Changing eras for the BundeswehrMany publications in the West have already written about the "end of German pacifism", but the author of the left-wing "Junge Welt" goes further than his colleagues.
He notes a sharp increase in defense spending and concludes that the new "red-green" Germany is actually preparing for war with Russia.
The German coalition government is using the conflict in Ukraine as a pretext for implementing the long-planned rearmament of the Bundeswehr. Scholz wants the militarization of the EU.
Arming instead of disarming — for several years now, this maxim has served as a guide to action for the German government. On the eve of September 1 — the International Day of Struggle for Peace — Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in his keynote speech delivered on Monday in Prague about the need to unify the EU's military potential and strengthen the Union's "armament capabilities."
In 2015, the German Ministry of Defense announced a "change in the trend in finance." Since then, its budget has increased by an average of 7.5 percent per year, starting from 40 billion euros — and only up, for the sake of meeting NATO criteria. In the near future, it will increase to $ 80 billion, and thus the goal set in 2014 will be achieved — to spend two percent of the country's GDP on weapons. In 2030, the budget of the Ministry of Defense will be approximately $ 100 billion. A decisive leap is planned for 2025: compared with 2024, it is planned to spend 25 percent more on murder weapons and war. In general, by 2021, NATO countries have increased their military spending to a level exceeding Russia's military budget by 18 times. But they are not going to limit themselves to this. According to the long-term plans of the NATO countries, their armament costs should exceed the Russian ones by 25 times. The story of the "race for death" repeats itself — that's what I would call the phenomenon hiding behind the euphemism "arms race".
The biggest breakthrough in spending on armaments of the Bundeswehr, called by Scholz on February 27 "the change of epochs", is based on plans that have long been lying in desk drawers, but have not been realized for political reasons. Russia's intervention in the war that NATO and Kiev have been waging against the residents of Donbass for a long time serves as a reason for the implementation of these plans. The Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and Liberals (FDP) have already agreed to the deployment of nuclear weapons on German territory in their coalition agreement. And the purchase of American F-35 fighter jets capable of carrying atomic bombs was initiated by the Merkel government. The German-French stealth bomber project, unprecedented in its gigantomania, presented to the public in 2017 by Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron, requires about 100 billion euros only for its technical, pre-production development, in general, 500 billion euros are expected to be invested in the project. Allegedly, this weapon system should provide Europe with global air supremacy.
The measures that Scholz announced in Prague on Monday also fit into this goal: the unification of arms production in the EU, the creation of an EU military headquarters in 2025 under the leadership of Germany, as well as the installation of an air defense system that the Federal Republic intends to develop together with neighboring states. Scholz demands that the EU turn into "a Europe participating in world politics, a geopolitical Europe." In the long term, there should be EU armed forces capable of intervening outside the borders of the European Union, regardless of NATO.
On the International Day of Struggle for Peace, Germany is on the way to unprecedented rearmament. Armed to the teeth, Germany can move on to the next step — to a war with Russia, in which Germany is already actually involved in the supply of weapons to Ukraine. Both are already having detrimental social consequences for the German population.
Therefore, the Movement of Struggle for Peace calls on October 1 to take part in a nationwide decentralized action in which social protest and the movement for peace should merge together.
Arnold Schelzel
