Opinionated piece by Stefan Wolff, Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham, UK.
… the EU’s largest and Nato’s second-largest economy, Germany is now also aiming to turn its Bundeswehr (the German army, navy and air force) into the “strongest conventional army in Europe”. Its most senior military officer and chief of defence, Carsten Breuer, has published plans for a rapid and wide-ranging expansion of defence capabilities.
Germany is finally beginning to pull its weight in European defence and security policy. This is absolutely critical to the credibility of the EU in the face of the threat from Russia. Berlin has the financial muscle and the technological and industrial potential to make Europe more of a peer to the US when it comes to defence spending and burden sharing. This will be important to salvage what remains of Nato in light of a highly probable American down-scaling – if not complete abandonment – of its past security commitments to the alliance.
…
No nukes - no guarantees.
France has Nukes
The headline says Germany is replacing the US as security guarantor. Clearly it’s more nuanced, as you point out.
So France, and only France has a believable deterrence. Or do you really think a front national President would risk Paris for a small tactical nuke on Nato troupes in Poland? France doesn’t have tactical nukes, only the city destroying strategic ones, they can’t answer without escalating.
Which, you know, is a great deterrance to would be attackers. Nuclear deterrance is 4D chess via game theory. Not being able to slowly escalate a nuclear war is a benefit that makes people think twice about starting one.
It works as long as its plauble to think that someone will press the red button. I have no doubt that Macron would follow a treaty that would demand that, but he wouldn’t be the president of France forever. Baradella (Front national) has good chances to get the next president and I wouldn’t trust him risking a nuclear over anything but France itself.
Your pretty generous assuming that he would defend France since all those fuckers are Putin puppets
In Europe? Also the UK.
You don’t think we are capable of building nuclear weapons. If not, the French can deploy there nukes on our soil. The Green’s will be pissed.
After the Russo-Ukrainian war began the Greens have really done a 180 on this sort of stuff, so I wouldn’t count on it.
Greens? Not rather The Left?
The Greens went nuts over the Pershing II missiles back in the 1980’s. “Die Linke and AfD,” the fucking losers, will cry too.
Quick reminder: 1985 is 40 years ago. The Greens have agreed to regime change missions in several countries. The Iron Curtain fell; Ukraine was disarmed; Srebrenica, 2014 and 2022 happened. Traffic light coalition consisted of social democrat’s historical-moderate restraint, market-conservative opportunism and green-liberal-interventionist guilt. 1980s West-Greens are not 2020s middle-class intellectuals Greens.
Operation Paperclip
Of course youre capable of building nuclear weapons, but it takes time which we dont have
Considering this is about the USA becoming unreliable, I would say those nukes don’t count.
Unreliable and stupid. They probably left the gate unlocked and the keys in it.
Doubt it, but even if, those aren’t the big nukes you need for nuclear deterrence. These you need to strap to a Tornado or F35 and fly it all the way to Moscow or Washington and hope you don’t get shot down en route.
Need to get nukes may also revitalize nuclear energy in Germany for peaceful purposes. I hope.
Possibly. Issue is the kind of reactors that are typically employed in submarines and on aircraft carriers are not necessarily the ones we want for civilian uses, but the temptation to use the civilian program as a training ground for military stuff is huge, for economic reasons. I think nuclear energy would be far more advanced if it wasn’t shackled to the pressurized water designs.
but the temptation to use the civilian program as a training ground for military stuff is huge, for economic reasons.
Yes, that’s what I meant.
Only for ‘peaceful purposes’. You have to run nuclear reactors to create plutonium for the bomb. So all peaceful nuclear electricity creates the material for the bombs.
Not True, that was the case with light water reactors, which were initially, only ever conceived for nuclear submarines. They were never meant to be scaled up. But, the US government canned research into Thorium and Natrium Nuclear reactors. Which can produce 1/1000 the amount of nuclear waste and can be fueled using spent nuclear rods from lightwater reactors. They create longer, more complete and sustained fission and we have had these designs since the 60’s. But the fossil fuel industry spent billions trying to demonise and delegitimise nuclear power because that would be the end of for-profit energy production. Now private companies like Copenhagen Atomics and Bill Gates’s Natrium are producing vastly more efficient and in the Case of CA, modular nuclear reactors. Like, the size of a 40 ft shipping container modular. It is super exciting stuff.
I sure hope US doesn’t start selling weapons to more dictator countries like Russia and so on, because it may seem our allies are the west, but really our allies are those who buy our weapons, which is anyone.
Germany is so slow to act on anything, half of Europe would be invaded before they thought about sanctioning the invader.
I can’t think of a single example where allies of the defenders were really quick to intervene unless they were already mobilized and ready to go. The attackers are always faster to start with.
