After weeks of failing to persuade Chancellor Olaf Scholz to free up Germany’s Leopard 2 tanks for shipment to Ukraine, President Biden was ready to make one more try.
In a late morning call with Scholz from the White House on Jan. 17, Biden tried several tacks.
Britain had announced it would send 14 of its Challenger tanks, he reminded Scholz, addressing the chancellor’s concern that Germany not be the first to challenge the Russians by giving Ukraine a major new weapons system.
Scholz did not budge. Berlin and Washington must face down Moscow in lockstep, he told the president. Germany would not send its main battle tanks if the United States continued to decline sending some of its own — the powerful Abrams M1.
“I think the chancellor had the impression … he made a good case,” a German official said. Biden told Scholz he would “get back to you,” the official said.
Two of Biden’s closest foreign policy aides had been listening in, and after he hung up the three men sat alone rehashing the disappointing call. Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken had helped him navigate countless national security crises over the years — Blinken since Biden’s Senate days and Sullivan during his vice presidency.
“How do we move forward?” Biden asked the two.
It was Blinken who suggested a possible workaround. What if they announced a commitment to supply M1s but at some future point as part of Kyiv’s “long term” needs in a war that might go on for years? It could provide Scholz with the cover he sought to allow the Leopards to move right away. At the same time, it would give the Pentagon — where Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was against supplying Abrams tanks he thought were too complicated for near-term use in Ukraine — time to address concerns about training Ukrainian forces on how to use them and setting up the necessary logistics.
For Scholz, it was a significant political dilemma. Since the early days of the war, he had tried not to appear ahead of the pack when it came to arming Ukraine, expressing concerns over Moscow’s potential retaliation, or being seen as a direct participant.
Tasked with figuring out whether and how the idea would work, Sullivan spoke that afternoon with Austin about the proposed Plan B to commit to transferring Abrams tanks. The defense secretary still had concerns, but agreed to task the Pentagon with figuring out how it could be implemented.
Austin, however, was due to travel to Germany that week for a meeting with his German counterpart and a Friday gathering at Ramstein Air Base with the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, the consortium he had organized last spring to coordinate arms donations and shipments to Ukraine. He wanted to give Plan A — at least getting Germany to release other countries to send the “Leos,” as they were known in the Pentagon, even if it wouldn’t send its own — one more chance without promising Abrams tanks.
Over the weekend, Austin told Sullivan that Berlin remained adamant: No Leos without Abrams.
The 31 M1A2 main battle tanks that Biden officially authorized on Tuesday would not be taken from U.S. military stockpiles, but would be procured under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. They would be built to task, without the depleted uranium armor, for delivery late this year or next.
