At the Nato summit currently underway in The Hague, Germany’s new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, is expected to present his plan to transform the Bundeswehr into “the most powerful conventional army in Europe”. This dramatic announcement represents more than a shift in policy — it signals a rupture with the fundamental strategic identity Germany has maintained since 1945.
The idea of rearming the German military dates back to Olaf Scholz’s 2022 Zeitenwende speech — the so-called “turning point” announced in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Scholz promised a €100 billion fund for the military and pledged to meet Nato’s then 2% spending target. Yet that “turning point” largely failed to materialise. Two years later, the German Council on Foreign Relations bluntly concluded that little had changed.
Now, Merz is determined to deliver what Scholz only gestured towards. He has made defence and security the cornerstone of his chancellorship, launching the most ambitious rearmament campaign since the Second World War. The scale is staggering: a proposed €400 billion in defence and security investments, including a plan to raise annual defence spending to 5% of GDP — as demanded by Nato. That would represent nearly half of the federal budget — around €225 billion — a transformation with sweeping political and social consequences. On Monday, Berlin confirmed that its military spending will reach 3.5% of GDP by 2029, with the 5% target to be reached in the years to come.
To achieve this, Merz rammed through a constitutional amendment to reform the “debt brake”, a fiscal mechanism that has been enshrined in Germany’s Basic Law since 2009 and has since capped the federal structural deficit. Despite pledging during the campaign that the debt brake would remain untouched — and failing to mention his rearmament plans — Merz reversed course immediately after his election. His government exploited the final session of the outgoing parliament — even though a new Bundestag had already been elected — to approve the change. The aim was explicitly stated: to unlock vast new funding for military expansion.
On 19 May, Germany’s top-ranking military official, Inspector General Carsten Breuer, issued a directive laying out a sweeping vision for the Bundeswehr. The goal: to achieve “full operational readiness” by 2029. The list of priorities is extensive and ambitious. It includes fully equipping and digitalising all troop formations, reviving conscription, building up anti-drone and missile defence, expanding offensive cyber and electronic warfare capabilities, and even developing space-based defence systems. Plans also include strengthening Germany’s role in Nato nuclear-sharing arrangements and enhancing the country’s long-range strike capacity — a major symbolic and strategic departure.
These changes are not just about military doctrine: they reflect a deeper transformation in Germany’s foreign policy posture. Merz has rapidly embraced a confrontational approach toward Russia, echoing some of the most hawkish voices in Nato. He has warned that Russia is “waging an aggressive hybrid war every day”, and declared that “there is a threat to us all from Russia”. Ahead of the Nato summit, he said that “we have to fear that Russia will continue the war beyond Ukraine”, implying that Russia represents a direct military threat to Europe in the near-to-medium term.
Meanwhile, just the other day, Reuters reported on a leaked Bundeswehr strategy document describing Russia as an “existential risk” and outlining Kremlin preparations for large-scale conflict with Nato “by the decade’s end”. The notion that Russia could launch a full-scale attack on Europe within a few years has become an official talking point among EU and Nato leaders — despite the fact that Moscow has neither the capacity nor strategic interest in such a move.
Immediately upon taking office, Merz launched an active foreign policy campaign. He toured European capitals to coordinate policy toward Moscow and Kyiv. One of his first acts was to travel to Kyiv alongside the leaders of France, Britain and Poland — a symbolic show of unity with Ukraine and a signal of defiance toward Trump, who had publicly advocated for a negotiated settlement with Russia. In Berlin, Merz hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and floated the delivery of German-made Taurus missiles, which have a range of more than 500 kilometres. Although domestic opposition forced him to partially retreat, he quickly pivoted to a new strategy: a €5 billion agreement to co-produce long-range missiles on Ukrainian territory using German technology.
Even more provocatively, Merz announced that Western-supplied weapons are no longer subject to range restrictions. “Ukraine can now also defend itself by attacking military positions in Russia,” he declared — effectively giving the green light for strikes deep into Russian territory with Western equipment. For the first time since 1945, Germany is now not only rearming at scale but actively encouraging direct military engagement with Russia, a nuclear-armed power. To underline this shift, Merz also confirmed that new German air defence systems would be delivered to Ukraine under a long-term, multi-year plan.
