THE REARMAMENT OF GERMANY AND ITS GLOBAL MILITARY STRATEGY

THE REARMAMENT OF GERMANY AND ITS GLOBAL MILITARY STRATEGY
Irnerio Seminatore

Table of Contents

Germany, “Europe’s Leading Conventional Power”

The Bundeswehr and the “Army-People” Relationship

Is Germany Preparing for War?

A Paradigm Shift in Collective Defence. Germany’s First “Global Military Strategy”

Inescapable Leadership

NATO Capability Targets as National Targets

European Pillar of Defence

The Equalising Power of the Future

Prospective Conditionality

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Germany, “Europe’s Leading Conventional Power”

Announced in the Bundestag in February 2022 by Chancellor Scholz, a massive rearmament programme (a special fund of €100 billion) will make Germany the spearhead of European rearmament in view of the Russian threat and American disengagement. This announcement marks a turning point in the country’s recent history, an epochal change. It alters the political balances of the continent, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, and preoccupies Moscow. The official argument is well known: it is a matter of catching up after decades of under-investment and of honouring commitments made to NATO. Yet the gap deliberately opened with France raises for Paris a question that Berlin has carefully avoided formulating: France has alone financed the nuclear deterrent that protects the entire continent, and no budget, however massive, can buy out that asymmetry. What Berlin is building is therefore not merely a more powerful army—as is reiterated in Paris - but a decision to establish itself as the military pivot of the European Union, to the detriment of the strategic equilibrium that long justified the Franco-German tandem. On the diplomatic level, German rearmament raises the problem of the country’s foreign policy and therefore of the security policy of Europe as a whole. It naturally raises the question of the size and importance of the defence instrument called upon to serve that policy. The Bundeswehr, born in 1955 and politically and strategically subject to the control of the Bundestag, was a political instrument allowing the integration of the Federal Republic into the West. Through the creation of the Bundeswehr, Chancellor Adenauer sought to restore the legitimacy and sovereignty of the FRG within NATO, whose objectives were formulated bluntly by Lord Ismay, the Alliance’s first Secretary General: NATO’s purpose is “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” Faced with a radical transformation of the international system and with the multipolarisation and geopolitical fragmentation of the world, the political equilibrium of the European Union is affected. That equilibrium rested on a tacit division of roles: economic dominance for Germany, military and strategic leadership for France. Yet the budgetary projections of German rearmament indicate that the defence budget will far exceed that of France, creating an asymmetry that unsettles bilateral relations as well as the internal balances of the European Union and its political cohesion. Unilateral initiatives (such as the European Sky Shield anti-missile shield) signal that Berlin intends to influence, or even dictate, the technological and financial standards of defence on the continent, sometimes to the detriment of joint industrial projects already under way.

The Bundeswehr and the “Army-People” Relationship

Faced with the fears of the 1950s, political and military leaders then publicly emphasised that the Bundeswehr must not be seen as a continuation of the Wehrmacht and that reference to the nineteenth-century German reformers—von Scharnhorst, von Gneisenau and von Clausewitz—must reconnect the “army-people” relationship to the structures of the new army. Today’s Germany, with a population of 83.563 million (September 2026), is composed of a growing immigrant population; the foreign population stands at 13.9 million and, if one includes persons with a migratory background (born abroad or with foreign parents), the figure exceeds 25 million. If the defence of a country rests on the defence of its territory and its population, this notion cannot disregard demography, history or the spirit of a people (Geist). This obligation of comprehensive insurance must be preserved by other, differentiated and specific means that guarantee the historical continuity of the nation-frame, through distinct and homogeneous extra-community combat corps ensuring order, cohesion and discipline in the face of external dangers and securing the indispensable hierarchical spiritual unity of the “army-people” couple.

Is Germany Preparing for War?

As regards the classical military aspect of German rearmament, I reproduce here part of the critical text published on LD on 19 July 2026 by G. Gagliano:

“Germany is preparing for war while it has not yet managed to decide what it wants to become in peacetime. Such is the paradox that accompanies the Federal Republic’s first global military strategy: a country traversed by industrial recession, demographic ageing, the crisis of its energy model and the rise of nationalist opposition decides to entrust rearmament with the mission of rebuilding its European centrality. Chancellor Friedrich Merz promises to transform the Bundeswehr into the most powerful conventional force on the continent and to achieve technological superiority by 2039. The project envisages at least 460,000 personnel between active-duty soldiers and reservists, a defence budget of around €160 billion annually by 2029, and a long series of investments in armoured vehicles, aircraft, satellites, missiles, air defence and unmanned aerial systems. It is not merely a matter of increasing expenditure. Berlin wants to alter Germany’s place within Europe. During the Cold War, German rearmament was accepted because it was integrated into a system dominated by the United States. Today, by contrast, Germany is preparing to use its military power to construct a continental system in which the armies of smaller states would depend, at least in part, on German industry, procedures, communications and command. Rearmament thus becomes the continuation of industrial policy by other means… The proposal is not to create a politically unrealisable unified European army, but a network of national armies increasingly integrated around the Bundeswehr.” The answer, as in so many other cases, lies in Thucydides’ expression: “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

A Paradigm Shift in Collective Defence. Germany’s First “Global Military Strategy”

Germany is changing paradigm. Since Europe’s collective defence system is no longer dominated by the United States, a redefinition of national power is necessary; it results from the integration of civil defence and overall defence. Such is the lesson of the German paradigm of collective defence. The geopolitical analyses of German planners are clear: Germany’s commitment within the framework of collective defence is no longer limited solely to the defence of German territory but goes well beyond it, given the enemy’s “hybrid” mode of action below the threshold of an external crisis.

