The German chancellor Olaf Schulz is under pressure from local coalition partners and external allies to allow the export of German Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine.
Scholz so far rejects doing so because the U.S. is not willing to give its own tanks, M1 Abrams types, to Ukraine:
Germany won’t send or authorize the transfer of tanks to Ukraine until the U.S. agrees to give its own, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told American lawmakers on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum on Wednesday.
The exchange in Davos, described by three people with knowledge of what was said, was respectful in tone but showed just how far apart Washington and Berlin are on a tank deal.
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A spokesperson for Scholz didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But the chancellor hinted at some kind of arrangement with the U.S. during his Davos address.“We are never doing something just by ourselves, but together with others, especially the United States, which are very important in this common task to defend Ukrainian independence and sovereignty,” he said.
The U.S. has send its secretary of defense Lloyd Austin to Berlin to pressure Scholz into changing his mind:
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin met his newly appointed German counterpart on Thursday for talks that have taken on more urgency since Berlin put conditions on tank deliveries to Ukraine.
In a call this week with President Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stressed that in order for Germany to unlock a package of Leopard 2 tanks for Ukraine, Washington should send tanks, too, according to a German and a U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private conversation.
It’s a move Washington doesn’t want to make, citing the high fuel consumption and maintenance burden of the U.S. military’s M1 Abrams battle tanks. Austin is hoping to break the deadlock in Berlin and persuade Germany to send tanks, according to a senior U.S. defense official.
The excuse Washington gives for not delivering Abrams tanks is not really believable. Yes, the turbine driven Abrams is guzzling a bit more fuel than the Leopard’s diesel engine. But a turbine also requires less maintenance than a diesel engine which has many more moving parts.
Aside from the engine the Abrams do not have any significant parts that the Leopards do not have. Training for the use and maintenance of either does not differ in time needed or intensity.
There is also the false impression, pushed by some weapon dealers (in German), that there are ‘hundreds’ of Leopards available. This is nonsense. Not every Leopard is like the other. The most standardized variant is Leopard 2A4 one. In the end Ukraine could receive may be 50 of those. The current German standard tank is the Leopard 2A7 which had three upgrades since the A4 version came out. Various countries have versions in between, often with their own upgraded gun control and communication systems. It would not make any sense from a training and maintenance point to give Ukraine a smorgasbord of various Leopard types. The logistics to support those would immediately become unfeasible.
There are also other issues. Soviet era tanks have a weight of about 40 metric tons. All he ‘western’ Abrams, Leopard, British Challenger and French Leclerc main battle tanks have a battle weight in the 60 metric ton class. I doubt that Ukraine rural roads and bridges were constructed with such tanks in mind. What use is a tank when you can not move it around without destroying your own supply routes?
There is also the important issue of training. This does not only include the technology of the tank but its tactical use in the field. The Turkish experience in Syria showed that bad tank tactics inevitably lead to bad outcomes, no matter how good the tanks are.
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Back to the original issue.
Why is the U.S. rejecting to send Abrams of which it has hundreds readily deliverable in various depots and pre-positioning sites?
The German chancellor seems to think that the U.S. wants to sneak out of its commitment and responsibility for the coming defeat of Ukraine.
“The Germans were responsible for delivering tanks but they did not deliver quickly and not enough of them,” could become a convenient excuse when the neo-conservative Ukraine project fails as it inevitably will. The U.S. could thereby leave Europe on the hook for a dismembered and bankrupt Ukraine. That may happen anyway but it should not be made any easier by letting Germany be pushed into leading the escalation spiral in the U.S. proxy war with Russia.
Scholz should have thought of that when he, at the start of the war, committed his country to the Ukraine project. The consequences were easy to predict:
All energy consumption in the U.S. and EU will now come at a premium price. This will push the EU and the U.S. into a recession. As Russia will increase the prices for exports of goods in which it has market power – gas, oil, wheat, potassium, titanium, aluminum, palladium, neon etc – the rise in inflation all around the world will become significant.
‘Western’ central banks are still at practical 0% interest rates and will be reluctant to increase those as that will cause a deeper recession. This makes it likely that inflation in the ‘western’ world will increase at a higher rate than Russia’s.
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The shunning of economic relations with Russia and China means that Germany and its newbie chancellor Olaf Scholz have fallen for the U.S. scheme of creating a new Cold War. Germany’s economy will now become one of its victims.On February 4 Russia and China declared a multipolar world in which they are two partnering poles that will counter the American one. Russia’s move into the Ukraine is a demonstration of that.
It also shows that the U.S. is unwilling to give up its supremacist urges without a large fight. But while the U.S. over the last 20 years has spent its money to mess up the Middle East, Russia and China have used the time to prepare for the larger conflict. They have spent more brain time on the issue than the U.S. has.
The Europeans should have acknowledged that instead of helping the U.S. to keep up its self-image of a unipolar power.
It will take some time for the new economic realities to settle in. They will likely change the current view of Europe’s real strategic interests.
Now Germany and Scholz are in the mess I predicted at the start of the war. This will not get better by ‘taking responsibility’ for tank deliveries and letting the U.S. off the hook. Scholz needs to be able to point to the U.S. as the power behind the war when the final results come in. So let’s see how long his usual weak backbone will hold him straight.
The U.S is by the way working on further escalation steps in the war by planing new attacks on Crimea:
Now, the Biden administration is considering what would be one of its boldest moves yet, helping Ukraine to attack the peninsula that President Vladimir V. Putin views as an integral part of his quest to restore past Russian glory.
American officials are discussing with their Ukrainian counterparts the use of American-supplied weapons, from HIMARS rocket systems to Bradley fighting vehicles, to possibly target Mr. Putin’s hard-fought control over a land bridge that functions as a critical supply route connecting Crimea to Russia via the Russian-occupied cities of Melitopol and Mariupol.
However, President Biden is not yet ready to give Ukraine the long-range missile systems that Kyiv would need to attack Russian installations on the peninsula.
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This week, top U.S. and Ukrainian commanders will hold a high-level planning meeting in Germany to game out the offensive planning, another senior U.S. official said. The drill, the official said, is meant to align Ukraine’s battle plans with the kinds of weapons and supplies NATO allies are contributing.
The U.S. is planning all major Ukrainian operations in the war. It checks what weapons are necessary to pursue those plans. It then orders its NATO clients to deliver the stuff or at least to pay some other country for doing it. When the operation finally launches it will only be Ukrainian and Russia soldiers who will die in their efforts.
“What is not to like with this,” asks the White House.
Well, I do not think that Russia is willing to be the proverbial slowly boiling frog in this escalation game. It will, at some point, have to strike back at the powers behind the war instead of just at their Ukrainian proxy. I am sure that the Kremlin has already studied the various options to do so.
