the criticisms of the high commands of his Army

“The Army that I have the privilege of leading is more or less naked,” said Alfons Mais, Lieutenant General and Inspector of the Army and, consequently, someone at the top of the Tudesca military hierarchy shortly after the start of the Russian invasion. Germany comes from there, from being a country that years ago forgot —like many others in Europe— NATO’s commitment to spend 2% of its GDP on defense and where if the Army has been in the news, it has been because of its bad state of magazine and its many limitations.

For the latter, the German Army is still news. Rafael Loss, an expert for security and defense affairs at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), a think tank Europeanist.

Loss gives EL ESPAÑOL the following eloquent example: “It is known that the military deployed in Lithuania and in other countries have not been able to communicate properly with their allies because they still have communication systems of the eightieswhich are not digital and, therefore, are less secure than those that the allies are using”. Germany leads in Lithuania one of the eight battalions that NATO maintains on the eastern flank of the Atlantic Alliance. It also participates in the battalion that leads the Czech Republic on Slovak soil.

Communications is one of the areas in which the German authorities are investing in view of the deficiencies of the Bundeswehr, the name given to the armed forces in Germany. Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in the Bundestag a few days after the start of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine that there should be money for those expenses and many, many more.

[¿Alemania, ante la decadencia?]

“Hereinafter we will invest more than two percent of GDP in our defense year after year”, stated Scholz three days after the start of the invasion against Ukraine in the Lower House of the German Parliament. He spoke so clearly in a speech about “the era of change” that was opening in his country because of Russia and the return of the war to the European continent.

Relearn to spend on defense

In that speech, Scholz also announced the creation of a fund of 100,000 million euros for “investments and weapons projects” that are necessary to dress the Army that Alfons Mais described naked.

But Germany, despite the chancellor’s show of political will, has a serious problem. The country does not know how to spend on defense. Commentators here complain about the “horrendous” amounts of money the Ministry of Defense spends maintaining its bureaucratic structure without improve action capacity from army. This has been pointed out, for example, by Jonas Jansen, a journalist for the influential daily Frankfurter Allgemeine. We must not lose sight of the fact that, despite not devoting 2% of its GDP to the Army, the German Defense budget was around 52,000 million euros in 2021.

“We are in a process of relearning what security policy entails and defense”, agrees Loss from the ECFR. “Since the end of the Cold War, defense policy was relegated to the margins of the political process in Germany, it received little attention, it only received it when the country participated in missions such as that of Afghanistan, launched within the framework of NATO. But overall he was ignoredLoss explains.

[Alemania entra en recesión técnica: su PIB se contrajo un 0,3% en el primer trimestre]

Less investment after the war

In his view, for example, Angela Merkel, Scholz’s predecessor in the Federal Chancellery, kept defense policy far from her priorities. “Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has changed this”says Loss, but he is one of those who regrets the slow times in which the administration led by Chancellor Scholz moves.

To begin with, Scholz did not plan to make a speech like the one he had to make on February 27. His defense minister at the time, Christine Lambrecht, also a Social Democrat, did not expedite the necessary acquisitions for the German Army. She is not reminded of big announcements from the Ministry of Defense regarding purchases of military equipment. So much so that, despite everything, German military spending, in 2022, was about 51,000 million euros, less than in 2021 despite the outbreak last year of a war the likes of which had not been seen on European soil since World War II. .

[La guerra de Putin deja un “agujero inmobiliario” en el rascacielos ‘Alexander Tower’ en Berlín]

The acquisition for around 8,500 million euros of 35 F-35 model aircraft, from the American firm Lockheed Martin, was something that even Scholz himself spoke about in the Bundestag. These fighters will replace the Tornados that the German Army has used since the Cold War years in the distribution of NATO nuclear weapons. The really important announcements regarding the acquisition of military equipment have begun to take place once Lambrecht resigned earlier this year and the also Social Democrat took over the reins of Defense Boris Pistorius.

2023: first serious purchases

For example, last March it became known that the German Army was going to acquire an unspecified two-digit number from Leopard 2 A7 tanks, the latest model of those German-made battle tanks that, in earlier versions and with droppers, have been donated to Ukraine. Also in March it was learned that Pistorius was going to buy for his army a dozen Panzerhaubitzer 2000self-propelled artillery pieces.

Still to be resolved are, among other things, the ammunition procurement issues, something essential for a German armed forces that continue to accuse bureaucratic delays that complicate any purchase of material. With Pistorius as Defense Minister, a reform of this part of the administration is underway that aims to streamline its operation.

Meanwhile, the German armed forces are also getting in the service of the Ukrainian resistance. There is no country in the ‘old continent’ that is supporting the kyiv war effort as much as Germany.

Although it is difficult for Scholz to present himself as a leader in this regard, the truth is that his country has passed from cautiously supporting Ukraine to doing so openly. Two Saturdays ago, the Pistorius ministry announced the delivery of a military aid package to Ukraine valued at €2.7 billion, the largest German consignment to date. German aid, which also includes the training of the Ukrainian military in the management of German military systems, is costing the Tedesco Army additional efforts.

“There are many challenges and dangers that can break the dynamic of change that Pistorius has brought about and, as a result, there are risk of delaying decisions that must be taken”, warns Loss from the ECFR on account of the work that Scholz and the German Ministry of Defense have ahead of them.