The Defense Minister and the Chancellor are fighting for dominance like two wolves in a pack. Scholz doesn’t like this at all because it torpedoes his strategy in several ways. Pistorius must now show composure.

Defense Minister Boris Pistorius’s cardinal mistake is this: the man is more popular than the highest-ranking member of the cabinet pack. The more pronounced this popularity advantage, the more dangerously the defense minister lives.

Canis Lupus Olaf: The same animalistic rules apply to politicians as we know them from the wolf pack. If there is a violation of space, i.e. one person moves too close to the other, the so-called territorial behavior is activated. The Alpha Wolf’s space of control must now be marked, supported by publicly visible threatening gestures. In the final instance, the bite reflex is triggered.

What this means for the government is that there are now three different groups of the pack fighting each other. So far there have been hidden ranking battles between Robert Habeck and Annalena Baerbock as to who will be number one of the Greens in the future. There is an obvious beef between the SPD social politicians and the FDP – and now a red fratricidal fight has broken out.

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It is not just the demand for additional billions for the military and the reinstatement of compulsory military service that excites the Chancellor, but the fact that Pistorius has not coordinated such initiatives with the holder of the directive authority, i.e. him. In doing so, the defense minister is questioning the hierarchy in the cabinet.

The Defense Minister also claims special status vis-à-vis the Finance Minister and, ultimately, even the Federal Constitutional Court. In a guest article for the Handelsblatt, he calls for an exception to the debt limit of the Basic Law for the national defense, i.e. the army he leads, and thus salvation from Christian Lindner’s austerity dictates. Without further legal justification he claims:

“Constitutionally, the debt brake has no priority over the task of setting up armed forces for defense. On the contrary, it must take a back seat to the state’s elementary duty to provide security.”

In addition, he would like to reinstate compulsory military service, which was suspended by CSU Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. According to the Ministry of Defense, three different models were developed and presented to the minister. Cost: still open. Pistorius literally said on his trip to Washington, D.C. last week:

“I am convinced that Germany needs some form of conscription.”

The Chancellor knew nothing about it. It is this continued refusal to show respect that has activated Olaf Scholz’s instinct for power and thus triggered a struggle for rank within the SPD. Because even if the Chancellor is not getting much done at the moment:

His instinct for power is intact.

His immune system is working.

Anyone who questions his authority enters the combat zone.

And Canis Lupus Boris violated the Chancellor’s strategic private zone in three areas:

The Social Democratic head of government wants to be seen by voters as a chancellor of peace. Military support for Ukraine and the rearmament of the Bundeswehr have not been canceled, but they have moved back on the agenda. The Chancellor called addressing the personnel shortage in the Bundeswehr a “manageable task”.

For the Defense Minister this means: rhetorical moderation and no emotional general mobilization by drumming up support for the reintroduction of compulsory military service. Anyone who rattles the saber now is violating the SPD’s strategy in the European election campaign and in the three state elections in East Germany, where the aim is to calm the people rather than whip them up. Sleep child sleep.

Scholz is seeking solidarity with his Pacific-minded faction leader Rolf Mützenich. In the Ukraine war, he prefers quick cessions of territory, no Taurus cruise missiles and a negotiated solution, even if there is no negotiating partner in sight on the Russian side.

Scholz has understood that this move will not pacify Putin, but it will pacify the SPD parliamentary group. The unity of this group is vital for a chancellor whose poll ratings are low – even if it means making the government in Kiev a plaything of domestic political calculations. All business is local.

Scholz does not want to wantonly blow up his coalition in the budget conflict with the liberal finance minister. That’s why he rhetorically supports Christian Lindner. In an interview with Stern he says:

“The finance minister gave the departments limits – that was agreed with me.”

And further:

“We shouldn’t make life too easy for ourselves. Now it’s time to sweat.”

But it is precisely this strengthening of support that is perceived as an affront just a few kilometers from the Chancellery. At the coalition breakfast with budget and defense politicians, the defense minister said, as the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported, citing participants:

“I don’t have to do this here.”

The fact that Scholz also made costly promises about the further expansion of the welfare state to his labor and social affairs minister, pension politicians and citizens’ money supporters is not so important at the moment. Scholz is playing for time. In the background, people are looking for ways to increase borrowing in accordance with the constitution. After all, everyone in the pack is hungry.

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Conclusion: If Boris Pistorius, who is under pressure, does not want to lose this power struggle, he must control his temper and demonstrate strategic composure. Charles Darwin could not have known the traffic light coalition, but nevertheless described exactly what was important in the Berlin pack fight in his 1859 work “On the Origin of Species”:

“It is not the strongest species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one that responds best to change.”