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.
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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