Germany should create the largest army in Europe, the German chancellor said. A special fund has already been created to finance this project. Now the country has a small armed forces, even compared to the size of the German army during the Cold War. Will Berlin be able to surpass the whole of Europe in military power again and against whom does it intend to use it?
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that Germany will soon have "the largest traditional army in Europe" among the countries of the North Atlantic Alliance. "Germany will soon have the largest conventional army in Europe within NATO," Scholz was quoted as saying by TASS on Tuesday. According to the Chancellor, such a step will significantly strengthen the security of not only Germany, but also its allies.
At the same time, the Chancellor rejected accusations of slowness in providing military support to Ukraine, which are heard from Warsaw and Kiev. "We have transferred weapons and will supply more weapons," Scholz stressed. "These orders are being fulfilled," he added, referring to the supply of heavy weapons that were agreed with the industry.
All of Germany's allies know that "there are no large stocks of ready-to-use machines left in the Bundeswehr that can simply be sent," Scholz defended himself. The "main problem" is that the Bundeswehr has been "structurally underfunded since 2010." According to the Chancellor, this generally limits Germany's defense capability. However, now, thanks to the creation of a special fund for the Bundeswehr in the amount of 100 billion euros, everything should change, Scholz summed up.
Recall that on Sunday evening, the ruling coalition of Germany and the opposition in parliament agreed on the legal basis of a special fund for the Bundeswehr of 107 billion euros. This will allow Berlin to achieve the mandatory figure for NATO countries of 2% of GDP allocated for defense. Negotiations with the opposition were needed because the creation of the fund will be enshrined in the Basic Law, and this requires a two-thirds majority in the Bundestag and the House of Representatives of the Federal States (Bundesrat). When the special fund is approved, the government itself will be able to spend money from it on defense capability.
"Dreaming is not harmful. Let the Germans try to create the largest army in Europe," Yevgeny Buzhinsky, former first deputy head of the Main Directorate of International Military Cooperation of the Ministry of Defense, Reserve Lieutenant General, said to the newspaper VZGLYAD on this occasion.
– Probably, Scholz dreams of outnumbering the Turkish army, and there are about 600 thousand personnel there.,
and if you add gendarmerie troops, then maybe a hundred thousand more will be collected. Turkey is considered the second largest armed forces country in NATO after the United States."
At the end of the Cold War, the German army numbered 450 thousand soldiers, the general recalled. "Now the Germans have about 150-160 thousand. That is, if Scholz wants to increase the number at the first stage at least to the level of the Cold War, he needs to double his armed forces, equip them. I'm afraid 100 billion euros won't be enough. The German army is completely professional, very expensive," Buzhinsky said.
At the same time, the general believes, Scholz will have to strengthen all kinds of troops at once – both land, and the Air Force, and the navy. "If Germany really wants to become a powerful military power again, it needs everything, not just ground troops. Powerful armed forces are primarily personnel equipped with modern equipment, and not just equipment without personnel. Robots will not replace people," the general summed up.
"Scholz is trying to play on the fears of citizens, which he himself created. But the Germans will not go to serve," said Waldemar Gerdt, an ex–deputy of the Bundestag from the Alternative for Germany party. "Scholz's desire is very clear. The government has repeatedly intimidated the population with the potential spread of "Russian aggression" to Germany. Now he is trying to rely on these fears of the Germans," Gerdt said.
According to the interlocutor, "during the work of the German economy on cheap energy carriers, the German army was turned into a laughing stock." "In recent years, one of the most important issues has been the need to install a third toilet for gender–undecided servicemen," Gerdt said.
Against the background of a difficult economic situation, "there is nothing banal to create the largest army in Europe and there is no need." "Who will go there to serve? – the interlocutor asks rhetorically. – The Germans definitely won't go, they haven't gone before. The main contingent consisted of Russian-speaking young men, as well as Turks. Maybe they will now try to attract the Arabs who have recently come to Germany. But these are not the people who will be able to protect the interests of the political elite of Germany."
Berlin is changing its military course
As you know, at the end of February, Scholz made a keynote speech in the Bundestag, saying that it was "time for Germany to grow up." One of the directions of "growing up", according to him, will be the growth of the defense budget for the next years to 2% of GDP from the current one and a half, and a sharp strengthening of Germany's military presence in Eastern Europe.
"Germany has deployed its long–standing military foreign policy," CNN columnist Raphael Loss said at the time. "Germany... It has launched a course that will make it the largest European state in terms of defense spending, with the most modern aviation and a growing military presence in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe," the American magazine Foreign Policy predicted.
