by Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has begun warning Germans that they must prepare for decades of confrontation with Russia and that they must quickly rebuild the country’s military in case Vladimir V. Putin does not plan to stop at the border with Ukraine.
The Russian military, he said in a series of recent interviews with German media, is fully occupied with Ukraine. But if there is a truce and Putin, Russia’s president, has a few years to reset, he believes the Russian leader will consider testing NATO unity.
“No one knows if this will last or how it will last,” Pistorius said of the current war, advocating a rapid increase in the size of the German army and a replenishment of its arsenal.
Pistorius’s public warnings reflect a significant shift at the highest levels of leadership in a country that has eschewed a strong military since the end of the Cold War. The alarm is growing louder, but the German public remains unconvinced that the security of Germany and Europe has been fundamentally threatened by a newly aggressive Russia.
The position of defense minister in Germany is often a political dead end. But Pistorius’ status as one of the country’s most popular politicians has given him a freedom to speak that others – including his boss, Chancellor Olaf Scholz – do not enjoy.
As Scholz prepares to meet President Biden at the White House on Friday, many in the German government say there will be no return to normal with Putin’s Russia, anticipate little progress this year in Ukraine and fear the consequences if Putin prevails there.
Those fears have now mixed with discussions about what will happen to NATO if former President Donald J. Trump is elected and given a second chance to act on his instinct to remove the United States from the alliance.
The prospect of a re-elected Mr. Trump has German officials and many of their NATO counterparts informally discussing whether the nearly 75-year alliance structure they plan to celebrate in Washington this year can survive without the United States at its center. . Many German officials say Putin’s best strategic hope is the fracture of NATO.
For Germans in particular, this is a surprising change in mentality. Just a year ago, NATO was celebrating a new sense of purpose and a new unity, and many were confidently predicting that Putin was on the run.
But now, with an unreliable United States, an aggressive Russia and a feisty China, plus a seemingly stalled war in Ukraine and a deeply unpopular conflict in Gaza, German officials are beginning to talk about the emergence of a new, complicated and worrying. , with serious consequences for European and transatlantic security.
Their immediate concern is growing pessimism that the United States will continue to fund Ukraine’s fight, just as Germany, the second-largest contributor, has agreed to double its contribution this year, to about $8.5 billion.
Now, some of Pistorius’s colleagues warn that if American funding dries up and Russia prevails, his next target will be closer to Berlin.
“If Ukraine were forced to surrender, that would not satisfy Russia’s hunger for power,” the head of Germany’s intelligence service, Bruno Kahl, said last week. “If the West does not demonstrate a clear willingness to defend itself, Putin will no longer have reason not to attack NATO.”
But when pressed about a possible conflict with Russia or the future of NATO, German politicians speak cautiously.
In the decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, most Germans have become accustomed to the notion that the country’s security would be guaranteed if it worked with Russia, not against it, and that China is a necessary partner with a market critical for German cars and equipment. .
Even today, Scholz, a social democrat whose party traditionally sought decent ties with Moscow, seems reluctant to discuss the much more conflictive future with Russia or China that German defense and intelligence chiefs describe so vividly.
With the exception of Pistorius, little known before he was chosen to head the Defense Ministry a year ago, few politicians will address the issue publicly. Scholz is especially careful, mindful of Germany’s relationship with the United States and wary of putting too much pressure on Russia and its unpredictable president.
Two years ago, he declared a new era for Germany: a “Zeitenwende,” or historic turning point, in German security policy, which he said would be marked by a significant shift in spending and strategic thinking. He kept his promise to allocate an additional €100 billion for military spending over four years.
This year, for the first time, Germany will spend 2 percent of its gross domestic product on the military, meeting the goal that all NATO countries agreed to in 2014, after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, but that most Experts warn that it is now too low. . And Germany has pledged to reinforce NATO’s eastern flank against Russia by pledging to permanently station a brigade in Lithuania by 2027.
In other respects, however, Scholz has acted with great caution. He has opposed, along with Biden, setting a timetable for Ukraine’s eventual entry into the alliance.
The clearest example of his caution is his continued refusal to provide Ukraine with a long-range air-launched cruise missile called Taurus.
Last year, Britain and France gave Ukraine its closest equivalent, the Storm Shadow/SCALP, and have used it to devastate Russian ships in Crimean ports and force Russia to withdraw its fleet. Biden reluctantly agreed to provide ATACMS, a similar missile although with a range limited to about 100 miles, to Ukraine in the fall.
The Taurus has a range of more than 300 miles, meaning Ukraine could use it to strike deep into Russia. And Scholz is not willing to take that risk, nor is the country’s Bundestag, which voted against a resolution calling for the transfer. While the decision seems to fit with German opinion, Scholz wants to avoid the issue.
But if he remains reluctant to put too much pressure on Putin, it is a caution that Germans share.
Polls show that Germans want to see a more capable German military. But only 38 percent of respondents said they wanted their country to be more involved in international crises, the lowest number since that question began being asked in 2017, according to the Körber Foundation, which conducted the survey. Of that group, 76 percent said engagement should be primarily diplomatic, and 71 percent were against a military leadership role for Germany in Europe.
German military officers recently sparked a small outcry when they suggested the country should be “kriegstüchtig,” which roughly translates as the ability to fight and win a war.
Norbert Röttgen, an opposition lawmaker and foreign policy expert for the Christian Democrats, said the term was considered a “rhetorical overreach” and was quickly abandoned.
“Scholz has always said that ‘Ukraine must not lose but Russia must not win,’ indicating that he always thought of a stalemate that would lead to a diplomatic process,” Mr. Röttgen said. “He thinks Russia is more important than all the countries between us and them, and lacks a European sense and her possible role as a European leader.”
Röttgen and other critics of Scholz believe he is missing a historic opportunity to lead the creation of a European defense capability that is far less dependent on the American military and nuclear deterrent.
But Scholz clearly feels more comfortable relying heavily on Washington, and senior German officials say he is especially wary of Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, who has advocated for European “strategic autonomy.” Macron has found few supporters on the continent.
Even Scholz’s main European defense initiative, a coordinated land-based air defense against ballistic missiles known as Sky Shield, relies on a mix of US, US-Israeli and German missile systems. This has angered the French, Italians, Spanish and Poles, who have not joined in, arguing that an Italian-French system should have been used.
Scholz’s ambitions are also hampered by its increasingly weak economy. It contracted 0.3 percent last year, and is expected about the same in 2024. The cost of the Ukraine war and China’s economic woes, which have hit the auto and manufacturing sectors hardest, have exacerbated the problem. .
While Scholz acknowledges that the world has changed, “he’s not saying we should change with it,” said Ulrich Speck, a German analyst.
“It’s saying the world has changed and we will protect you,” Speck said.
But getting it right could require much more military spending: more than 3 percent of Germany’s gross domestic product. For now, few in Scholz’s party dare suggest going that far.
Germans, and even social democrats, “have realized that Germany lives in the real world and that hard power matters,” said Charles A. Kupchan, a Europe expert at Georgetown University.
“At the same time,” he said, “there is still hope that all this is just a bad dream and that the Germans will wake up and return to the old world.”
