Useful mishaps

At first, events couldn't unfold quickly enough: within just a week, the German government tossed out its previous principles and openly publicized a decision to supply the Kurds in Iraq with weapons. The aim was to prevent a genocide that barely anyone mentions anymore these days.

The Bundestag, Germany's lower house of parliament, was even summoned early from its summer break to discuss military aid for a non-state entity at war. Of all days, the date set for the debate was the 75th anniversary of the German invasion of Poland.

In the meantime, things have relaxed: after checking its inventory, the Bundeswehr collected weapons from various bases, sorted, inspected and neatly packed them up. Before they were loaded for shipment, reporters in Berlin were invited to take a look, too. The transport by trucks to the airport in Leipzig went smoothly, but ever since then, one mishap is followed by another.

Scheduled flights are more reliable

The seven training supervisors scheduled to teach the Kurds how to use the weapons from Germany haven been held up in Bulgaria for days because the first and now the second plane that was to fly them out had mechanical problems. One might recommend the Bundeswehr soldiers to fall back on a means of transportation the German jihadists use: a scheduled, commercial flight to Diyarbakir, and from there, travel overland to Iraq.

At least this way you know you'll arrive. It's worked, as intelligence services know, hundreds of times already.

In addition, the plane that flew the first arms shipment to Iraq started much later than planned due to a mechanical problem.

Is that what Germany's promised greater international commitment is going to look like? On Thursday, at least the defense minister managed to arrive in Erbil without a glitches - far ahead of the weapons and training supervisors of the Bundeswehr she heads.

Now Ursula von der Leyen will have to do without what must have been planned as an ideal photo opportunity of a weapons handover to the Kurds. But she'll easily get over that, because this series of mishaps is a political boon.

As she whiles in faraway Kurdistan, the Bundestag debated the annual report by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Armed Forces. In a radio interview, Hellmut Königshaus, the parliamentary commissioner for the armed forces, has already said the Bundeswehr is only conditionally ready for action. There is too much pressure to economize, there is too much hardware that is too old, and the airplanes are older than the pilots who fly them.

This can't continue

That's how you create the political mood for a change of tack in a country that is more open to each and every new social benefit than to even a tiny rise in the defense budget. As she is a clever politician, Ursula von der Leyen is aware of that fact; there's a reason she is regarded as a possible successor to Angela Merkel.

Even among defense experts who know that more money alone won't make the Bundeswehr more effective, von der Leyen can benefit from the series of glitches.

It's not news that the Transall transport planes - a type that is 50 years old - have become extremely repair intensive. Debate about the plane's successor has been going on for the past 30 years, concrete plans were made 15 years ago, but so far, new planes haven't yet arrived in Germany's Air Force.

That is why Ursula von der Leyen's biggest project is so immensely important: a fundamental reform of arms planning and of all of the Bundeswehr's other acquisition processes. After this week, even a military layman will understand why things can't continue as usual. After all, Europe's biggest economic power doesn't want to be permanently ridiculed on the international stage!