Zee Germans considering increased military budget, demand hinges

[CountDeMoney]

Caught between Trump and Russia, Germans begin to ratchet up their military might
With the Trump administration pressing allies to shoulder more of their own defense and fears of Russian aggression, Germans, who have largely rejected militarism since the Nazi horror, are debating a military buildup in a manner rarely seen since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
By Anthony Faiola
The Failing Washington Post

In the era of Donald Trump, Germans debate a military buildup

SESTOKAI, Lithuania — A vermilion-colored locomotive slowed to a halt, its freight cars obscured in the blinding snow. A German captain ordered his troops to unload the train's cargo. "Jawohl!" — "Yes, sir!" — a soldier said, before directing out the first of 20 tanks bearing the Iron Cross of the Bundeswehr, Germany's army.

Evocative of old war films, the scene is nevertheless a sign of new times. Seven and a half decades after the Nazis invaded this Baltic nation, the Germans are back in Lithuania — this time as one of the allies.

As the Trump administration ratchets up the pressure on allied nations to shoulder more of their own defense, no country is more in the crosshairs than Germany. If it meets the goals Washington is pushing for, Germany — the region's economic powerhouse — would be on the fast track to again become Western Europe's biggest military power.

Any renaissance of German might has long been resisted first and foremost by the Germans — a nation that largely rejected militarism in the aftermath of the Nazi horror. Yet a rethinking of German power is quickly emerging as one of the most significant twists of President Trump's transatlantic policy.

Since the November election in the United States, the Germans — caught between Trump's America and Vladimir Putin's Russia — are feeling less and less secure. Coupled with Trump's push to have allies step up, the Germans are debating a military buildup in a manner rarely witnessed since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Perhaps nowhere is the prospect of a new future playing out more than here in Lithuania — where nearly 500 German troops, including a Bavarian combat battalion, arrived in recent weeks for an open-ended deployment near the Russian frontier. The NATO deployment marks what analysts describe as Germany's most ambitious military operation near the Russian border since the end of the Cold War. It arrived with a formidable show of German force — including 20 Marder armored infantry fighting vehicles, six Leopard battle tanks and 12 Fuchs and Boxer armored personnel carriers.

"Maybe, with respect to the United States, you need to be careful what you wish for," said Lt. Col. Torsten Stephan, military spokesman for the German troops in Lithuania. "Mr. Trump says that NATO may be obsolete, and that we need to be more independent. Well, maybe we will."

The German-led deployment — also involving a smaller number of troops from Belgium, the Netherlands and Norway — is designed to send a muscular message from Europe to Putin: Back off.

Yet on a continent facing the prospect of a new Cold War, the deployment is also offering a window into the risks of renewed German strength — as well as the Russian strategy for repelling it by dwelling on Germany's dark past. In the 21st-century world of hybrid warfare, the first proverbial salvos have been fired.

Recently, coordinated emails were sent to Lithuanian police, media and top politicians, falsely claiming that the new German troops had gang-raped a local 15-year-old girl. The Lithuanian government quickly disproved the allegations — but not before a few local outlets and social-media users had spread the false accounts. Officials are investigating whether the Russians were behind it.

"But if you ask me personally, I think that yes, that's the biggest probability," said Lithuanian Defense Minister Raimundas Karoblis.

Pro-Russian websites, meanwhile, are preying on old stereotypes, harking back to Adolf Hitler and portraying the NATO deployment in Lithuania as a "second invasion" by Germany.

As Germany grows bolder, outdated imagery is roaring back to life through Russian propaganda. Last week, the Russian Defense Ministry announced the building of a reproduction of the old German Reichstag at a military theme park near Moscow, offering young Russians a chance to reenact the 1945 storming of the structure during the fall of Berlin.

Yet in Lithuania, a former Soviet republic now living in the shadow of Russia's maw, the Nazi legacy is seen as ancient history. To many here, modern Germany is a bastion of democratic principles and one of the globe's strongest advocates of human rights, free determination and measured diplomacy. And facing a Russian threat in times of uncertain NATO allegiances, the Lithuanians are clamoring for a more powerful Germany by its side.

"I think U.S. leadership should be maintained, but also, we need leadership in Europe," Karoblis said. Noting that Britain is in the process of breaking away from the European Union, he called Germany the most likely new guarantor of regional stability.

