Germany's Rearmament Program: August 2025 Update

Back in 2022 remarking Germany's announced infusion of cash into its armed forces I acknowledged the magnitude of the expenditure, which at a stroke made Germany a candidate for the rank of the world's third highest-spending military power. However, I also argued that the sums being talked about (2 percent+ of GDP for defense bolstered by a hundred billion euro "one-off") would not result in a very much larger or more capable German military force given inflation, the country's industrial troubles, the fluctuating exchange ranges relevant to the imports clearly part of the program (like F-35 fighters), the long neglected problems of those forces (like their reportedly unlivable barracks) and of course the extremely high cost of military power, even before the way one gets into the excellence of governments and military-industrial complexes at making a lot of money go a very short away.

I do not seem to have been wrong about that, with this underlined by how three years later Germany, militarily scarcely different from what it was before the grandiose claims of "Zeitenwende", the country joined the rest of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in committing to a far higher target. This saw them abandon the 2 percent of GDP for defense that was the old target in favor of a defense outlay nearly twice as high--3.5 percent--by 2035, not counting the extra 1.5 percent to be spent on "infrastructure," which will (much as Germany's long -neglected civilian infrastructure needs an overhaul) plausibly end up backdoor defense spending, effectively restoring defense spending to the High Cold War-era target of 5 percent. More aggressive still Germany's government has pledged to realize this goal not by 2035 but by 2029, with this facilitated by the earlier amendment of the constitution to exclude defense spending above 1 percent of GDP from the "debt brake," and parliament's creation of a half trillion euro "infrastructure fund" also exempt from said brake, some months earlier.

It is also the case that this aggressive, drastic, fiscally enabled enlargement of German defense spending has been accompanied by what was absent in the wake of the Zeitenwende, specific targets for the enlargement of the forces, and massive orders of new equipment. The current plan seems to be to enlarge the German armed forces' standing component from 180,000 to 250,000+ personnel (a 40 percent increase) and the reserves from 60,000 to 200,000 (more than tripling reserves that had, like those everywhere else in Europe, been cut nearly to nothing in the wake of the Cold War reorientation to rapid-response and less conventional missions in faraway places), with the result a fully mobilized force not in the quarter-million but the half-million range. Meanwhile the German government is reportedly ordering as many as 1,000 new Leopard 2 tanks (as against the three hundred or so it now has) and 6,500-8,500 Boxer and Patria armored fighting vehicles, implying a fully mobilized mechanized force many times Germany's current force in size. A much more substantial project than anything discussed three years ago it seems fair to say that Germany has not undertaken anything to compare with this since the founding of the Bundeswehr (when the country established its 400,000-strong, twelve-division army). And of course this does not include the reality of the "Framework Nation Concept" which has turned the Dutch army's brigades into "plug-and-play" elements (insertable into German divisions), with Czechia and Romania partly ventured on this course, which would potentially mean still larger forces under German "leadership."

All in all this situation seems a reminder of how when the issue is the social needs of the public, or something else to which elites are indifferent or even hostile Authority wails about balanced budgets, admonishes to the hungry and homeless to be respectful of vested interest, offers homilies about "politics as the art of the possible," and warns them that those (rightly) contemptuous of its do-nothingism and desirous of actually solving a problem are crazy people fleeing from freedom into totalitarianism who will make an Orwellian hell of the world should they get their way. But when it's something elites care about suddenly the politicians become "men of action." Not very intelligent, competent, men of action, but men of action all the same, with all this underlined by how that amendment instituting the debt brake came along back in 2009, right after the Great Recession when Berlin was intent on austerity in the face of '30s-like crisis and everything else be damned, as we saw with German bridges collapsing--but didn't seem so important when events presented them a new chance for weltpolitik and corporate welfare.

Still, in spite of themselves the program will take many years to realize, with reversal not impossible. The geopolitical situation, the economic situation (Germany is not in a great way here, all as military Keynesianism, which ain't what it used to be, may not help much), may well throw some surprises at them in these coming years. Besides, the words "On time and on budget" simply don't exist in the vocabulary of contractors, with the military-industrial complex-types second to none here. Meanwhile, though you would never know it from the media cheerleading ("Who are the heirs of Julius Streicher?"), it is very probable that this program is much less popular with the public than the chattering classes. This is all the more the case as, as the collapse of the vote for the traditional leading parties shows, Germany's political Establishment is just as despised and mistrusted by its electorate as its counterparts elsewhere, career corporate lawyer and former Blackrock Germany board member Chancellor Merz is already warning the public that his warfare state requires sacrifice of the already austerity-battered welfare state, and the idea of the German government realizing its ambitious military manpower goals on a purely voluntary basis seems like pure fantasy. Aside from the aversion to militarism on the part of the German public generally, and its disinterest in military confrontation with Russia particularly, the well of manpower on which it can draw is more limited than one may guess from the size of its population, for where fertility and age structure are concerned Germany is practically in the same boat as Japan, such that having the kind of mobilizable force they want means a very high proportion of military-age German youth putting the best years of their lives into "service." If the German government really is staying the course on this one, conscription is returning to the country, and before very long--with this obvious enough that I would imagine (not that the media will rush to report it) a great many German young people are already thinking about how to avoid the draft, as the more activism-minded among them consider the prospects for a new campaign. In fairness, Germany's government seems less and less inclined to let democratic niceties stand in the way of its goals, but this too may mean surprises in store.