Markus Bungert, a German specialist, clarifies the contents and recommendations here (RDN, summer 2026):

“Since the fall of the Wall, NATO and the EU have expanded to the borders of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. In the event of collective defence, Germany would no longer be a front-line state but rather a logistical and strategic hub, an initial deployment and fallback zone. It has thus become a host and transit country for German and Allied armed forces. Germany’s commitment within the framework of collective defence is no longer limited solely to the defence of German territory. A hybrid mode of action by the enemy, below the threshold of an external crisis (destabilisation of society through the paralysis of critical infrastructures, cyber-attacks, disinformation campaigns, attacks…), could moreover prevent timely measures or decisions by the German government.” In the absence of American or NATO protection, the more reliable and solid defence remains national defence.

Inescapable Leadership

What remains decisive in the domain of foreign policy and military strategy is the degree of dependence or autonomy of a country and the active and pre-eminent function of Leadership. This asserts itself in politics through different capacities of mastery, conviction, negotiation and prestige; in civil society through a sense of responsibility and solidary action; in military life through obedience, loyalty, courage, initiative, rapidity and risk. In the German army, this relationship to strategic surprise and the irruption of the unforeseen is catalogued as trial and sacrifice in the discharge of a mission of national and collective defence. Further on, Bungert notes that in Germany, unlike in France, Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 was felt as a real threat, particularly within the population, and that this feeling was exacerbated by the conflict in Syria and the migratory crisis of 2015. Thus, in 2016, the Federal Government adopted its White Paper, the first in ten years. In addition to the reorientation towards national and collective defence and the structural adaptations of the armed forces that flowed from it, the document integrated as axes of effort the resilience of the state as a whole, crisis anticipation, hybrid warfare and cybersecurity. “That is why Germany consented to invest more in collective defence.”

NATO Capability Targets as National Targets

Bungert emphasises that since 2017 Germany has been the first major country to apply the theoretical requirements set by the NATO Defence Planning Process (NDPP) to the planning of its own armed forces. These requirements flow from the political directives decided at the NATO Summits of 2014 and 2016, and the scenario retained as the planning base is a large-scale joint collective-defence operation (Major Joint Operation “Plus”). Given that the German armed forces dispose of only a single set of forces (“Single Set of Forces”), this set is engaged both in NATO and in EU operations. It therefore appears logical, he adds, that Germany should bring the same contributions and capability-planning targets to the European planning process (CARD – Coordinated Annual Review on Defence) in order to strengthen the European pillar.

European Pillar of Defence

In March 2022, a few weeks after the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, EU leaders approved the Versailles Declaration and agreed to invest more and better in defence while stimulating the European defence industry and reducing strategic dependencies. Within this framework Germany intends to organise the grouping that particularly influences foreign policy, industrial priorities and the allocation of resources. It thus uses military and industrial integration to construct political dependencies without formally calling into question the sovereignty of the Union’s member states. In the bureaucratic language of the Commission, Berlin accentuates the rhetoric of cooperation, responsibility and integration, because language conceals dependence and hierarchy. Nothing better than speaking of reciprocal support in the name of a false equality that hides the old Marxist distinction between the development of capital into a centre and a periphery.

The Equalising Power of the Future

Each time Germany restores its military power, the European debate falls into the Thucydides trap or that of historical phantoms. The problem is not the past but the future. Contemporary Germany does not conceive a continental hegemony; it exercises it. It does not prepare territorial conquests, for the dependencies are informal and consented to, hence democratic. It does not offer stability; it suffers from it, for Merz leads a fragile coalition while Alternative for Germany advances in the polls. The right-wing party is not opposed to military power or to Russia, but it contests a rearmament subordinated to American strategy or oriented towards permanent confrontation in the name of peace. If the language of growth produces cohesion, that of aid to Zelensky generates debt, contestation and new fractures that could call into question the rearmament commitments in Germany and elsewhere.

Prospective Conditionality

In terms of considered conclusions, the success of Germany’s global strategy depends on several factors:

- the perception and reality of the Russian threat as the cement of the effort;

- the evolution of the global threat and of the Hegemon’s commitments in the Near and Middle East and the Gulf, and beyond that in the Far East and the Indo-Pacific;

- the withdrawal of American power from Europe and its conception of an updated “Monroe Doctrine”;

- the role of Europe, of NATO and of France in the sharing of the defence effort and of its financial weight.