Germany Gets a Wack to the Side of the Head

The real question is, "Why didn't they see the threat before this year?" Germany Announces It Will Rearm.

On the 27th of Februray, Bundeskanzler Olaf Scholz announced that Germany would rearm. That is an about face on military spending that goes back to 1989.

Germany is Europe’s richest and most powerful nation. Unfortunately, Berlin has been the weak link in the Western alliance for a generation. Since reunification, under Chancellors Kohl, Schröder, and Merkel, Germany’s once-powerful military has atrophied. ...

Every American president this century has asked, begged, cajoled, and pleaded with the Germans to take more responsibility for Europe’s defense. Alas, even during the Obama/Trump/Biden “pivot to Asia,” the Germans have been content to spend a pittance on defense — last year, barely over 1.5 percent of GDP, which is billions and billions of dollars below the NATO-country target of 2 percent of GDP.

I haven't looked at German military readiness in a few years. Here is what I found in 2018.

• Helicopter pilot training has been outsourced to a private company – most of the Bundeswehr helicopters are out of commission.
• Only 95 of 244 Leopard 2 tanks are in service.
• Only 29 of 93 commissioned fighter jets are combat-ready. (Only 66 are operational)
• In recent NATO war games they were forced to disguise broomsticks as machine guns to hide the fact that they don’t have enough equipment.

If you don't have enough firearms to equip your forces, and are forced to use broomsticks to pretend, you really don't have much of an army. Here is a link to the story about German soldiers playing "Let's Pretend." Germany’s neglected soldiers forced to use broomstick as a gun. Most of it has disappeared behind a paywall in the intervening years.

Now granted, it was a panzer company and not the infantry that got shorted on weapons, but still...

And here is a bit from 2014: If German Military Might is Non-existent…

Maybe the French can stand up to Russia. Because it is clear that Obama and Co. can’t do it. (Or won’t do it – amounts to the same thing in the end.)

There are some details in the Spiegle article, that I linked to in that post, on the state of the German Air Force in 2014. I was mostly quoting von Clausewitz, and noting the Putin's empire building days were not over. (Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, and Crimea in 2014.)

Der Krieg ist eine bloße Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln ‡
− Carl von Clausewitz

And here is what I had to say in 2014 about Putin's Russia.

So if Germany has sidelined itself, what happens when Putin’s Russia makes its next move? You don’t think he is done, do you? Empire builders never stop of their own accord. They have to be stopped by some outside force, which is usually another military.

I'm not a foreign policy analyst. I am a student of history. From the Persian invasion of Greece, to Alexander the Great. The war between Athens and Sparta. The building of the Roman Republic, and the Roman Empire. The Ottoman Empire under folks like Mehmed the Conqueror and Suleiman the Magnificent. Charlemagne. Napoleon. Etc. Most empire builders don't stop of their own accord. Putin isn't going to decide his position that rebuilding the Russian empire is a destiny was wrong; he isn't going to give up and go home.

‡ For those of you with limited command of German, “War is merely the continuation of policy by other means.” So for example, the Constitution states that Congress is supposed to pass a Declaration of War (not some mealy-mouthed resolution on the use of force.)