Germany re-arms: what does it mean for Europe?
Paris sees risks for its industry and the continent’s sovereignty in Berlin’s rapid defence build-up
Anne-Sylvaine Chassany in Berlin and Leila Abboud in Paris
A month after writing on “the perils of German power”, historian Liana Fix received an unusual dinner invitation in Washington.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz was in town in March for talks with Donald Trump and wanted to see the German researcher privately to debate her article, which had taken Berlin by surprise.
In the essay, Fix outlined how her country’s ambitious rearmament plans could go wrong — from industrial competition with countries such as France to a scenario in which the far-right, Russia-friendly Alternative for Germany party used military clout to bully its neighbours.
Germany, she wrote, needed to contain its hegemonic inclinations and find a way to reassure its EU neighbours.
Government officials maintain that such concerns are exaggerated and not reflected in their interactions with their European allies, which are instead urging Germany to rebuild its defences as fast as possible.
The essay appeared to hit a nerve all the same.
Because of a huge surge in spending set in motion by Merz, Germany’s defence budget is set to match the combined total of the UK and France by the end of this decade and is already starting to shift the balance of power within Europe.
Even before meeting Fix in Washington, the chancellor had publicly sought to counter her thesis.
While Berlin would take a leading role in defending the continent, he told the Munich Security Conference in February that it would be on purely multilateral terms: “Partnership-based leadership: yes; hegemonic fantasies: no. Never again will we Germans go it alone.”
Merz has repeatedly depicted the historic rearmament as a response to the threat posed by Russia, the US’s wavering commitment to Europe under Trump and Germany’s own evolution as a modern western democracy.
It is widely seen across Europe as necessary, urgent and overdue.
But the spending plans are also stirring unease, particularly in France and Poland — not so much at the return of German military power in the heart of Europe, some eight decades after the war, as at the practical consequences for the continent’s defence industry.
Despite Fix’s headline-grabbing argument, the worry in Paris in particular has less to do with 20th-century great-power politics than with 21st-century considerations about the power of Berlin’s purse.
Germany’s rapid rise in spending risks locking in key procurement choices for decades, potentially extending reliance on US systems such as fighter jets and air defences, while boosting German industry without guaranteeing the country’s neighbours a share of the spoils.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz speaks to navy personnel aboard the frigate Bayern. The country’s defence budget is set to match the combined total of the UK and France by the end of this decade © Getty Images“Germany has been asked to re-arm but at the same time, I see people in Paris wary of this massive rearmament and the widening gap between defence spending in France and Germany,” says Jacob Ross, a Paris-based analyst at the German Council on Foreign Affairs.
“Germany has been throughout history in the difficult position of being perceived as too powerful or too big within Europe’s balance of power,” he adds.
“Many thought that European integration had resolved that question.”
Still, the sheer scale of Germany’s plans — and how much they dwarf those of its European allies — is a break with postwar history.
With many EU countries fiscally constrained, much will depend on Berlin to fill the security gaps a diminished US presence would leave.
Merz has promised to rise to that challenge, vowing to turn the Bundeswehr into “Europe’s largest conventional army” once again.
After loosening its constitutional debt brake last year to unlock virtually unlimited spending on the sector, Berlin intends to allocate €779bn to defence between 2026 and 2030 — more than double the previous five years.
By the end of the decade — more than five years ahead of the 2035 target date — the country would surpass Nato’s goal of spending 3.5 per cent of GDP on the military, with an annual budget reaching almost €190bn.
“Germany is not only capable of spending more on defence, it is doing so and ahead of schedule,” says Claudia Major, head of the German Marshall Fund’s Berlin office.
“There is both an aspiration from Merz, and an expectation from Europe, for Germany to lead.
Two countries are not comfortable with that: France and Poland.”
Neighbours’ reservations
A rift with Paris on defence would strain the Franco-German relationship, long built on mutual co-operation at the heart of the EU.
For some French old hands, history still weighs heavily.
“The question of German domination has always been an unspoken truth” between France and Germany, says Jacques Attali, a former adviser to the late president François Mitterrand.
“For the Germans, the US has provided a guarantee against their own demons.
They think that if the US withdraws, maybe these demons could re-emerge.”
Few of those now exercising power in France believe Germany could again pose a military danger.
