“Schönbach case”: foreign policy total loss | tagesschau.de

The scandalous statements by the now resigned naval chief Schönbach massively undermine the line of the federal government. And give the traffic light a foreign policy total loss.

For some time now, Vladimir Putin has been trying to drive a wedge into the middle of NATO, and he is happy to try the same thing with the EU and its closest partners. What the Russian President has been working on for years, a German naval admiral managed to do in just a few sentences.

And he gave the federal government a foreign policy total loss: With the unpleasant double effect that the traffic light government is now not only dealing with a badly disgruntled partner Ukraine, but also with a renewed debate about arms deliveries to the country.

Hair-raising sentences in uniform

So what on earth, one wonders in Berlin, has ridden Kay-Achim Schönbach to give such hair-raising sentences for the best? And that in full uniform, and thus clearly marked as an envoy of the Federal Republic?

The man, who was proud to call himself head of the German Navy until Saturday evening, caused a stir with scandalous statements at a lecture in New Delhi: The Crimea? Lost for Ukraine, won’t come back. Putin? Don’t want to attack, just want respect. Which he probably deserves, says Schönbach. Russia? You need it as a partner on the German side against China, because it’s also Christian after all.

How unified is the traffic light?

All of this undermines the line of the federal government so massively and inimitably downplays the Russian threat that there was no longer any need for the Kremlin to intervene. And the high-ranking German military representative does not seem to have given any thought to how his sentences would go down with the Eastern European allies or in Ukraine, on whose borders there are more than 100,000 Russian soldiers.

The problem: The scandalous sentences come at a time when neither the traffic light government nor the European allies give the impression that they are speaking with a tongue. How much valuable time was wasted before Chancellor Olaf Scholz prevailed against all those in his SPD who are more afraid of alienating Moscow than their EU and NATO partners?

Scholz now emphasized that “everything is on the table” with regard to possible sanctions in the event of a Russian attack, including the Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea pipeline not. If there were already doubts about German credibility in the Ukraine, the Navy Admiral should have finally torpedoed them verbally.