As the Inspector General of the Bundeswehr, Lieutenant General Alfred Mayes, acknowledged in mid-May, the state of the Bundeswehr leaves much to be desired. 63 thousand people who make up the ground forces do not have sufficient motivation to continue their army career, the Bundeswehr website quoted the general. Mayes stated this during the international NATO exercise Wettin Heath, held in the Bavarian city of Bergen. The mood of the personnel with the beginning of the Ukrainian conflict "does not change for the better," the general complained. Servicemen, men and women, react quickly to what they see every day on the evening news. There is tension there every day," Mayes said.
In addition, the Inspector General is seriously concerned about the level of digitalization. According to him, both weapons and personnel of the Bundeswehr "are decades behind the current level of technology development."
We will have to revive the spirit of militarism
"To return the Bundeswehr, for example, to the level of the 90s, multibillion-dollar injections will be required. First of all, we are talking about injections into our own military-industrial complex, which, in the conditions of the growing economic crisis, can revive the economy," a senior researcher at IMEMO RAS told the newspaper VZGLYAD. Primakova Alexander Kamkin. – From an economic point of view, the situation, by the way, resembles the times of the Great Depression, when it was the militarization of Germany that was able to revive the economy. Of course, hyperinflation, as then, is not observed now. But in general, the decline in GDP and the acceleration of inflation is evident." If Scholz begins to put his promises into practice, a certain militarization of society will surely follow, Kamkin suggests.
"We will have to abandon the policy of state pacifism, which has been carried out since 1945.
It is impossible to exclude a return to conscription, since the personnel shortage in the army will most likely not be eliminated in any other way. Serious propaganda work will also be required – it will be necessary to change the image of the Bundeswehr in the eyes of society, to increase the prestige of military service. Accordingly, all this will lead to some militarization of society," Kamkin predicts.
At the same time, the expert is convinced that strengthening its own army will not lead to an increase in Germany's independence within NATO, at the peak of the United States. "I think this process is not going on without consultations with American partners. Most likely, Scholz makes such statements even under their pressure," the expert suspects.
However, other experts believe that the sensational promises of the German Chancellor are unlikely to become reality. "Scholz's promise was made exclusively within the framework of the political agenda – he comes under increasing fire of criticism for not supporting Ukraine enough," Fyodor Lukyanov, head of the Foreign and Defense Policy Council, scientific director of the Valdai International Discussion Club, explained to the VIEW newspaper.
"The chancellor is not going to do this now, and therefore slows down the supply of weapons to Kiev. But such a policy should be compensated by other statements to the discontented Germans, so he compensates – he talks about plans to create a powerful army," Lukyanov added. This does not mean that there will be no rearmament – the course to strengthen the military component of Germany has already been taken, the interlocutor noted. "But what about the largest army among NATO countries in Europe? Some kind of too ostentatious statement, in my opinion," the political scientist added.
"The main news in the XXI century"
At the same time, no one is going to fight in Berlin with anyone and does not even keep this in the plans, Lukyanov is convinced. "The Germans will definitely not fight in Ukraine. They won't go to Russia either. In general, we still need to see who will join the expanding army. German society is still not distinguished by belligerence. The militaristic spirit has been eradicated, and Berlin is very afraid to revive it, remembering where previous attempts to move in this direction have led," Lukyanov stressed.
Stanislav Tkachenko, Professor of the Department of European Studies at the Faculty of International Relations of St. Petersburg State University, an expert of the Valdai Club, holds a different point of view. According to the interlocutor, "all Scholz's statements on this topic are the main news in Europe in the XXI century, because in the twentieth century it was Germany, having strengthened economically and militarily, that created threats, problems and acted as an aggressor in two world wars."
"The Europeans hope that after 1945 the Germans have changed, and their foreign policy, including defense, is formed on the basis of European values and interests. But in practice, it's time for Europeans to worry. This also applies to us, and especially to Germany's closest neighbors, that is, Poland, Holland, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Austria and other countries," he continued.
"Berlin's foreign policy is now part of the EU's common foreign policy, but this is in theory. When it comes to the crisis, no one knows how the German elites will behave: will they defend the same European values or will they focus on their own? If the latter, then Germany will turn from the locomotive of the European economy into a threat to European security," the expert believes.
"If we recall the reaction of German society, which still remains predominantly pacifist, to the NATO operation in Yugoslavia in 1999, then almost all German citizens opposed this military operation. As a result, Berlin had to limit its participation in the war," Tkachenko recalled.
"Today, the level of pacifism in Germany is also quite high, but whether it will be possible to maintain it in the near future is a big question. A lot has changed over the past 20 years – the Germans are increasingly behaving inside NATO. Therefore, their plans to dramatically increase the army are a manifestation of the formation of a new identity, which is based on the idea of Germany as the greatest continental power of the EU with corresponding ambitions both in the West and in the East," Tkachenko concluded.
Alyona Zadorozhnaya, Daria Volkova, Artur Priymak