"Why not Germany? Why not?" he said.

More dangerous missions

For many Germans, however, there are many reasons — including overspending and fears of sparking a new arms race. According to a poll commissioned by Stern magazine and published this year, 55 percent of Germans are against increasing defense spending in the coming years, while 42 percent are in favor.

The German military has staged several military exercises in Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe, and its pilots form part of the air police deterring Russian planes buzzing the E.U.'s eastern borders. It has also begun to take on more dangerous missions — deploying troops to the Balkans, Afghanistan and, last year, to Mali. The military also has taken on a logistical support role in the allied fight against the Islamic State.

But the Germans are slated to do much more. In 2014, German officials agreed with other NATO nations to spend at least 2 percent of its gross domestic product on defense within 10 years — up from about 1.2 percent in 2016. Until recently, however, many German officials privately acknowledged that such a goal — which would see Germany leapfrog Britain and France in military spending — was politically untenable.

Since Trump's victory, however, German politicians, pundits and the media have agonized over the issue, with more and louder voices calling for a stronger military. Last month, the Defense Ministry announced plans to increase Germany's standing military to nearly 200,000 troops by 2024, up from a historical low of 166,500 in June. After 26 years of cuts, defense spending is going up by 8 percent this year.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has called for cool heads, but also for increased military spending. Her defense minister, Ursula von der Leyen, has been more forceful, saying recently that Germany cannot "duck away" from its military responsibility. Although considered a distant possibility, some outlier voices are mentioning the once-inconceivable: the advent of a German nuclear bomb.

"If Trump sticks to his line, America will leave Europe's defense to the Europeans to an extent that it hasn't known since 1945," Berthold Kohler, publisher of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, wrote in a recent opinion piece. That could mean "higher defense spending, the revival of the draft, the drawing of red lines and the utterly unthinkable for German brains — the question of one's own nuclear defense capability."

Germany, along with its regional allies, has begun exploring an increase of military activity through joint European operations — and experts see that, and NATO, as the most likely funnels for German military power. Germany's deployment in Lithuania, for instance, is part of a broader allied deterrent in Eastern Europe, with the Americans, Canadians and British leading other contingents in Poland, Latvia and Estonia.

In some of Germany's neighbors — particularly Poland — there remain pockets of opposition to renewed German military might, positions based at least in part on war memories. But old prejudices are dying fast.

Take, for instance, tiny Lithuania — a nation the Nazis overran in 1941, kicking out the occupying Soviets. The Third Reich held on there through 1945, exterminating more than 200,000 Jews. After World War II, Lithuania reverted to Soviet domination before winning independence at the end of the Cold War. Over the past decade, Lithuania hitched its star to the West — joining the E.U. and NATO in 2004, much to the chagrin of the Russians.

Now, Lithuanians' fear of the bear on their doorstep is surging. Since the de facto invasion of Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea, Russian politicians have begun speaking ominously about a key warm-water port that they say was wrongly "gifted" to Lithuania after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Hackers thought to be linked to the Russians have targeted government servers and national television channels.

In the city of Jonava, about six miles from the barrack housing the new NATO troops, the Nazis killed more than 2,000 Jews in the 1940s. Yet in the oral histories, the German occupation is portrayed in a far better light than the Soviet era that followed.

Nadiezda Grickovaite, 86, the town's only living resident with vivid memories of the World War II era, said she recalled her mother taking her into the woods "so we didn't see the shooting of the Jews." But she said the Soviets were comparatively worse — a history she has passed down in speeches and talks at local schools.

"I don't feel any bad feelings against the Germans because of the past," she said. "This was history. We can't blame them now."

The new German troops, meanwhile, have received special sensitivity training about the Nazi legacy in Lithuania and to insist on gentle interactions with locals. Jonava's acting mayor, Eugenijus Sabutis, said the only incident since the troops arrived in late January was an altercation between an American GI and local men over the attentions of a woman.

"I don't feel part of that history — the history of Germans who were here before," said Sebastian, a 27-year-old German private stationed in Lithuania who only gave his first name per the German army's rules for the interview. "What I know is that we are in a kind of new Cold War, and now we are here to help."

[Eddie Teach]

I didn't think there were any warm water ports in the Baltic.

[Duque de Bragança]

I didn't think there were any warm water ports in the Baltic.