But what makes this rearmament campaign especially significant is that it is not limited to the military sphere. Merz’s vision is one of total mobilisation — a “whole-of-society” approach that seeks to prepare not just the armed forces, but the entire German economy and civil infrastructure for confrontation with Russia. Media, education, industrial policy and civil defence are all being aligned to support this new war footing. Dissent — whether political, journalistic, or academic — is increasingly stigmatised as subversive or even a threat to national security. Renowned journalists and intellectuals such as Ulrike Guérot, Gabriele Krone-Schmalz and Patrik Baab have been attacked and professionally marginalised for urging diplomatic solutions to the Ukraine conflict.
This is a profound rupture. For most of the postwar period, Germany deliberately defined itself in opposition to its militaristic past. It wielded influence not through tanks or missiles, but through trade, diplomacy and its leadership within the EU. The doctrine of Zivilmacht — civilian power — was not only a policy orientation, but a moral commitment forged in the ashes of Nazi militarism. Germany saw itself as a peacekeeper, not a power-broker. The Bundeswehr was a “parliamentary army”, structured to prevent misuse by the executive and embedded in multilateral institutions designed to constrain sovereign adventurism.
Merz’s aggressive anti-Russian rhetoric — and broader strategic posture — also marks a radical departure from Germany’s postwar tradition. Even his predecessor, Olaf Scholz, though a firm supporter of Ukraine, stopped short of authorising the use of Western-supplied weapons for strikes inside Russian territory — a red line that Merz has now crossed. Moscow has warned that such actions could trigger retaliatory strikes against Nato targets. Not long ago, this would have been unthinkable for a German chancellor.
Indeed, throughout most of the postwar period, despite the Cold War, German policy was aimed at improving relations with Russia, then the Soviet Union — a policy known as Ostpolitik (East politics). At its core, Ostpolitik was built on the conviction that political stability and peace in Europe could be achieved through closer economic ties and sustained dialogue with the Soviet Union. Rather than confrontation, it pursued détente — a strategy of engagement grounded in the idea that interdependence would foster trust, reduce tensions and gradually open space for political reconciliation.
This was the German consensus for over 50 years — essentially up until the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — though over time the country’s political leadership, most notably Merkel, found it increasingly difficult to balance Germany’s strategic interests with its transatlantic ties, amid growing US pressure to destabilise Russia via Ukraine. In her memoir, for example, Merkel recounts her commitment to getting Ukraine to implement the Minsk agreements, which were intended to bring an end to the civil war in eastern Ukraine. As Merkel recalls, talks ultimately collapsed due to powerful forces in the US and elsewhere who were advocating for a military resolution to the conflict. This was in no small part designed to drive a wedge between Russia and Europe, and Germany in particular.
Since 2022, however, the postwar consensus started being dismantled — and is now being radically overturned. But how did we go, in the span of just a few years, from Ostpolitik to Merz vowing to do “everything” to ensure the Nord Stream pipeline never reopens, embarking on a massive rearmament programme and even flippantly talking about helping Ukraine bomb Russia? Is this simply a “natural” reaction to Russia’s invasion and the new post-Ukraine geopolitical reality, further exacerbated by Trump’s decision to disengage from Europe?
According to some observers, this shift signals a dangerous resurgence of German nationalism and chauvinism — long simmering beneath the surface among segments of the elite, and even within broader society. For decades, this narrative goes, this latent impulse was restrained by the postwar consensus and contained within the framework of the US-led security order.
Now, with Washington increasingly preoccupied elsewhere and hinting at strategic disengagement from Europe, that restraint is eroding. According to this narrative, Germany is seizing the moment to reassert its dominance on the continent, using the vacuum left by American retrenchment to reclaim a hegemonic role — this time not through economic leverage alone, but through an assertive military posture, and doing so with a confidence that recalls far darker chapters of the 20th century.
