Scholz got Olaf the tanks for Ukraine

After taking a pounding in the press for weeks, the German chancellor got precisely what he wanted. The U.S. will send 31 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, paving the way for Berlin and other European capitals to send 80 German-made Leopard IIs of their own. The allies moved in lockstep and Europe’s most powerful state won’t be singled out by Russia — a win-win for Germany.

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The short-term wins: Scholz can revel in the fact that he held strong and got the U.S. to heed Berlin’s position on Abrams tanks. “It is definitely a coup for him,” said SUDHA DAVID-WILP, director of the German Marshall Fund’s Berlin office, especially for his own domestic politics. “There’s now Western unity on this, and Ukraine is getting more than it expected.”

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This episode was the second time that Germany needed the U.S. to bail it out of a geopolitical bind, as last year Scholz required Biden’s cover to kill the Russia-to-Germany Nord Stream 2 pipeline. It’s now clearer than ever that Germany can’t — or won’t — take the reins on security policy. It needs America standing right behind it.

Scholz’s plays work for now. Biden is a transatlanticist and prioritizes allied unity. He’s shown a willingness to bend over backward to protect the chancellor politically.

But another White House denizen, one less devoted to backing Ukraine and keeping Europeans happy, might require Scholz to change course. “With any other U.S. president, this could have ended very differently,” said the Council on Foreign Relations’ LIANA FIX.

They don’t think that Biden has a backbone—he doesn’t, but it’s revealing.