Warmer than Leningrad/St. Petersburg I guess. At least, I hope for the Baltic Coast people.

[Maladict]

Russia will have more warm water ports than it needs in a few decades.

[CountDeMoney]

Russia will have more warm water ports than it needs in a few decades.

No kidding.

http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-military-build-up-arctic-2017-1

[Josephus]

The Germans demand hinges today. Tomorrow it will be Poland. Stop appeasing them I say

[Kleves]

Six tanks is a "formidable" show of force? Guderian wept.

[Zanza]

Don't hold your breath. There is very little political will to actually spend money on defence and the armed forces have a very hard time to recruit enough personnel since conscription was abolished.

[The Brain]

Don't hold your breath. There is very little political will to actually spend money on defence and the armed forces have a very hard time to recruit enough personnel since conscription was abolished.

Germany will never reach for a position of military ascendancy again. One world war was quite enough, thank you!

[Zanza]

https://www.ft.com/content/19e7bc4e-0010-11e7-8d8e-a5e3738f9ae4

The isolation of Angela Merkel's Germany
On all sides, the country sees threats to stability and order

Angela Merkel has described the idea that she is now the de facto leader of the western world as "grotesque" and "absurd". The German chancellor's angst is understandable. Modern Germany has no desire to lead the west and is not powerful enough to bear that burden.

But unrealistic expectations are not the only reason for German anxiety. If Ms Merkel looks out from the glass box of the chancellor's office in Berlin there is trouble on every horizon. To the east are the ever more authoritarian and Germanophobic governments of Poland and Hungary. And further east a hostile Russia. To the west, is the US of Donald Trump; to the north the UK of Brexit. And to the south lie Italy and Greece, two troubled countries that increasingly blame Germany for their economic woes.

Collectively, the situation threatens to revive an old German nightmare: the fear of being a large, isolated power at the centre of Europe. The situation must feel even more grotesque because — unlike in the 20th century — Germany's current loneliness has very little to do with the country's own malign behaviour. On the contrary, it is the world around Germany that is changing fast, as populism and nationalism surge across Europe and in the US.

Of course, there are criticisms that can be made of the Merkel government's handling of the euro and refugee crises. Those criticisms are made with great ferocity in Warsaw, Athens and other EU capitals. But nobody seriously doubts modern Germany's commitment to liberal values at home, and internationalism abroad.

The problem is that Germany's unwavering commitment to these values feels like the exception in the west, not the rule. One American delegate, returning from the recent Munich Security Conference, remarked to me that "it felt good to be in a normal country, again". But German normality is now abnormal.

The danger and peculiarity of Germany's position is underlined when compared with the international situation that faced the country in mid-2008, just before the outbreak of the financial crisis. That summer, a charismatic and idealistic US presidential candidate named Barack Obama came to Berlin and spoke before a huge and enthusiastic crowd.

In Moscow, a more pro-western president, Dmitry Medvedev, took over from Vladimir Putin. With the eastward enlargement of the EU recently completed, Germany was now surrounded by friendly democracies that were fellow members of the bloc. The euro seemed to be operating well and the countries of southern Europe were prosperous and shared Germany's enthusiasm for the EU. Both Britain and France were governed by pro-EU centrist governments.

Less than a decade on and all of that has changed utterly. For Germany, the most troubling developments are probably those closest to home. The EU is meant to be the ultimate guarantee against the return of German isolation on the European continent. But Britain has voted to leave. Brexit means that the EU is losing a country that has always been crucial to the European balance of power. It also sets a precedent for possible future defections. It is now clear that the EU can indeed break up.

Almost as alarming for Germany is the prospect that countries will stay within the EU, but then fail to respect its fundamental values and economic rules. The erosion of democracy in Poland and Hungary — amid a resurgent nationalism — is profoundly worrying for the Merkel government because there is no clear remedy. The EU was meant to be the insurance policy against this sort of thing but it has failed to deliver.

In the coming weeks and months, populist and nationalist parties will also perform strongly in the Dutch and French elections. If Marine Le Pen wins the French presidency in May, many in Berlin fear that the EU could collapse.

Meanwhile in Italy, the pro-EU centre is shrinking under the impact of the euro crisis. The populist and Eurosceptic Five Star movement is the country's main opposition and could come to power in the next 12 months. The Greek debt crisis may soon revive.

