BERLIN (Realist English). Germany’2022 budget will add approximately €17 billion to its defense expenditure this year to fulfill its 2014 promise to allocate 2% of GDP to military needs. This is stated in the review of the The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).
The money will come from a €100 billion ($113 billion) special fund intended to invest in improving the combat capability of the German armed forces.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also reaffirmed Berlin’s commitment to nuclear deterrence and Germany’s participation in the NATO agreement on the joint use of nuclear weapons, increasing the likelihood that the American F-35 stealth fighter will replace the European Tornado jet.
ECFR experts agree that “money alone cannot solve Germany’s problems.”
“In addition to spending more to fill critical capability gaps in its armed forces, the country needs to rationalize its defense-industrial ecosystem and procurement processes. Never-ending legal battles between procurement agencies and industry harm military readiness. All Germans – including not just soldiers, officials in the defense ministry, and security and defense policymakers in the Bundestag but also other voters – need to have an honest debate about the purpose of military force. They need to deal with the reality that killing enemy soldiers and destroying military systems and infrastructure to defeat an act of aggression can be an important part of an effective foreign policy” write ECFR researchers Rafael Loss and Angela Mehrer.
Loss and Mehrer consider the increase in military funding a “revolution” that “should be accompanied by an intellectual awakening.”