But this interpretation is, in my view, mistaken. What we are witnessing is not a return of German nationalism, but its opposite. The policies now being implemented — from massive rearmament to the escalation of conflict with Russia — are not rooted in a cold pursuit of German national interests, but in their negation. They are the expression of a political class that has internalised the Atlantic ideology so thoroughly that it can no longer distinguish between national strategy and transatlantic loyalty.
“What we are witnessing is not a return of German nationalism, but its opposite.”
This is the long-term consequence of how the German question was “resolved” after the Second World War: not through the restoration of sovereignty, but through the absorption of Germany into the “collective West” under US strategic guardianship. As noted, throughout most of the postwar period, German leadership attempted to balance this with the pursuit of the national interest, but in the years following the coup in Ukraine, the “American” wing of the German establishment began taking over — and with Merz, a former BlackRock representative, it is firmly in the driving seat.
Now the leadership thinks only in terms of alignment with a Western project whose priorities are often defined elsewhere. In an op-ed published yesterday in the Financial Times, for example, Merz and Macron once again reaffirmed their commitment to the transatlantic relationship and Nato — which has always entailed Europe’s strategic subordination to Washington — despite their recent rhetorical gestures toward a more autonomous European policy.
It is telling in this sense that Merz, while publicly critical of Trump, is in fact executing Trump’s vision: pressuring Germany to drastically increase defence spending, take over leadership in the Ukraine war and sever energy ties with Russia. And yet they are presented as expressions of German and European sovereignty. Contrary to Merkel’s courageous stance against the US invasion of Iraq 20 years ago, Merz has also offered a full-throated endorsement of Trump’s recent attack on Iran.
The problem today then, is not German ambition, but German submission. And the tragedy is that this submission is being dressed up as strategic autonomy — a grim parody of sovereignty in an age of ideological dependency. If German leaders once understood that peace with Russia was in Germany’s fundamental interest, today’s leaders act as if permanent conflict is a condition of responsible statecraft. That reversal is not only dangerous for Germany, but for Europe as a whole.
The good news is that Germany’s militaristic ambitions collide with an unyielding reality: the Bundeswehr can’t find enough people to fight its wars. The military is short of 30,000 personnel, and one in four recruits quits within six months. Nato has asked Berlin to raise seven new brigades — requiring 60,000 more soldiers — a goal even Defence Minister Boris Pistorius calls unrealistic.
Pistorius says that for now conscription is “off the table”, not for lack of will but because it’s logistically impossible. “We don’t have the capacity — not in barracks, not in training,” he told Parliament. Still, he hinted that this might only be a transitory phase, subject to the military finding enough volunteers.
But the real barrier may be cultural, not logistical. A YouGov poll found that 63% of Germans aged 18-29 oppose conscription; just 19% would fight if Germany were attacked. Among those over 60 — long past draft age — support is strongest. As the researchers Chris Reiter and Will Wilkes put it: “This generational divergence is more than just an attitudinal shift. It reflects two vastly different lived realities. Postwar Germans came of age in a Cold War world with a shared civic mission: defend democracy against Soviet expansionism. In return, the state offered stable jobs, affordable housing, and a sense of national purpose.”
But this social contract has broken down, amid deteriorating social and economic prospects for young people. “For many, the call to serve in uniform doesn’t feel like patriotism — it feels like one more extraction by a system that hasn’t given back,” Reiter and Wilkes wrote.
“When you ignore our concerns and then ask us to die for the state — that’s absurd,” said influencer Simon David Dressler in a televised forum. This feeling was probably best articulated by 27-year-old German journalist Ole Nymoen in a book titled Why I Would Never Fight for My Country, in which the author addresses his generation’s widespread opposition to militarisation, conscription and rearmament. That disillusionment is also reshaping politics. In recent elections, nearly half of young voters rejected establishment parties, turning to Die Linke or the AfD — not necessarily out of ideological alignment, but as a rejection of Nato’s agenda and scepticism towards the rearmament push.
Ultimately, this may be the greatest obstacle to rearmament, in Germany and beyond: that a growing number of people are beginning to realise that their real enemies are not in Moscow, but within their own political and economic elites.
