Politicians and experts insist that Russia is a big and real threat to Germany and NATO. But the citizens of Germany, accustomed to decades of peace, simply cannot believe it.
On the pre-election posters for the European Parliament, almost all parties focus on the security and defense power of Germany. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, politicians drastically reduced military and defense spending, but now, after Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022, they had to see that the German army was in a hopelessly bad state, barely capable of defending its own territory. And that it is not capable of fully fulfilling its obligations as a member of NATO.
Shortly after the Russian aggression, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that a special fund would be created to equip the German army, but the announced 100 billion euros (195.59 billion BAM) turned out to be insufficient.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius wants to increase the military budget for 2025 by at least 6.5 billion euros (12.71 billion BAM). He believes that these are exceptional circumstances in which that state expenditure should be exempted from the legal obligation of a balanced budget.
Fabulously expensive decades of austerity
And German military experts, such as Frank Sauer from the Bundeswehr University, think that even with those additional 100 billion, the German army will still be chronically short of money. Without an increase in the budget, there will already be a moment in 2026 when the German army will only “maintain the existing plant with the greatest efforts”, but nothing more than that. However, there is no consensus in the German government regarding a larger allocation for defense.
Minister of Finance Christian Lindner claims that Russia’s attack on Ukraine cannot be a reason for additional state debts, to which the Social Democratic Minister of Defense angrily stated at a government session that he “doesn’t need such pain” in his life and, as far as he is concerned, someone else to do the practically impossible in the Bundeswehr should be appointed.
But how big is the threat from Russia? The organizer of the Munich Security Conference, Christoph Heusgen, is convinced that Vladimir Putin is aiming for a Greater Russia within the borders of the former Soviet Union.
“If Putin does not lose the war in Ukraine, we have to reckon with the fact that Moldova or the Baltic states are next in line,” he says.
The Baltic states are admittedly members of NATO, but Fabian Hoffmann from the University of Oslo estimates that this military alliance does not have the capacity to deter Russia’s pretensions and that Europe has “two or three years at most” to create a defense that Putin would rather not attack.
“They won’t take us either!”
The professor of the military university mentions a very possible scenario: as early as this November, Donald Trump may return to the White House, from whom we could already hear that he is more concerned about the threat from China than the troubles of European countries that do not spend enough on defense anyway. And Putin is almost 80 years old, and according to Sauer, his only desire now is to realize the vision of Greater Russia – or at least to destabilize all the surrounding countries enough that they do not pose any threat to Moscow. Will Russian tanks start rolling towards a NATO member? It doesn’t have to be, but it is certainly a real possibility already in the next five years, Sauer believes.
Unlike many military experts and politicians, the citizens of Germany are still not convinced that the period of peace in Europe can be over in the foreseeable future. According to the YouGov survey, only 36% of respondents think that a Russian attack on one of the NATO members by 2030 is “very” or “probably” possible, and 48% of them think that it is “rather” or “completely” excluded. And that the target of the attack will not be one of the peripheral NATO members, but Germany itself, is considered probable by only 23% of the participants, while 61% think the opposite.
Me with the gun?
At the same time, it is clear to the citizens that the German army is in a bad state: only 2% of the survey participants think that the army is “excellent” equipped to defend the homeland, 12% believe that it is “fairly good”, and 39% of them think that the Bundeswehr ” badly” or “very badly” prepared for a possible attack. The result of the research conducted by the Civey Institute conducted this March, is even more devastating. In it, only a third of the German citizens asked expressed their willingness to defend their homeland with weapons, more than half of the respondents would not do so.
“We are living in a period of great historical change,” says Frank Sauer. But the realization that peace is not and does not have to be an eternal state has not yet reached the citizens of this country, Sauer points out. And he adds: “That change in people’s minds is ongoing. And that cannot be forced into people’s heads either with a club, or with three politicians’ speeches and five newspaper headlines.”
This professor from the Bundeswehr University says: “I too would rather have wind farms, solar panels, and kindergartens built. But unfortunately, we have to produce armored vehicles, cruise missiles, and drones.” What and how will be decided, we will see. But Sauer is convinced: the way we lived, especially in the last three decades in Western Europe, will no longer be possible, Radio Sarajevo writes.
E.Dz.
