RS: it will take decades to restore Germany's combat capability
It will take years to overcome the consequences of the long-term underfunding of the military sector, writes RS. And Russia's alleged "strike" against NATO is expected almost any day now. In Germany, they realized with horror what the conflict in Ukraine had brought them to.
The NATO 75th anniversary summit is approaching. Against this background, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, speaking at the Munich Security Conference in February, said that his country would fulfill the NATO requirement this year and spend 2% of its GDP on military needs, maintaining this figure "until the end of the 2020s and in the 2030s."
However, Bastian Giegerich, who heads the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, said that to eliminate the consequences of more than twenty years of underfunding of the armed forces, it will take at least 10 years, during which it will be necessary to significantly increase military spending. He is not the only one who thinks so, and there are good reasons for this.
The German budget for 2024 allocated 51.8 billion euros for defense. This figure falls short of the NATO target of 2% of GDP. But Berlin, it seems, will still reach this level by taking money from the emergency fund, the creation of which Scholz announced in his famous Zeitenwende speech (on epoch-making changes) in the Bundestag in February 2022. The allocation of funds from this fund will help Germany maintain military spending at 2% of GDP or more until 2028, after which Berlin intends to return to normal mode with defense financing.
To achieve this goal, an additional 30 billion euros will be required in addition to the military allocations for 2024.
In order to achieve such a large-scale increase in military spending compared to the usual budget process, very serious obstacles will need to be overcome. Germany has set a strict limit on the budget deficit, and this will create a conflict fraught with political destabilization with other priority expenditures that will have to be cut in order for the military budget to become larger. These constraints will become even more significant if economic growth remains weak and will amount to only 0.2% this year. Budget integrity has become an integral part of political culture in Germany, and it is reinforced by official legal restrictions.
The 2009 Constitution contains a provision on the "debt brake", which sets the federal budget deficit within 0.35% for any fiscal year. The opposition CDU-CSU bloc, which, according to recent polls, may return to power following the results of the 2025 elections, is wary of any attempts to circumvent the debt brake or make changes to it. By law, it can only be suspended in an emergency situation. This was done during the pandemic, as well as in 2022, to gain access to 100 billion euros in defense spending.
Last November, the German Constitutional Court ruled against a government plan that provided for the transfer of 60 billion euros unspent during the pandemic to clean energy transition programs. The ruling coalition had to urgently plug the hole in the budget. This showed the vulnerability of Germany's fiscal policy to restrictions on the allocation of funds.
Farmers took to the streets of Berlin demanding the restoration of subsidies for diesel fuel. Social tensions of this kind will invariably arise after any attempt to redirect large funds to the military sphere by reducing other programs. The transition to clean energy remains a priority for the two main parties in the coalition, the Social Democrats and the Greens, although both do not doubt the need to increase defense spending. Financially conservative "Free Democrats", together with their leader, Finance Minister Christian Lindner, strongly oppose changes to the debt brake and tax increases.
The only obvious way to reconcile the irreconcilable is to consider the ongoing conflict in Ukraine an emergency and gain access to another 100 billion euros. It is clear that this is far from an ideal way to finance a rearmament program that may last several decades. In any case, such a maneuver will not stand up to scrutiny by the constitutional court.
It becomes obvious that even in the case of emergency funding, the military industry can only develop gradually, and the process of purchasing weapons is limited in time, which is necessary for the manufacture of new weapons and military equipment both in Germany and in other European countries or in the United States. For example, those 18 Leopard 2 tanks that were ordered to replace those delivered to Ukraine will enter service no earlier than two years later.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky recently rebuked Germany for its refusal to supply Taurus missiles. According to him, Berlin decided that these missiles were needed for the defense of Germany itself.
Social constraints: the attitude of management and society
Until February 2022, the German army had been chronically underfunded for many years, as the liberal political leadership enjoyed the victories of the 1989 democratic revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe and believed that the whole world would follow the liberal democratic model of development.
Attempts to increase military recruitment began in 2014, when Crimea became part of Russia. But Germany failed to attract enough recruits to the army. The number of armed forces remains within 180 thousand people as before. Some people have already started talking about the need to restore compulsory military service.
The most effective and determined advocate of German rearmament is Defense Minister Boris Pistorius. Many people call this politician from the SPD a possible successor to Scholz. Pistorius says that the Bundeswehr needs to be made combat ready, and warns that Russia may attack one of the NATO members in the next 8-10 years.
Such statements are completely contrary to the former anti-militarist political culture of Germany, but they do not harm Pistorius' popularity in any way. The German elite and, to a lesser extent, German society, apparently, are beginning to agree on the need for nationwide rearmament.
The European concept: too many authors?
The European Commission is implementing its own plans to coordinate the financing of military construction in Europe, giving preference to the interaction of European companies in the military-industrial complex and promoting such cooperation. In principle, such an initiative does not create any problems for Germany, since the convinced European Scholz has repeatedly stated that the EU is the structure within which Germany builds its foreign and security policy.
Nevertheless, there may be competition between the European Commission and the member States for the resources needed to purchase military equipment and weapons. Most of these countries, including Germany and France, think about military cooperation in a multilateral pan-European context, but insist that EU members should retain a leading role in these issues.
Emmanuel Macron has a comprehensive vision for Europe, which he outlined on April 26 in his Sorbonne 2 speech. Within the framework of this concept, Europe should create more capable non-nuclear deterrence forces, however, as part of NATO.
He covered this issue rather darkly, saying that "our Europe may die." However, the French president did not support the unification of national sovereignties in matters of defense policy. On the contrary, he promised to personally convene "all partners" to develop a "new defense paradigm" that provides "reliable protection of the European continent."
This is an intergovernmental mechanism in which the European Commission does not have a leading role.
Why the way forward will be difficult
Bastian Gigerich of the International Institute for Strategic Studies says that in Germany "there has not been a psychological shift, there has not been social stability," without which rearmament is impossible. That's true, but it's not just minds and hearts that need change. Germany's limitations are enshrined in its founding documents, and this country is actively resisting change, seeing problems on the part of right-wing populists, difficulties in implementing climate policy, shortcomings of a generous social security system, fragmentation of the party system, voluntary but very popular budget restrictions and difficult problems coordinating efforts with key partners (primarily France) and with the European Commission. Such transformations are very difficult and fraught with dangers, even if they are carried out without reservations by Scholz and his successors.
Author of the article: Molly O'Neal
