Berlin Better an end with horror than horror without end. If the reports of Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht’s voluntary resignation are confirmed, then the SPD politician will be doing her country one last service – namely, not to let ridicule and malice about the defense department grow any further and not to further damage Germany’s international reputation.
Lambrecht was a thoroughly deserving Minister of Justice in the Grand Coalition. This is also why Chancellor Olaf Scholz chose the party friend when it came to forming a cabinet with equal numbers of women and men. And when the new traffic light government was sworn in in December 2021, the focus was not necessarily on defense and the surprising new department head.
That changed abruptly with the Russian attack on Ukraine on February 24 last year. But instead of a minister who vigorously implemented the turning point proclaimed by Scholz almost overnight in practical politics, a department head resided in Berlin’s Stauffenbergstrasse who was strangers to the office and never made a secret of the fact that she would have preferred to become interior minister.
In her own ministry, she never lived up to the new claim to leadership for Germany that Lambrecht herself formulated in her keynote speech in September. One cannot expect the Commander-in-Chief of the German Armed Forces in peacetime to immediately find her way around all the details of complex military matters.
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But in times when the danger of war for Germany and NATO is greater than it has been for decades, one has to demand that the defense minister take an interest in her position. You didn’t have that impression with Christine Lambrecht from the start.
The minister lacked any instinct for social media democracy
In addition, she apparently lacks any instinct for how politicians should behave in social media democracy. If the unfortunate New Year’s Eve video, from which the ministry embarrassed itself distanced itself, was an attempt to get young people interested in government policy, then it went horribly wrong. Even the critical reports about her adult son’s helicopter flight – including the posted photo – should have been a lesson for Lambrecht.
If the defense minister was still speculating that she would still become interior minister when Nancy Faeser went to Hesse as the SPD’s top candidate for the state elections, then this hope has now finally been dashed. The 57-year-old’s position in the Ministry of Defense may not be the best letter of recommendation for another political career.
Chancellor Scholz now faces the difficult task of finding a successor. If he wants to maintain gender parity in the cabinet, he would have to appoint a woman for the post. Or urging Interior Minister Faeser to quickly explain her planned future. Should she go to Hesse, the way would be clear for a major cabinet reshuffle.
Whoever takes over the office must also be aware that their own creative freedom ends where Scholz’s creative will begins. Because the fact that the chancellor saw defense policy as a top priority at the turn of the century was something that Lambrecht felt painfully.
More: The Bundeswehr and Lambrecht want to stick to the Puma infantry fighting vehicle