This year, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz pledged to build Europe’s strongest army – a tall order for a country whose military has undergone years of neglect.
The coalition government is hoping a new bill agreed upon last week will help make this a reality, bolstering Germany’s forces in the face of the perceived threat from Russia and a significant shift in US foreign policy.
The sweeping new reforms will see Germany attempt to boost its numbers to 260,000 soldiers, up from around 180,000 currently, in addition to an extra 200,000 reservists, by 2035.
Better to take it seriously and nothing happens than to ignore it and suffer the consequences.
What if they take it seriously and suffer the other consequences? Because remember, the biggest threat to Germany currently isn’t Russia or China or even America; it’s the far right. Expanding the military this much would put a lot of strain on the budget and inevitably come at the cost of social welfare, further fueling the far right as living conditions get worse and worse. And on top of that taking healthy young adults away from a workforce that already needs more people to do something wholly unproductive can’t be good for the economy. You’re completely ignoring the opportunity cost here; there are simply more important and pressing problems that deserve attention and budget than a hypothetical with nothing to back it up.
A problem we frequently observe is when armies are given a giant hammer they suddenly start looking at the world map as a bunch of nails. Next thing you know Germany is invading Iran for Israel and not “defending against Russia”.
Remember the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions.
So your argument is to better be the “nail” and let the soviet “hammer” fuck you up?
Europe was already spending four times more on their military than Russia before the remilitarization push.
And they are going to get hammered anyways because their weapons investments are largely going towards American and Israeli companies.
What lies are you referring to? The fact that Russia invaded its neighbour Ukraine and is becoming more and more aggressive towards other post-soviet counties? That lie?
Yeah except right now the biggest issue the Bundeswehr faces is equipment and troop readiness. A report came around 2022 and made noise. After a short exercise 18 modern Puma IVF had been out of action for lack of spare parts on relatively minor issues. And that was on the 10th Panzer division which was earmarked for deployment in Lithuania, not a low priority unit.
More bodies are nice for an army. But those come after the infrastructure has been fixed for what already exist