Drumbeat for Scholz to send Ukraine Taurus missiles

The German government is under heavy pressure to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine. To be more precise, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is the one being pushed by his own defense and foreign ministers – with Annalena Baerbock, his foreign minister, giving speeches pushing for the Taurus missiles to go there.

The Taurus cruise missile is a long-range weapon that would need to be mounted on a Ukrainian fighter jet – most likely one of Ukraine’s Su-24 planes, currently equipped with the British Storm Shadow cruise missile. It’s likely that appropriate interfaces would need to be installed on the Ukrainian jets.

How can a government survive when it is completely fractured? Why would a chancellor allow this kind of opposition in his governing ranks?

Part of it is because Germany is led by a coalition government that is wobbling badly. His fellow senior officials know that Scholz is a pushover: All you have to do is provide some political cover for him. He resisted sending Leopard tanks to Ukraine until the US “persuaded” him by agreeing to send Abrams M-1 tanks along with the Leopards.

David Cameron, once Britain’s prime minister and now foreign minister, proposed a solution. Britain would send more Storm Shadow cruise missiles to Ukraine and Germany would supply Taurus missiles to replace them in the UK. This scheme sounded promising, but Scholz did not like it. His foreign minister, on the other hand, endorsed Cameron’s proposal.

A vexing question is just how many of the Taurus missiles actually are in working condition. Reliable numbers are hard to come by, but some reckon that Germany has 600 Taurus cruise missiles (in different models) in its inventory. Only 150 or so are certified operational, although that number may be an exaggeration.  Germany may be asked to send between 30 and 50 Taurus missiles to Ukraine, significantly depleting the working inventory.

One presumes that Germany needs Taurus missiles for its own national security, although how many is not clear. Those boosting sending them to Ukraine, like the Green Party, are all-in on sending these weapons to Ukraine – but are far less committed to defense spending in Germany. Annalena Baerbock is a leading Green party member. She favors a European defense scheme under the supervision of the European parliament.

Scholz says that a key reason he opposes sending Taurus missiles to Ukraine, even though he trusts the Ukrainians, is that German soldiers would have to operate them. This, Scholz suggests, makes Germany a combatant against Russia, a result he does not support.

Leaving aside the obvious target of the Kerch Strait mega bridge – at which, according to the leak of a tape of German military officers, 20 Taurus missiles would be aimed – no one doubts that sending Taurus missiles to Ukraine would aid and abet Ukraine’s attacks on Russian territory.

Such attacks have escalated in the past couple of weeks. On March 12th alone, Ukraine sent 58 kamikaze drones aimed at six locations.The Ukrainians have been aiming at Russian oil refineries. Two of them were hit on March 12.

There reportedly was an attempted strike on a nuclear power plant in Rostov. The Rostov plant includes three power units and generates 3.1 gw (gigawatts) of electricity.

An attack on a nuclear power plant is extraordinarily reckless and has repercussions that could escalate the war with new terror weapons, including nuclear weapons. Scholz’s statement that he trusts the Ukrainians would seem misplaced.

Ukraine’s attacks grow out of desperation, as Ukraine’s military is steadily eroding and the Russians are thought to be on the verge of a major offensive. The Ukrainians are urgently building new defenses consisting of trenches, pill boxes and obstacles, but if the Russians actually do move a large force, the new defense works will be either bypassed or destroyed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin strongly warned the West about nuclear weapons. Putin conflated nuclear weapons with the possible introduction of US troops in Ukraine, saying that the West should be aware that Russia is “technically ready for nuclear war” and that if the US sent troops to Ukraine, it would be considered “a significant escalation of the conflict.” Putin’s statement came before the reported attack in Rostov. It isn’t known how Russia will respond to that.

There will be a vote in the German Bundestag, staged by the opposition, on the Taurus question. Previously the Bundestag voted against sending Taurus missiles to Ukraine. How such a vote will turn out this time, given the fissures in the German government, is not clear.

UPDATE MARCH 14, 2023: The Associated Press reports that the Bundestag has rejected the proposal.

Stephen Bryen served as staff director of the Near East Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as a deputy undersecretary of defense for policy. This article was first published on his Weapons and Strategy Substack and is republished with permission.