" and this sentence highlights the feeling of the liberal component of the coalition.
This political struggle can be resolved in two ways:
- with the resignation of Scholz and, perhaps, with a change in the government majority, and the replacement of the SPD with the CDU;
- with the decision to start exports, perhaps initially allowing only the allies to send battle chariots.
As we have underlined, this is only a decision with political effects. From a strategic point of view there are not enough tanks for the Ukrainian needs, unless the USA intervenes directly: The production lines of the Leopards are practically at a standstill and 3400 have been built, even in the first versions of the seventies and distributed between a myriad of nations. Unlike the American Abrams, over 10,000 have been built in various versions and are, in any case, much more recent. So why does the US want to send German tanks? Give yourself an answer.
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The article Leopard case: will the German government jump under US pressure? comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/caso-leopard-il-governo-tedesco-saltera-sotto-la-pressione-usa/ on Sat, 21 Jan 2023 15:04:43 +0000.