Can a turning point be foreseen?

To put it another way: How can the claim to historical significance be reconciled with the need to have always acted in a planned manner and even to have anticipated the improbable?

The appearance on talk shows is preceded by the consideration of how one would like to appear there.

This applies all the more when it is a one-off appearance, i.e. when each factual question asked raises the additional impression that the interviewee leaves.

That was also the case with Olaf Scholz (SPD).

He doesn't want to be surprised

Jurgen Kaube

Editor.

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The result of the test: The chancellor does not want to have been surprised under any circumstances.

His most common words are "a long time" and "prepared".

According to Olaf Scholz, what was about to happen in the Ukraine was foreseen for a long time.

What has happened since the end of February was not entirely unplanned, the escalation in Ukraine had been apparent for a long time.

In an interview with Anne Will, Scholz emphasizes this insistently.

They got involved “with great preparation and a great plan”.

All measures against Russian aggression had been considered long in advance.

They had "discussed it very well, prepared it very well" and acted long before the start of the war.

We do everything, he says, that is in our power, possible and sensible.

We act carefully, precisely, "prepared to a hair's breadth", and therefore efficiently, and have consistently rational expectations.

If it seems that we are not supplying arms or are reluctant to do so, that is only the effect of a communication that does not publicly report on arms supplies, so as not to complicate them.

The politician gives the impression of not being irritable at all.

Especially not through a war.

Scholz lets us know he always sees things coming.

Without using the word "without alternative", he presents his decisions, which are always formulated in the first person plural, in this way. We are the robots.

When the journalist asks him about his reaction to the deaths in Ukraine, the answer comes out of the gun: "three answers".

One of them claims that Putin cannot do anything with the money from the sanctions' energy supplies "predominantly" and "essentially".

The journalist is amazed at how little time there was between the beginning of the war on Thursday and the "turn of the era" on Saturday, but he rejects this with the comment "wrong connection".

Plans in the drawer?

Also in the question of energy supply, he emphasizes that he was determined by long plans "prepared for weeks".

As early as December, when there was no talk of a turning point, the question of what to do if Putin refused gas supplies was being discussed.

The plans were all in the drawer, Scholz has now pulled them out.

That is why all European neighbors followed the German example, as with arms deliveries.

You read it differently.

This example shows what constitutes a success for the chancellor: When Putin annexed Crimea in 2014, Scholz praised himself and those like him that NATO increased its military presence on its eastern border.

And the SPD, together with Chancellor Merkel, planned Nord Stream 2, one may add, and shamefully stuck to it until the last second.

Of course, Scholz remembers that he has long been committed to liquid gas terminals.

Because that is the rhetorical corset into which Scholz presses all his answers: to have everything in mind beforehand.

When asked how Putin would react if chemical weapons were used against Ukraine, he said he had good reasons for not answering.

That leaves open the possibility of saying afterwards that it had been planned for a long time and that Germany was exemplary in everything.

And even if it didn't progress, it is such an important country for Scholz that his decisions are still decisive for everyone else.

The arrogance that lies in the talk of the turning point is considerable.

The attempt to present one's own policy as planned cannot hide this.