On the eve of the one-year anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, German officials had hoped to use next weekend’s Munich Security Conference to unveil their long-awaited national security strategy.
But disagreements in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s governing coalition have put paid to those plans. The annual security gathering, dubbed the “Davos of defence”, will most likely not be the place to showcase progress on his promised Zeitenwende, or historic turning point, that pledged a more assertive role for Germany in European defence.
The dispute centres on a disagreement over whether Berlin should set up a US-style National Security Council (NSC) — an idea that some German ministries fear could hand too much power to Scholz’s office.