German Chancellor Olaf Schulz has made a big surprise by promising a massive increase in military spending, in what appears to be a real change in the difficult relationship between the German political world and the military.
And if this came in the context of responding to the Russians' invasion of Ukraine, it remains for the chancellor to clarify what he means by modernizing the German army and for what purpose?
With this introduction, the French Mediapart website opened an article by Thomas Schnee, in which he tried to analyze the new German step, and said that it falls within the context of the new government’s promise to bring about a complete change in directing efforts towards renewable energies, and to involve Germany in a deep military and strategic revolution, linked of course to the invasion Ukraine, but its program goes beyond that.
The German chancellor promised - in a "surprising" speech to deputies - an additional 100 billion euros this year to equip the German army, with a sustainable increase in the military budget, by 1.5 to 2% of GDP, a jump from 50 to 75 billion euros annually. , allowing support for large European armaments projects.
This shift, as the writer says, is accompanied by a change in the export of weapons, as the Chancellery confirmed the direct delivery of 1,000 missile launchers, 500 Stinger missiles and 14 armored personnel carriers to Ukraine, with the possibility of delivering 2,700 Strela surface-to-air missiles from the stocks of the East German army.
The trauma of the war in Ukraine
Although the shock of what the writer called “Russian aggression” and the disruption it will cause in global balances explains the radical nature of the German declaration, it remains to know what Schulz means by modernizing the German army, or “rearmament” - as some prefer to describe it - and for what purpose he wants that.
The writer explained that Schultz's goal in this announcement at first was to provoke a shock that would make people forget Germany's lack of solidarity at the beginning of the invasion with Ukraine, after it refused for weeks to close the German-Russian gas pipeline "Nord Stream 2", and also prevented - because of its history - sending any A shipment of German weapons to Ukraine, in addition to a slowdown in the exclusion of Russian banks from the international payment system "SWIFT" due to their dependence on Russian energy.
After pressure from his allies in addition to the reality in Ukraine, Schultz and his government finally realized - as the writer sees - that it was time to admit the failure of more than 20 years of foreign policy that centered on the certainty of a special relationship between Germany and Russia, and therefore the chancellor decided to ignore the responses So did a large part of the left-wing electorate, asserting that his government had never failed to act in the face of Russia.
It seems that this announced transformation is also - as the writer says - a real change in the difficult relationship between German politicians and the army, when the German forces were weakened by those who lead and finance them, after the merger of the East and West German armies, and the reduction of the unified German army from 500 thousand to 180 thousand Soldier, as if it was designed to be a remote intervention force to serve diplomacy and "peacekeeping" operations, so that the number of armored infantry fighting vehicles was reduced from 4 thousand to 350 units, and more than 20% to 40% of helicopters became out of service, says the journalist Thomas Wegold.
With the escalation of the Ukrainian crisis, Germany reinforces its forces in Lithuania (Getty)
Warning shot
Nevertheless, Germany increased its participation in non-peaceful international operations, as it did in 1999, when it sent planes to bomb Belgrade with NATO, to participate in a war for the first time since 1945. It also showed that it is capable of providing well-equipped units, as is the case In Mali or Afghanistan, however, they are sorely short of materials for troops and weapons such as ammunition.
It was the option of an army integrated into multinational operations, providing the advantage of operating at lower cost in times of austerity and in the face of peaceful voters, but "the 2014 occupation of Crimea - as Thomas Wigold says - was a warning shot", brought the case for defending the homeland back into The emergence of, and military budgets began to increase little by little, until the defense of the national and European lands became a national priority, as evidenced by the billions of euros announced by Berlin.
Munich historian August Heinrich Winkler said, "It is now up to the ruling coalition to open a strategic discourse about Germany's role in the world, and to reconsider widely held and delusional ideas about the role of Germany's mediator between East and West, or about an alleged special role for Germany in its relations with Russia." ".
For Christian Mulling, director of research at the German Research Center, the announced developments should not raise irrational fears, because "Schulz has not yet achieved what he promised first, and the criticism directed at Germany in recent years - as I remember - is that it has not invested enough to defend itself. And about Europe, in addition to the fact that investing in the army does not lead overnight to an increase in the desire for military engagement.
Pending the implementation of government reforms, the position of the traditionally pacifist people remains unknown, although a large majority of citizens currently support Schulz's plans, says the writer, but the director of the left-wing Freitag magazine, Jacob Augustin, believes that "few cases in history have succeeded It contains a recipe for making peace by providing more weapons, and therefore the West, by handing over more weapons, will prolong the war.”