They took their time (but my guess is that its just another posturing)
Judging by what they’re doing around the whole Gaza Genocide (both the “uwavering support” for the genociders based solely on the ethnicity they claim to represent and the various authoritarian laws and abuses of force to silence dissent claiming it’s “anti-semitism” which even affect the server hosting this very forum and the forum itself) as well as the growth of the AfD (the rest of German politics being big fans of Racially Discriminatory policies is perfect grounds for a “Let’s Be Racist For Ourselves” party like this to grow), Germany isn’t at all a reliable “guarantor” of European security, unless the rest of Europe is willing to risk something similar to 1939 if and when Germany rides this current Racist and Authoritarian direction to its natural end.
Even if the Humanists in Germany (who, granted, seem to be waking up of late to the reality of a heavily racist political environment in modern day German and that the notion of “good” racial-discrimination was always a manipulative lie) manage to somehow stop this slide towards the full-on “good old days”, more in general it’s also a pretty bad idea for Europe to rely on a single large nation as guarantor of European Security: best for Europe to make itself safe as a group, following the very same principles of the European Union, but in the field of Military Security, were no doubt Germany would have an important role, just not an essential and irreplaceable one of guaranteeing anything.
Professor Wolff’s ideas are themselves a throwback to older days with older concepts of a hierarchy of nations and military power and we’ve been doing a big effort since to move from that to “together we’re strong” approaches that don’t have big strong nations on top and little weak nations as little more than their vassals praying that that the big boys don’t trample on them.
Yeah agree, Germany arming up and wanting to be strong leaders again is something we should fear, not cheer at.
That’s not what I wrote and is not what I defend.
Germany should be a fully participating member of the group, maybe even primo inter pares, just not a required and irreplaceable part of European defense.
All of Europe should make itself ready to defend all of Europe rather than rely on some mythical father-nation that protects us from the baddies (especially not Germany which has issues, but in general that whole concept is risky and outdated).
No that was my personal take, and Germans can downvote me as much as they want but they’re a shitty neighbor and I don’t need them to show up as a “strong leader”. It seems to me that even the progressives there are mostly ignorant as to how seriously bad the current trajectory is, and they expect us to trust them?
IMO centralized power is always bad but especially bad in a country that has a terrible fascist history and that seems to be repeating its mistakes while being offended by anyone who warns them about it because they still believe they learned their lesson and are now the main moral instance on combatting fascism.
My take is replacing american militarism and imperialism with that of Germany and France is not good actually. I know its suddenly unpopular to oppose massive rearmament of European imperial powers for some reason but I’m going to stick to my guns of opposing massive militarization.
Yes. And no. Develop capabilities to ensure you can defeat your enemy. Then scale down using game theory. It’s what has been done with nuclear warheads count.
Right now we can’t trust several players so yes, do arm. Also get into politics to prevent bad players (national or foreign) to take over the government.
Yeah like why would former colonial powers who both had the ambition once to conquer all of Europe be untrustworthy? I’m sure they won’t ever get drunk on power and start bullying their smaller neighbors, oh wait…
Disappointing, I did not want to see our Prussian militarism rise up again. As long as the Russians continue to threaten Europe and politically influence the USA, we have no choice but to rearm.
What if I were to tell you all that you can rearm and simply be pragmatic, not weird about it?
With our (German) military history, I hope so and let the cool heads prevail.
Easy: have a provision that if AfD or anybody like them ever gets into government, all the MIC and weapons stockpiles will be handed to surrounding non-Orban-stan EU countries or NATO itself.
Mate, have you not noticed the authoritarian measures in Germany to silence criticism of the Gaza Genocide, not all that dissimilar to what the US is doing?!
The rot of Racial Discrimination and the tendency to use Force to silence dissent crosses most of German politics, the AfD being but the current pinnacle of it (easily replaced so long those very fields keep getting watered and fertilized by the rest of the German political body).
People in power in Germany NOW are the very opposite of Humanists who equally care for other people merely because they’re human beings, and it would be very dangerous for the rest of Europe to rely on the goodwill of those in power in Germany even if the threat of the AfD was stopped.
And who is supposed to enforce that mechanism? That would require stationing a few hundred thousand soldiers from all over NATO to be stationed in German bases and eye their “allies” carefully, make sure they are the ones handling the stockpiles etc.
That is completely unrealistic.
Well, we have historians who think it necessary to introduce the old traditions again. One of them: a historian responsible for shaping government policy concerning the military:
But we are progressive too, feminists fantasising about protecting their families with M16s in street fights with Russians are a thing as well.
So, don’t get your hopes up
Wehrmacht were the baddies not because they had breeches, sabres, trumpets and did goosestepping.
So there’s really nothing problematic with military traditions. Morale is important even for corporations.
Yeah, all dandy when you kinda ignore what all that signifies. Corporations are a great example, for they are pretty perfect fascist organisations. All really nothing problematic.
All that signifies that a military is a hierarchical structure intended to impose your will upon some other group by force, hurting, maiming and killing people on scale.
That is unfortunately a required module.
Well, we have historians who think it necessary to introduce the old traditions again.
As far as I can tell, this historian says in the article that a soldier is more than an extension of democracy but also needs to be able to actually fight and hence not only needs ‘role models’ for ehtos/attitude but also for acquiring military skills.
