On February 27, 2022, three days after the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz made a speech to parliament – later dubbed “the turning point speech”, Zeitenwende in German – in which he promised investment by 100 billion euros to strengthen the German defense and to bring the budget for military spending to over 2 percent of GDP, the standard required by NATO under which Germany had always maintained. The speech was considered historic, because it heralded a radical change of direction from the principles that had guided German politics for decades.
A year after that speech, there is still essentially no trace of those investments. For various reasons: the threat of an imminent Russian victory has, at least for the moment, greatly diminished, the consequences of the invasion on the economy and energy prices have made other types of investments more urgent, and according to some analysts a radical transformation of German defense policies take much longer.
In his speech a year ago, Scholz said that the invasion of Ukraine had been a “turning point in the history of our continent”: he called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “warmonger” and promised to allocate 100 billion euros in military spending to modernize the army, the Bundeswehr, weakened by decades of underinvestment. Germany is one of the few economic powers in the world without a strong military and has historically been reluctant to participate in military missions abroad.
Daniela Schwarzer, of Open Society Foundations, said Scholz’s speech had “strategically repositioned” Germany, which since the end of World War II had always maintained a strongly anti-militarist stance.
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Of those 100 billion promised by Scholz, only a very small part has been spent, partly for investments already envisaged before the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The only indication of a larger investment was given at the end of February this year, when Scholz announced spending of 30 billion: Arne Collatz, spokesman for the defense ministry, said that the contracts have already been made, but that the sum will be paid when the materials arrive. It is not clear what materials we are talking about and what exactly that money will be spent on: the government has said that “the business plan is being developed”, adding that it cannot talk about it due to confidentiality issues.
In the meantime, due to inflation, what a year ago was a hundred billion euros – in terms of their value in terms of actual purchasing power – is now worth around 87 billion. This year, German defense spending is expected to be around 50 billion euros, well below the 2 percent of GDP threshold required by NATO.
The lack of German defense investment, and its inconsistency with Scholz’s big announcement a year ago, has been noted. In his February 27, 2022 speech, Scholz had also promised a massive shipment of arms to Ukraine: Germany today is, in absolute terms, the country that sends the most aid to Ukraine after the United States (even if it is far behind). . But military aid is very scarce when compared to the size of the German economy, and over the past months the German government has shown itself rather recalcitrant, even attracting criticism from allied countries.
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Among other things, during Scholz’s visit to the United States, US government officials said that US President Joe Biden used the occasion to “try to shift the balance of Germany in the direction of greater resistance”.
During this year, the German government has made investments in other directions, for example in the energy sector. Like the governments of other countries, including Italy, Germany has approved a huge investment (in this case of 200 billion euros) to defray energy bills, thus at least partially offsetting the price increases. Terminals have also been built for the import of liquefied natural gas and economic agreements have been made with new energy suppliers: the aim was to diversify its sources of energy supply, given that Germany has so far been the European country most dependent on Russia since this point of view.
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Various hypotheses have been made about the reasons for Germany’s lack of a large defense investment. In a highly critical article published in Politico, the analyst Matthew Karnitschnig wrote that Scholz’s announcement a year ago should be considered at this point more as a rhetorical act, an expression of concern, at the time, that the Ukraine would soon collapse and you would find the Russian army on the Ukrainian border with Poland.
According to Karnitschnig, in other words, Scholz’s speech signaled Germany’s intention to radically change its approach towards Russia compared to what was done by former chancellor Angela Merkel, who had always been more conciliatory and had never responded with particular harshness previous Russian actions (invasion of Georgia in 2008 and invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014, among others).
Over the months, however, the threat of a Russian victory has gradually diminished: the Ukrainian forces, supported by the many weapons sent by Western governments, have implemented an unexpected and tenacious resistance. Russia first had to make a dramatic and rapid retreat from the northern parts of the country – including Kiev, without succeeding in deposing the Ukrainian government – and then focus on the southern and eastern parts of the country, where it is still fighting.
In all of this, says Karnitschnig, the German urgency to rearm is at least partially reflected: “The impression is that the chancellor hesitates, procrastinates and takes decisions only when he is forced to do so,” Friedrich Merz, leader of the of Scholz’s main opposition party, the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
According to Karnitschnig, another reason why Germany has not yet invested heavily in defense is the opposition Scholz faces within his own party, the centre-left Social Democrats. It is a party traditionally opposed to both rearmament policies and closeness to the United States. Scholz himself, early in his political career, led some protests in West Germany against the United States, going so far as to suggest that Germany should also leave NATO, which he considered an “aggressive and imperialist” force.
Scholz has also been criticized by the country’s armed forces: Alfons Mais, head of the army, said: “it is extremely important that the material we have given away is replaced as soon as possible: these holes are simply unacceptable”.
Scholz, finally, has to face the disagreements and divisions within his government. They concern various issues, from environmental policies to relations with China. Finding unity on one of the most delicate and complex topics for German politics, that of rearmament and defence, can be very complicated, especially if we are talking about radically reversing principles and spending cuts decided over decades of peace and stability.
This is the opinion of Roderick Kefferpütz, an analyst at the Atlantic Council, a US study center that deals with foreign policy: according to him the so-called Zeitenwende, the “epochal turning point” Scholz spoke of, is an enormous structural change, moreover not limited only to strengthening the army. If implemented, it should also include a parallel radical change in intelligence services and IT tools: according to Kefferpütz, these are all issues to which Germany has not yet devoted due attention.
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