Developments in Moscow and Washington are also profoundly worrying for the German government. Germany led the European response to Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea. But the price of that has been a sharp rise in hostility between Ms Merkel's Germany and Mr Putin's Russia. Given the gruesome history of the 20th century, a hostile relationship with Moscow puts a special psychological pressure on Berlin.

Throughout the cold war, West Germany could at least look to the US for steadfast support. But in the Trump era that can no longer be relied upon. On the contrary, Mr Trump has been openly contemptuous of Ms Merkel and has raised serious questions about his commitment to the wider western alliance.

With so much going wrong for Germany, a huge amount hangs on the French election. If the pro-EU, pro-German Emmanuel Macron wins the presidency, there will be delight in Berlin. His election would break Germany's growing sense of isolation, and offer renewed hope that a Franco-German partnership can revive the EU. By contrast, if Ms Le Pen wins, the German nightmare will be complete.

[CountDeMoney]

 

Don't hold your breath. There is very little political will to actually spend money on defence and the armed forces have a very hard time to recruit enough personnel since conscription was abolished.

Germany will never reach for a position of military ascendancy again. One world war was quite enough, thank you!

I don't always say it, but I appreciate the idea of you.

[Admiral Yi]

I got a chuckle out of the presumption that Lithuanians hate Germany for WWII.

[The Brain]

I got a chuckle out of the presumption that Lithuanians hate Germany for WWII.

No one likes a loser.

[Zanza]

http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21717981-donald-trumps-questioning-natos-credibility-has-berlin-thinking-unthinkable-germans-are

Eine deutsche Atombombe
Germans are debating getting their own nuclear weapon

Donald Trump's questioning of NATO's credibility has Berlin thinking the unthinkable

IT BEGAN in November, soon after the election of Donald Trump as America's president. The publisher of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a conservative newspaper, opined in an editorial that it was time to contemplate "the altogether unthinkable for a German brain, the question of a nuclear deterrence capability, which could make up for doubts about American guarantees". Roderich Kiesewetter, a foreign-policy expert in the Christian Democratic Union, the party of Chancellor Angela Merkel, chimed in that there should be no "thought taboos". He and other politicians then went silent, apparently after a signal that the chancellor did not need this distraction in an election year. But in Germany's think-tanks the debate kept raging.

Since 1945 West Germany and then the reunited country have relied on the American nuclear shield to deter aggression from Russia. A prominent thesis, outlined in 1984 by Josef Joffe, a journalist, holds that European integration was only possible because this external American power had "pacified" the age-old Franco-German conflicts. So West Germany, on its best behaviour after the war, signed the non-proliferation treaty in the 1960s; it reaffirmed the pledge in the treaty that led to reunification in 1990.

Suddenly, however, there is an American president who, though he said last week that he would "strongly support NATO", has also called the alliance "obsolete" and suggested that his support might be conditional on allies meeting their commitments to spend more on defence. By the ghastly logic of mutual assured destruction (MAD), deterrence must be unconditional to be credible. Countries in eastern and central Europe are beginning to fret about their vulnerability to nuclear blackmail by Russia under Vladimir Putin.

Germany's most obvious response would be to approach France and Britain, NATO's other two nuclear powers, for a shared deterrent. But their arsenals are small. France, moreover, has so far been unwilling to cede any sovereignty over its nuclear arms and has always been sceptical about shared deterrence. Britain, as its prime minister, Theresa May, has already hinted, might make its nuclear shield a subject of negotiation during the upcoming Brexit talks.

To Maximilian Terhalle, a German professor currently teaching in Britain, this means that Germany, Poland or the Baltic countries could never fully rely on France or Britain retaliating against Russia for a strike against them. He concludes that Germany must think about getting its own nukes, perhaps in collaboration with neighbours. Even the leader of Poland's governing party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, a habitual Germanophobe, called in February for a European nuclear deterrent, presumably financed largely by Germany.

The different dangers posed by Mr Putin and Mr Trump have raised the question of "how to deter whom with what", even though German nukes are not the best answer, says Karl-Heinz Kamp of the Federal Academy for Security Policy, a government think-tank. Mr Terhalle, for his part, thinks that even a debate about a German nuclear weapon could help—if it convinced Mr Trump to stop undermining the existing international order.

[CountDeMoney]

Fuck it.  Go nuclear, Berlin.