But with the geopolitical landscape changing so much, Paris is pressing Berlin to anchor its ambitions within a European framework.
“Germany is expected to lead within Nato, while reassuring EU partners that all this won’t put into question the European integration process, which was built on the promise that no single nation would dominate,” Ross says.
Nato itself is viewed differently by the two countries.
Germany is constitutionally forbidden from sending armed missions abroad without parliamentary approval and an international mandate — practically speaking from Nato, the EU or the UN — and hosts US nuclear weapons on its soil.
By contrast, France has a more complicated relationship with the US-led alliance, often deploying troops unilaterally and priding itself on its independent nuclear force de frappe.
In Poland, which for centuries was fearful of both Germany and Russia, politicians have issued more vocal warnings.
Mateusz Morawiecki, the former prime minister from the rightwing Law and Justice party, wondered in an essay last summer if a Germany “no longer bound by pacifist principles”, could “return to close co-operation with a colonial, imperial Russia”.
Foreign minister Radosław Sikorski of the centre-right Civic Coalition told the Polish parliament last year: “As long as Germany is a member of the EU and Nato, I am more afraid of a German aversion to armament than I am of the German army.”
But in a speech in Berlin in 2022, he also cautioned: “Don’t re-arm on a purely national basis.”
He added that some would question “whether Germany will re-arm against Russia or Poland”.
The country’s ambassador to Berlin, Jan Tombiński, emphasises the goal of ensuring that Germany’s spending spree strengthens deterrence against Russia — Poland’s most pressing threat — rather than fragments it.
“We must not be prisoners of past wars,” he says.
The key question is “what we can do together with this money, and to what extent it helps us”.
The military-industrial complex
In Paris, concerns centre on Germany’s industrial might and its reliance on the US and non-European suppliers.
French officials and defence experts warn that Berlin is pursuing a national approach to rebuilding its defence sector while also putting in big orders for US systems, despite pledges to favour European procurement and “strategic autonomy”.
“There was an implicit idea that Germany was the junior partner on military matters — Germany does not want to be the junior partner anymore, on the industrial and strategic levels,” says Johanna Möhring, a researcher at the École Normale Supérieure and the University of Grenoble-Alpes.
Mistrust cuts both ways and leads to industrial competition, according to Paul Maurice, a specialist of Franco-German relations at the Ifri think-tank.
“There is always scepticism in Germany of French calls for European sovereignty because it is seen as France just promoting its industry,” he says.
French officials do not think the country will be displaced as a leading military power in Europe because it has the nuclear bomb and a seat at the UN Security Council.
But Maurice argues that “an influx of so much money will change the face of the European defence industry by increasing the size and reach of German companies”.
Indeed, the fact that Germany, unlike Britain and France, does not have a costly nuclear deterrent to maintain means that even more money is available for conventional armaments.
The difficulties of joint projects such as the Franco-German Future Combat Air System are a symptom of the strain.
Emboldened by Berlin’s expanded defence budget and a desire to boost domestic knowhow, Airbus’s German-based defence unit has been locked in a dispute over decision-making, workshare and intellectual property with France’s Dassault Aviation on the shared fighter jet, leaving the programme on life support.
Another rift has opened over Germany’s Sky Shield project, which seeks to bring together a club of countries to build European air defences.
Germany and the initiative have emphasised the purchase of US and Israeli air defence systems, while excluding a Franco-Italian version.
Germany also plans to spend €35bn to launch its own military satellites, in a competing project to an EU initiative.
Many in Berlin suggest that France’s warnings stem from a fear of losing the country’s status as the continent’s security power and its defence-industrial powerhouse.
“The French are wary, but it says more about French insecurities,” says Major of the GMF.
In Berlin security circles, there is no shortage of criticism at the government’s defence policy.
Many agree Germany should reduce military reliance on Washington for key systems such as F-35 jets and Patriot air-defence systems.
But distrust about France is never far away.
Nico Lange, a former adviser to former German defence minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, says he is supportive of the French concept of “European sovereignty”.
But he adds: “Being the biggest spender, Germany has a responsibility to spend the money in a European way, but that should not necessarily mean that money is used to buy French equipment.”
