The article's headline says Germany is "supercharging its military", but for somebody who's been following the development of the German armed forces, it's more like "patching the most glaring, gaping holes".
The key point is that Germany has finally loosened the debt brake, which has particularly strained the social system and infrastructure. In addition to the 1,000 billion euros allocated for social welfare and infrastructure, another 600 billion euros are designated for the military. The former is linked to the tense situation in social systems and the associated right-wing shift in Europe, while the latter is connected to the ongoing fascist counter-revolution in the USA.<p>Since the USA and companies based there are no longer reliable partners, Europe will stand alone in the future. This means that France and Germany are working together on a joint nuclear defense shield to ensure Europe's security and strengthen NATO's eastern borders.
anti-war social movements are alive and well, despite this headline. Who is investing whose money, and who gets advantages in doing so? There is no "we" in the war machinery. Extra bonus points for putting ambitious women in front of the camera to ride the herds.
It's pretty crazy if you look at how much the US is/was spending on NATO in pure dollar amounts.<p>Since that's going to be cut back Germany and to a lesser degree France are the only countries left to take up the slack.<p>I don't have a really strong opinion either way in terms of what's happening in the US or in Europe, but the argument claiming that there's no real reason to spend money on the military seem pretty disingenuous re. Russia.<p>What's the real chances that Russia would do something like a land invasion of Europe? Really, really small.... But military spending is the thing helping keep those chances very small.
The caveat is that there's almost nobody in Germany who'd be physically fit and or motivated to actually fight a war. Germany was systematically drained off anything even remotely resembling patriotism. This was politically and legally enforced by borderline criminalizing terms like Heimat (home / homeland), forget about displaying its flag without raising eyebrows. Its cultural DNA is diluted to an extent that I'd be hesitant to even call it a country - it's basically just an area with lots of people living on it. There's no coherent society anymore. The war machines will all be sold to other countries. Rich people will get richer and the plebs will be brought to heel with orchestrated fear. It's a funny irony that the warmongers in German politics are the same people who'd have taken any opportunity to express their contempt for anything military up until only a few years ago.
Everyone except the US is going to come out stronger on the other end of this mess. Too many Americans believe the world would be screwed without the US and the USD, they can’t imagine trading being done in RMB or EUR, yet it is already happening. As a German that has lived in the US for over 10 years I just watch and wonder. Moving back to Germany is a more enticing prospect than it has been for a long time. I know a lot of Europeans that have moved or are planning their move. I don’t mean they talk about plans, they are buying land, building houses, etc.
> Presumptive Chancellor Friedrich Merz has decided that now is the moment for Germany to invest in its military, on levels not seen since the Cold War<p>Now? After spending billions funding Putin’s war with gas money. Especially after watching him annex Crimea in 2014, or taking Ukraine’s NATO’s membership off the table after Bucharest summit.<p>Now they finally see how dangerous he is! Better later than never I guess…<p>In perverse way they are also doing Trump’s bidding who chastised them for not investing enough in defense.
Everyone optimistic about this, but looking at the past decade, I don't think we have much to look for.<p>This is Germany/Bundeswehr we're talking about. They already decided on 100 billion after the Russian attack in 2022, a plan that didn't really pan out. The Bundeswehr is famous for its overspending, backwards/lazy ethics, rampant right-wing/neonazi ties. German, and let's be honest, EU government is - even now - in "play it safe" mode, not even big on words, even less on actions. They fumbled virtually every crisis since the 2000s. They let Orban/Putin puppets run rampant and veto most of the botched little help they provided, and still think he can be reasoned with after 15 years. They thought the same of Russia right up the second until a full scale invasion of Ukraine, 8 years after it started to attack it.<p>Europe is just hopelessly fractured, with no identity, hazy goals and an increasingly degrading economical power. I wish it weren't so, but we didn't manage to unite the forces of these 27 nations beyond some superficial economical agreements.
Even if WWIII is not a consequence of all this senseless and reckless militarization, each and every penny spent on it will end up missing dearly for fighting human civilization's real fight of this century: combatting climate change. It's even worse, since <i>this</i> kind of spending will make it even worse.<p>I'm afraid humanity is blowing it for good with this.
I wonder why americans trashed their own hegemony in record time. Was it just to own the libs or are they lashing out because the elites know something we dont