2024-08-02 19:18:38
Defense Minister Pistorius is traveling to the Pacific to show the German flag in an increasingly important region. The fact that the quarrels in his SPD are catching up with him even on the other side of the world does not seem to impress the minister much.
By Daniel Mützel, Honolulu
There is absolute silence as Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) enters the memorial of the “USS Arizona” and lays a wreath for the fallen US soldiers. The wall in front of him is covered with the names of the dead, over 1,000 of them.
When visiting the chalk-white resting place in the middle of the sea, built on the wreck of the battleship, Pistorius is accompanied by Samuel Paparo, the commander of the US Indo-Pacific Fleet. The admiral reminds Pistorius in a sonorous voice of the day in December 1941 when Japanese torpedo bombers sank the “Arizona” in just a few minutes. The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor led to the USA entering the war and was a decisive turning point in the Second World War.
The German Defense Minister, who is visiting a multinational naval exercise in Hawaii with German participation, has taken time to visit the memorial. He listens to Paparo’s stories, asks questions if he wants to know more, and nods thoughtfully. The message is that remembrance work is lived solidarity among partners.
Pearl Harbor, the Pacific as an old and perhaps new theater of war, a mega-maneuver involving German warships: there would have been many topics that a German defense minister could have spoken about that day.
But Berlin politics is catching up with the minister on the other side of the world. Pistorius’ own party in particular is not giving him any peace. The comrades do not want to simply accept the stationing of US medium-range missiles in Germany and are gathering their forces. Recently, SPD parliamentary group leader Rolf Mützenich warned of a possible “unintended military escalation” as a result of the stationing. Now other Social Democrats are following suit, such as foreign policy expert Ralf Stegner and former SPD leader Norbert Walter-Borjans, who are calling for a debate in the Bundestag.
What’s interesting is that Walter-Borjans in particular seemed to want to escalate the debate by personally attacking Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) and accusing him of “going it alone”. At the NATO summit in July, Scholz announced the decision to station conventional US cruise missiles and rockets in Germany.
But Pistorius was not very impressed by the storm at the epicenter of the SPD parliamentary group in Hawaii on Tuesday. The minister dutifully answered questions from the journalists who had traveled with him and pointed out the difference to the NATO double-track decision in the 1980s. Back then, it was about nuclear weapons, today it is about conventional systems, said Pistorius: “We should therefore keep things carefully separate here.” He also said he was open to a debate in the Bundestag, even if this is not actually a topic for parliamentary proceedings.
But all in all, Pistorius seems to be thinking about other things than the factional revolt at home. For example, about why he made the long trip to Hawaii in the first place: because of Germany’s growing involvement in the Indo-Pacific. At least that is the message that Pistorius wants to send out.
Whether this is also how the partners see it will have to be judged at the end of the trip. One thing is clear: the Indo-Pacific is a geopolitical region of paramount importance for world trade. For this reason alone, Germany, an export nation, has a vested interest in stability in the region and in free trade routes.