He criticises that we (Germany) try to hide the bitter reality of the military behind a purely bureaucratic façade, while the actual soldiers risking their lives deserve a more honest and open treatment.
No. It might seem that way superficially, but that’s not the case. It’s such a common place that soldiers have to acquire military skills, it’s laughable to pretend that the German state or bureaucracy sort of forgot about that. He explicitly criticises the German military’s directive that the Wehrmacht can’t serve as a traditional role model for the Bundeswehr, and he only implicitly, at least in this publication, wants to see the military traditions of Wehrmacht and Prussia, reinstated. The reasons why the Wehrmacht should never be a fucking role model for the Bundeswehr has been discussed at length and brought to an end (it seemed) in the 90s. It’s a fucking disgrace that all this reactive bullshit is becoming fashionable again. It’s only possible because they pretend that there’s never been a broad public and scientific discussion about these matters in Germany. Where in fact these were the reason why there is a changed attitude towards military traditions. And it took till 2018 for German politics to acknowledge that. And now we’re back to square one, fuck.
It’s such a common place that soldiers have to acquire military skills, it’s laughable to pretend that the German state or bureaucracy sort of forgot about that.
That is not the point he’s making. He says that while we (as in the general public) like to make the Bundeswehr appear as a “clean” entirely “bureaucratic” object with a large focus on questions of ethos/attitude, we closed our eyes to the inevitable military nature of the Bundeswehr. This is understandable, given our history, but the soldiers who actually risk their lives don’t only need role models in terms of ethos/attitude, but also in terms of skills. Maybe I overlooked it, but I can’t see where he “explicitly criticises the German military’s directive that the Wehrmacht can’t serve as a traditional role model for the Bundeswehr” and especially not where he “wants to see the military traditions of Wehrmacht and Prussia, reinstated”
The reasons why the Wehrmacht should never be a fucking role model for the Bundeswehr has been discussed at length and brought to an end (it seemed) in the 90s.
That’s why I’d like to see where he makes that point. We then can get angry all we want, but first I’d like to see what precisely to get angry at.
Note I found this article after I got that weird feeling about Neitzel in the Zeit article.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/19/wehr-j19.html
I don’t think this is too alarmist. It is no coincidence that Germany’s role in WWI also gets downplayed by these types, eg Münkler. Again, these reactionary debates create the illusion that historians of the 20th century somehow got it wrong or that there never was any debate about these topics. As if something like the Fischer controversy never happened. It’s scary.
In the previous article, this is what I based my suspicions on:
Musste die junge Bundesrepublik etwa noch auf die alten Wehrmachtseliten zurückgreifen, um eine Armee im Dienst der Freiheit aufzubauen, wolle man nach der Jahrtausendwende von dieser Kontinuität meist nichts mehr wissen, sagt Neitzel. Ein Ausdruck dessen sei etwa der Traditionserlass der Bundeswehr von 2018. Da heißt es: “Für die Streikkräfte eines demokratischen Rechtsstaates ist die Wehrmacht als Institution nicht traditionswürdig.” Und: “Grundlagen sowie Maßstab für das Traditionsverständnis der Bundeswehr und für ihre Traditionspflege sind (…) vor allem die Werte und Normen des Grundgesetzes.” Frühere Fassungen waren bei allen Distanzierungen von Nationalismus und Militarismus traditionsoffener, etwa der Erlass von 1965: “Die deutsche Wehrgeschichte umfasst in Frieden und Krieg zahllose soldatische Leistungen und menschliche Bewährungen, die überliefert zu werden verdienen.” Oder der Text von 1982: "Nicht jede Einzelheit militärischen Brauchtums, das sich aus früheren Zeiten herleitet, muss demokratisch legitimiert sein.”
Some friends of mine who did their mandatory military service about 15 years ago told me their MG42 ehhh. MG3s had swastikas scratched into the body.
There is regular scandals with Neonazi groups in the military and police, including stealing weapons and ammunitions and handing citizen data to Nazi terror groups.
We currently see Germany supporting a genocidial and fascist regime in Israel. One of the coalition partners the CSU has embraced Trump and Orban and had high ranking members go there to learn how to do this style of politics. Germany is providing weapons including fighter jets to “strategic partners” like Saudi Arabia.
There is many reasons to be concerned that Germany will be “weird” about it.
It needs to be a pan-European “together we’re strong” strengthening of military power, not one with big nation “guarantors” and little nations praying not to be trampled on.
Defense guarantors is always a dangerous game (have we learned nothing from History, including just now with the US!??), and having Germany as such is even more dangerous, not just for Historical reasons but also due to its current trend towards authoritarianism and Genocide-support, both via AfD and the broader political choice for Autoritarian-lite (with that “lite” being ever less so) reactions against criticism of the Gaza Genocide.
I don’t know were Germany will end up, but its current trend is to move away from Democracy and Humanitarian Values, so better for the rest to not rely on Germany for their protection, lest we all in the rest of Europe end up with another German Surprise.
I mean, technically you won’t cause you have almost no Prussia left.
