Summary: Germany is significantly increasing its military spending, with its budget projected to soon exceed the combined budgets of Britain and France. While this is a response to Russian aggression and a less predictable U.S., it has raised concerns among European neighbors about German dominance in European defense and "strategic autonomy." These worries are compounded by the political rise of Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany party, which evokes historical anxieties.
Main Topics Covered:
1. Germany's rapid increase in military spending and its projected scale relative to other major European powers.
2. European concerns, particularly from France, about German dominance in shaping European defense and strategic autonomy.
3. The historical and political context, including the rise of the far-right in Germany, which amplifies neighbors' anxieties.
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Germany Is Pumping Up Its Military Spending. That Worries Its Neighbors.
Soon the country’s armed forces budget could exceed those of Britain and France combined. In Paris, there are concerns that European “strategic autonomy” will have a German accent.
President Emmanuel Macron of France has persistently called for Europe to act decisively to defend itself and its own interests in a world where Russia is on the march, China is economically aggressive and the United States is turning away.
Mr. Macron first talked of the need for European strategic “autonomy” in 2017. In the last year, with trans-Atlantic relations spinning downward, Europeans seem to have heard the message: They need to do more and spend more in their own defense.
But there is a built-in political problem. Germany is already spending much more money than its European partners, according to military spending trackers, like that of the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based research organization. After years of aversion to war because of its history and a hope that the collapse of the Soviet Union would bring about a more peaceful world, the German military had shrunk badly.
Now, it is trying to catch up. And because Berlin has committed to putting more money into the military in the next few years, it will probably end up spending more than France and Britain, both nuclear powers, combined — and all of it on conventional warfare, not on an expensive nuclear deterrent.
Inevitably, much of Berlin’s spending will be on German companies, like Rheinmetall, which are growing quickly in response to lavish new funding.
Strategic autonomy, senior French, Italian and Polish officials fear, will increasingly have a German accent.
No one worries that Germany will march again on its neighbors, as the Nazis did. But a united Germany is bigger and richer than any other European country, and memories of past German domination remain embedded in the European psyche.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany has vowed to create Europe’s largest and best army in response to Russian aggression and American disinterest. While European leaders welcome that commitment after years of German pacifism, they are also cognizant that a far-right, anti-constitutionalist faction, Alternative for Germany, is the largest opposition party and might one day share power.
Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, an international think tank, said he was surprised by how many top officials in Paris “talked spontaneously about how worried they are about sustained German defense spending.”
“They spoke of it as on a par with other security challenges, like Ukraine,” he added.
The French are not alone, Mr. Leonard pointed out, in worrying about the growing influence of Alternative for Germany and about the possibility of that party’s joining a future coalition governing a country with such high levels of military spending.
“That’s scary for countries like France and Poland that have a strong popular memory of German military horrors, and both those countries have their own powerful far-right parties,” Mr. Leonard said.
The numbers are striking. This year, Germany expects to spend about $127 billion, by far the most in Europe. Britain will spend about $84 billion, and France about $70 billion.
The gap will grow significantly over the next few years because of Germany’s commitment to increasing its military spending.
All NATO countries agreed at their summit last year to reach funding of 3.5 percent of national income on core military requirements by 2035, but not all are expected to get there.
Britain is committed to reach 2.5 percent by 2027. France aims to reach 2.3 percent by 2028, and Italy is targeting 2 percent by 2028, according to the Atlantic Council tracker.
Germany’s comparative wealth and size will make the imbalance steeper, since it has committed to spending 3.5 percent of national income by 2029 — an estimated $189 billion a year.
After a decade of austerity and the need to jump-start a sluggish economy, Germany has the budget space, as well as the political and military incentives, for “a massive and sustained increase in defense spending,” said Max Bergmann, director of the Europe, Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based research group.
Also, Germany has removed a legal impediment to military spending, allowing those costs to rise despite debt limits on other parts of the budget. Other European powers may have the will to spend more but not the fiscal space, with tight budgets, high deficits and large accumulated debt.
“Take out the nuclear, just compare conventional spending, and the balances are even worse,” said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard of Bruegel, a Brussels-based economic think tank. “I’m not sure that the true implications have really dawned on the rest of Europe.”
Experts say those implications are broad.
“The impact of German defense spending is multiple, nationally and internationally,” said Christian Mölling, a military expert and director of a Berlin-based research institution, European Defense in a New Age. “What’s good for Germany on several levels is both good and bad for our neighbors and partners, and it depends a lot on the communication.”
Even if the money is spent badly or inefficiently, it will have a big impact on the military marketplace, experts added.
In France, Mr. Mölling said, the huge increase in German military spending was seen as “unbalancing the old relationship we have over the defense-industrial base in Europe.”
A senior French official, speaking anonymously to discuss sensitive matters, expressed deep concern over the German buildup. Not, he emphasized, because he feared a German Army. But because, he said, it would diminish the importance of France and of France’s military industry, which funds itself partly through exporting products, such as the Rafale jet fighter.
German spending is an issue for Italy and its industry, too, as it will be for Britain, said Nathalie Tocci, director of the Institute of International Affairs, a Rome-based think tank.
“The answer isn’t to tell Germans to spend less after telling them to spend more for years,” she said. “The answer is common European debt on defense.”
The Germans would only be willing to accept common debt, she noted, if Berlin did not fear being stuck with the burden of any financial irresponsibility by partners.
Common debt and production would also be a protection against a far-right, pro-Russian party in power in any European state, she added. “If equipment is jointly produced, it can’t be used against one another.”
Germany will seek political reasons, too, to work on joint programs with other European countries, as they currently do with France and Spain on the Future Combat Air System, a project to build a cutting-edge fighter jet. That project has been mired in mutual bitterness and may soon be abandoned, but perhaps lessons have been learned for the future.
For Mr. Bergmann, “the big question is whether Germany is rearming for Europe or for Germany, and it currently looks like the latter.” That will concern Germany’s allies, he said, “not just because of the revival of the far-right and fears of German power, but because it is not clear that Europe can rely on a cautious, self-centered Germany to come to Europe’s defense.”
Berlin will have to navigate its more assertive role “carefully but decisively, while at the same time providing assurances to its European neighbors,” said Steven E. Sokol, president of the American Council on Germany, a New York-based nonprofit. Old concerns about German dominance in France and Poland are inevitable, even as they welcome stronger German efforts to deter Russia and fill a leadership vacuum in Europe, Mr. Sokol noted.
“But Berlin should try to do everything in a multilateral and European framework as a reassurance mechanism, to embed Germany in NATO and the E.U,” Mr. Sokol said.
François Heisbourg, a French former defense official, said that all European countries had to focus on ramping up military production. The question, he said, is whether France and Germany can find a way to spend the money sensibly and coherently.
“We can worry about the color of the national paint,” he said, “but production right now isn’t really happening, which worries me more than burden-sharing between Germany and France.”
Steven Erlanger is the chief diplomatic correspondent in Europe and is based in Berlin. He has reported from over 120 countries, including Thailand, France, Israel, Germany and the former Soviet Union.
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