You can't blame German politicians for not hearing Putin's shot.

Defense and energy policies are undergoing policy changes that are essential given the new and serious threat posed by Russia.

One irony is that it is an SPD chancellor who has to end gas trade with Moscow and a Green foreign minister who has to deal with arms supplies to Ukraine.

But in principle the direction is right.

War is the father of all things here again, and that also applies to German foreign policy.

Nevertheless, the country is entering the turning point with a heavy burden that Scholz proclaimed: Germany is entering the new era with a political class that has made a fundamental mistake in a crucial question.

From the Federal President to the parties in the Bundestag to the state governments, almost everyone has taken part in the years of appeasement of Putin.

Loyal to the Nibelungen, they stuck to their practiced foreign policy until there was really no other choice.

Nord Stream 2, arms deliveries, SWIFT – on all of these crucial issues, Germany only changed its stance when Putin escalated the situation and the federal government was practically isolated from its western partners.

There was not much to see of a pioneering role, as Scholz now presented it.

Questions of power are systematically downplayed and ignored

When it comes to foreign issues, German politicians have always known exactly what is good and right, especially for other peoples.

Since February 24 it has become much more monosyllabic;

Beyond the topicality, she seems at a loss.

There's a good reason for that.

The failure of Russia policy cannot be compared with other failures in the country, such as recently in Afghanistan.

It is the worst possible accident in German foreign policy, because it is about vital questions: How can it be that a country with oil and gas, two central energy sources, makes itself dependent on a single supplier, and one who has been openly targeting the West for many years?

And how is it possible that Europe's strongest economy could not even defend itself against this aggressor,

The sobering answer is that such questions were systematically played down and ignored in Germany.

A whole generation has replaced the foreign policy multiplication table with a pseudo-moral attitude discourse.

That corresponded to the communicative needs of a post-68 society, but not to the geopolitical circumstances of the 21st century.

At a time marked by a sharp resurgence of global power struggles, German politicians roamed the world as itinerant preachers of “values-basedness” or multilateralism while others engaged in geopolitics and armaments.

In fact, Germany's role in the world has been debated for years, as if one could choose one like in a film.

Germany was too often on the wrong side

However, this did not prevent the “Berlin Republic” from asserting a claim to leadership and asserting it robustly, especially in the EU.

In retrospect, it is striking that the ultimately naïve “inclusion” of Moscow, which every federal government has pursued since Kohl, has repeatedly gone hand in hand with phases in which Germany alienated itself from its western allies, above all from America.

That wasn't just because of Berlin.

In Eastern Europe in particular, however, it was recognized early on that the fundamental question of where the reunified Germany stands in terms of foreign policy always resonated in the disputes over gas pipelines or NATO's two percent target.

Too often on the wrong side, one unfortunately has to say today.

Setting the course in Germany made a significant contribution to the starting position that Putin wanted to exploit with the war: Russia was strengthened, the West weakened.

For this policy to really be a thing of the past, it is not enough to make the Bundeswehr powerful, important as that is.

Above all, Germany must overcome the weaning from strategic thinking that has spread from politics to universities.

Foreign policy is primarily foreign policy, not climate policy, human rights policy or women's policy, not even economic policy.

It's about national interests, the maintenance of alliances, the international balance of power.

And security is primarily created with the help of military deterrence, not with civilian crisis management or with development aid.

Only when the political class has internalized these self-evidences again will one be able to speak of a turning point.