The first hours of the new Secretary of Defense

Good morning dear readers,

you have to be careful with military language images these days, but the term “thrown into battle” is really obvious in relation to our new defense minister: On Thursday at 8 a.m. Boris Pistorius is to receive his certificate of appointment from the Federal President, then take the oath of office in the Bundestag and be greeted with military honors in the Ministry of Defense – um then to meet with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin that same morning.

Hopefully his plane doesn’t have too much tailwind over the Atlantic, otherwise the schedule will get mixed up.

The meeting of the Ukraine supporter states in Ramstein follows on Friday, where Pistorius has to provide answers to the question of whether Ukraine will receive German-made Leopard tanks.

As if the armaments bosses were already clicking their heels in anticipation of the fresh wind in the Bendler Block, reports the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”: The Leopard manufacturers now see themselves in a position to deliver the first tanks to Kyiv as early as the third quarter. Just a few days ago, the boss of the armaments group Rheinmetall, Armin Papperger, said that this would not be possible until 2024.

Judging by public reactions, Germany seems to have collectively decided: The former Interior Minister of Lower Saxony, Pistorius, is the right person in the right place at the right time. Even the fact that he is not a woman, and thus upsets the promised gender parity in the federal cabinet, is forgiven for once.

Or, as our deputy head of politics, Martin Greive, comments: “The Lower Saxon has good prerequisites: he is considered to be assertive, a man of clear words. Character traits that are also valued in the hierarchically ticking Bundeswehr.”

However, Pistorius is not a defense policy expert either, and Greive considers that to be quite symptomatic: “Since the end of the Cold War and in the absence of a military threat, the talent pool of defense politicians and the ability to think strategically in the country have become fairly manageable. “

Perhaps we will console ourselves with another person who once had to leave Hanover in a hurry as an emergency solutionto save the day. Paul von Hindenburg was living peacefully there as a pensioner when, on August 22, 1914, he was surprisingly appointed commander of the 8th Army, which was under pressure from Russia, and boarded the special eastbound train the very next morning. Four days later Battle of Tannenberg, rest of history. step away.

In the evening, the 99-year-old former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger outlined a peace plan for Ukraine via video link at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos: The front should be frozen along the lines in Donbass, where Ukrainian troops and Moscow-controlled rebels faced each other before the Russian attack on February 24 last year. In the next step, “political talks about resolving the conflict” would have to begin.

The result of these talks does not “necessarily” have to be a division of territory along the front, stressed Kissinger. This would mean that Ukraine could get back the annexed Crimea peninsula and the Donbass areas from Russia after all. In order to keep the pressure on the Kremlin, Europe and the US should not relax their economic blockade against Russia until a peace treaty has been negotiated. The pacified Ukraine could then become a member of NATO.

A first assessment: No one will be enthusiastic about this plan. In Kyiv, people dream of a military reconquest of all occupied territories, including Crimea. And even Moscow is only likely to declare its willingness to evacuate the areas occupied after February 24 under enormous military pressure.

However, Kissinger expresses what is thought in almost all western capitals: At the end of this war there will have to be some form of compromise with Moscow. And whether that is acceptable or not is not decided in Kyiv, but in the states that make it possible to defend Ukraine with their money and weapons.

Not only in politics does it sometimes take a little longer for the insight into the inevitable to prevail. After months of criticism of its involvement in Russia, the BASF subsidiary Wintershall Dea is taking action. The oil and gas giant announced last night that it would “completely withdraw from Russia”. Wintershall CEO Mario Mehren said after the relevant decision by the Supervisory Board: “Wintershall Dea will end its activities in Russia. Continuing our business in Russia is not sustainable.”

The joint ventures there have been “de facto economically expropriated” by Russia. BASF holds around 70 percent of the shares in Wintershall Dea and has to write off its stake by 7.3 billion euros. The chemical company therefore wrote a loss after taxes of 1.4 billion euros in 2022. Hardly any other company stands for the integration of the German energy industry with Russia like Wintershall Dea. It has maintained a close partnership with Gazprom for decades, produces gas in Siberia and is involved in the Nord Stream pipeline in the Baltic Sea.

I don’t know about you, but our family’s planned skiing holiday in the Black Forest literally fell through in the first days of January. This is not an unusual phenomenon, as the Handelsblatt correspondents found out when researching the future of winter sports in the Alps.

Increasingly, the crucial question is no longer: Is there enough snow? But: do we have enough snow cannons and enough water for the artificial snow?

Métabief in the French Jura Mountains is even planning to go skiing by 2040. By then at the latest, according to a forecast, winter sports will no longer be profitable there due to climate change. Instead of investing in new lifts, the municipality now wants to invest in mountain bike trails and other tourism alternatives. Or you can just go straight to après-ski.

I wish you a day as smooth as a well-groomed slope.

Best regards

Your Christian Rickens

Editor-in-Chief Handelsblatt