Today is a good day for Ukraine, Germany and Europe: Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, has agreed not only to approve the export of Leopard 2 battle tanks by other European states to Ukraine but also to send at least a company (14) of Germany’s own Leopards. What makes this yet better is that the US will now also send its own Abrams tanks – which was not planned until Scholz made it a condition for Germany’s change of position. Along with other recent pledges, including the Challenger 2 tanks offered by Britain, it means a sizeable and multinational consignment for Kyiv. It would be churlish not to acknowledge that this is a happier outcome, reached more quickly, than I feared when I wrote of Germany as the “roadblock at the heart of Europe” on Friday.
How to view this breakthrough? One reading is that Scholz has pulled off a diplomatic masterstroke: that his valid concerns about the optics and potential consequences of Germany unilaterally sending tanks to Ukraine have ultimately meant many more tanks for Ukraine, from more countries, than would otherwise have been the case; and that crucially he has helped to bind the US to this new phase of Ukraine’s fightback. Another reading is that Scholz was merely cornered by his own excuses: that his protestations that Germany should not “go it alone” begot the insistence on the Abrams tanks (generally deemed less ideally suited to Ukraine’s needs than the Leopards, and in any case seemingly not deliverable for many months) and that the US called his bluff.
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