Why Jens Spahn’s nuclear screen is not a good idea

Jens Spahn has a special relationship with the Bundeswehr: he owes her life. Although retired and therefore uneducated, he became a deputy member of the Defense Committee in 2002. In 2005 he traveled to the German soldiers in Afghanistan. At the remote base Faizabad, Spahn’s biographer Michael Bröcker knows, he suffered acute appendicitis and had to be operated on.

In July 2019 Spahn would almost have become Minister of Defense. Ursula von der Leyen, most recently the first woman at the head of the Bundeswehr, switched to the European Commission. Spahn was considered a favorite for her successor. In the crucial CDU telephone conference, Chancellor Angela Merkel is said to have said to him that he did a “bomb job”, which did not serve as a reason to move him, but to keep him as a health minister. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer became the new Minister of Defense. And how bomb spahn then contested the rest of his term is currently the subject of extensive debates.

Bundeswehr and defense policy have remained important topics for Spahn. In the meantime, the CDU politician, as chairman of the Union faction, is in a position in which he can comment on everything. In this way, he pushes the compulsory conscription quickly, which should have the low supply of sympathy on the coalition partner further melted.

Now Spahn has asked to discuss a nuclear protective shield for Europe. This debate has been in itself since Emmanuel Macron opened it, Spahn’s party leader Friedrich Merz picked them up and the then Chancellor Olaf Scholz had declared them superfluous. Nevertheless, it is led in relevant foreign policy circles. SPahn, however, is now driving the discussion by bringing a somehow a kind of German leadership role into play.

Now one can say that given the Russian threat, no question may be taboo. Of course, it can be queasy if the atomic deterrent by the NATO partner USA is in the hands of a man who appears to be rather fan-hunted in his affection for Europe. But it is also correct that the Russian threat is not a license to derive a kind of “wish-to-what” from the turn of the times regardless of the sensitivity of other, especially European partner states.

It’s not just about the matter, the sound also makes music. Merz and Spahn are not tired of celebrating Germany’s alleged return to the international stage. But how! The new government has not yet been in office for two months, the Chancellor has already announced that the Bundeswehr should become conventionally becoming the “strongest army in Europe”. And now his parliamentary group leader speculates about a German leadership role in the nuclear deterrence.

It may be that European partners consider more security -political commitment to Germany to be correct, and also that Berlin wants to spend money without end. Therefore, however, historical awareness has not disappeared how dangerous German dominance struts can be. Speculations about a leadership role in the event of nuclear deterrence are a safe way, benevolence and trust in which you refer to quickly gamble again.