Trouble in the Union: For Foreign Chancellor Merz, the SPD manifesto is a disaster

Is it the revenge of those who have been short-changed and ignored? Of Rolf Mützenich , who, after his time as SPD parliamentary group leader, didn't even become committee chair? Of Norbert Walter-Borjans, the former party leader, who can only comment from the outside? Or are they simply unshakable beliefs that critics find incomprehensible after more than three years of the war in Ukraine, but that many Social Democrats consider part of their pacifist DNA?

Perhaps the SPD manifesto that is dominating the headlines these days is really just what Ralf Stegner calls it: “an important contribution to the debate”.

Whatever it is or is supposed to be: The paper, in which Mützenich, Walter-Borjans, and Stegner, along with dozens of other comrades, distance themselves from the federal government's security policy, comes at an inopportune time for Friedrich Merz . The Chancellor, who wants to make a name for himself as foreign minister, in Europe and the world, now has to worry about the centrifugal forces of his coalition. This seems almost provincial. Yet, there seemed to be agreement: German defense spending should be massively increased, with hundreds of billions of euros for the Bundeswehr.

Now, the SPD politicians' paper states that in Germany and most European countries, forces have prevailed that seek the future "primarily in a strategy of military confrontation and hundreds of billions of euros for rearmament." It's hard to create much more linguistic distance from the coalition partner without alienating them—not to mention one's own party leadership.

He is counting on there being unity, the Chancellor replied on Wednesday. It sounded reserved, patient. But you don't have to be a Merz expert to guess that he isn't pleased by Stegner et al.'s enthusiasm for debate. His spokesman said he perceived the government as "very, very united" on defense and deterrence. United and united, in other words, quite different from the traffic light coalition, which failed to find common ground on aid to Ukraine and ultimately couldn't even raise an additional three billion euros. Things will be different under Merz than under Olaf Scholz, or so the promise went. It was gratefully received in Ukraine, the EU, and among NATO partners.

But will it hold? Or are the Social Democrats hesitating, as Scholz has been accused of over the years, and Merz has to bend over backwards to prevent the government from collapsing?

SPD manifesto: Trouble among CDU foreign policy chief

The content of the SPD paper is not at all surprising. It criticizes "military alarm rhetoric," calls for talks with Russia, and a halt to the stationing of new US medium-range missiles on German soil. That comrades like Stegner and Mützenich think this way is really nothing new; their positions are well known. In the traffic light coalition, Stegner was the counterpart to Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, who unwaveringly called for more weapons. A popular pairing on talk shows, often seen, often outraged. And Mützenich, who once earned his doctorate on "nuclear-free zones," was the one who pondered aloud in the Bundestag that wars could also be frozen.

At that time, Mützenich was still speaking as chairman of the Bundestag parliamentary group, thus not just for himself, but for the Social Democrats as the traffic light coalition partner. Even then, the Greens were shocked, just as they are today. But it was obvious that Mützenich couldn't speak completely freely; the responsibility for his parliamentary group, and also for the government, tamed him. Today, he can.

One looks at this manifesto with "disbelief," says a leading CDU politician. However, it was only written by "has-beens," i.e., yesterday's people. Mützenich, Walter-Borjans, and Stegner, no longer worth mentioning? In any case, the document is considered "not very relevant to the course of the federal government," said the CDU politician. Social Democrats like Adis Ahmetovic, the domestic policy spokesman in the Bundestag, sounded a similar, albeit less derogatory, tone. He said he had taken note of the opinions of five of the 120 parliamentary group members. Large parts of its content are questionable, and it will not find a majority at the federal party conference.

The fact that the paper was published shortly before the SPD party conference is, of course, no coincidence, as Norbert Walter-Borjans confirmed in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. He then spoke of a "concentration of power" within the SPD, which, even if he didn't say so explicitly, he apparently sees in Lars Klingbeil, his successor at the party leadership. Certainly, there are more supporters of the disarmament course within the SPD than the list of initial signatories to the manifesto would suggest. And it's certainly not unusual for position papers to be published to influence party conferences. To set the tone in advance.

In any case, CDU/CSU foreign policy experts describe the manifesto as "disastrous for Germany's reputation in Central and Eastern Europe." And one man, above all, represents German government policy: Friedrich Merz. However, the CDU/CSU says they trust the "self-clarification processes" within the SPD. And so the question remains as to how resilient this trust is.