But as Harold Macmillan once said during his tenure as British prime minister, “events, dear boy, events” have a way of challenging leaders in ways they could not have imagined. Scholz’s initial reaction to Putin’s saber-rattling was to play it down. Nord Stream 2, the Russian pipeline to Germany that had long faced fierce resistance from EU partners and Washington, was an apolitical “business project” that should be decoupled from the sanctions debate, Scholz told the world in mid-December, even as Putin massed troops on the Russia-Ukraine border. (Not for nothing, the previous SPD chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, has morphed into a gas lobbyist for Putin since departing office in 2005.)

Scholz’s sudden about-face over the past week, as Russian troops rolled into Ukraine, was in part a reaction to the overwhelming pressure his government had come under—both within Germany and among Berlin’s closest allies—after weeks of foot-dragging. But the pressure alone does not explain the measures Scholz announced, which go far beyond what anyone could have expected from a politician known for his Hanseatic reserve.

The moves are an acknowledgment that the world has indeed changed, that Germany must invest heavily in its own defense, that it must pay an economic price to defend its values, that it cannot remain a larger version of Switzerland in a world of systemic rivalries. In making them, Scholz has gone against the tide of his own party, that of the German business establishment, and what many assumed to be the preferences of the broader German population. And yet the parties in his coalition have backed him, and the German media are hailing his boldness. On the same day Scholz made his announcements, more than 100,000 people converged on Tiergarten, next to the Bundestag, to show their solidarity with Ukraine.