It does not help that “everybody working on Franco-German projects has the feeling it’s like going to the dentist every day — no fun,” he says.
Some senior German politicians have also warned over a possible backlash against Rheinmetall, its sprawling tanks-to-ammunition maker which has been building plants and setting up joint ventures across Europe.
The worry they voice is that if Rheinmetall becomes too big in Europe at the expense of other countries’ companies that could in turn fuel resentment towards Berlin.
Still, government officials point to staunch support from the Baltic and Nordic countries for Germany’s defence push.
Lithuania, for instance, has welcomed a German brigade on its soil to bolster Nato’s eastern flank against Russia.
The officials also highlight Merz’s commitment to close defence co-operation with Paris.
Last month, the chancellor and French President Emmanuel Macron agreed to explore closer collaboration aimed at signalling to adversaries that France’s nuclear protection could extend to Germany.
Under the proposals, Berlin could participate in joint exercises and could deploy its conventional forces on support missions for France’s nuclear assets.
While plans are at an early stage, German and French officials portray it as a milestone that would cement Paris and Berlin’s defence co-operation further.
France is also exploring such ties on nuclear weapons with about half a dozen other European countries.
As for the prospect of an AfD-backed government, some analysts say the more pressing far-right challenge lies in France, with the nationalist, Eurosceptic Rassemblement National leading in polls ahead of the 2027 presidential elections.
“The question for Germany is why it should tie itself to France if the far right is close to taking power there?” says Hans Kundnani, a foreign policy researcher.
Germany’s road to rearmament
Fix, the German historian based in Washington, describes her country’s defence shift “as a big historic moment, on par with reunification” adding “something new is coming and we don’t know exactly what”.
“For decades being part of the west defined German identity,” she adds.
“What does a foreign and defence policy without the US at its centre look like? No one really knows.”
She argues that Germans are shedding a long-held self-image as a purely civilian power.
After its re-establishment in 1955 during the cold war, the German army became the largest land force in western Europe, but was not conceived as a fully autonomous fighting force.
The military’s purse strings are tightly held by the Bundestag, which can veto procurement decisions exceeding €25mn.
In the past, Germany’s military planners had to contend with both popular movements, such as the 1980s protests against the deployment of US nuclear missiles, and structural under-investment after the end of the cold war.
Yet in practice, German foreign policy had shifted, laying the groundwork for today’s embrace of military strength, Fix says.
“We liked to think we didn’t like military power, that we were more enlightened, more civilised,” she says.
"But this identity hasn’t matched reality for a long time.”
German soldiers were deployed in Afghanistan, but were met with hostility at home, she notes.
Public opinion still reflects that ambivalence.
Nearly three quarters of Germans support plans to double defence spending, according to a Körber Foundation poll.
Yet 61 per cent still oppose Germany taking a leading military role in Europe.
One person’s life can sometimes capture the country’s agonised postwar attitude to military force.
Winfried “Winni” Nachtwei, a veteran Green politician, told guests at his 80th birthday in Münster this month how he had given up the pacifism he avowed half his life ago to become a supporter of rearmament.
Still enthusiastic about the 1980s anti-nuclear protests, he has since embraced the causes of Kosovo, Afghanistan and Ukraine.
“This is not just another war,” Nachtwei says of Vladimir Putin’s full-scale 2022 invasion.
“It aims to destroy Ukraine’s statehood, its democracy, and to destabilise Europe as a whole.”
Europe’s largest democracy now bears “a particular responsibility for collective security”, he adds. “We cannot stand on the sidelines.”
Will Germany get bang for its buck?
One remaining question in France is how militarily capable and ready Germany really will be.
There is a deep-seated belief that Berlin lacks the strategic knowhow and willingness to deploy its military, as shown in its lack of commitment to sending troops to support Ukraine after a ceasefire, unlike France itself and Britain.
General Nicolas Richoux, a former French defence attaché in Berlin, says Merz’s pledge to make Germany the most powerful land army in Europe made him “chuckle”.
For the German army to become a credible deterrent, it “would have to be willing one day to pay the price in blood”, he says.
“Given its history marked by a strong sense of pacifism, that doesn’t seem likely.”
Richoux sees a strong German conventional army as a positive — complementing, not supplanting, the French armed forces.
While he says France’s €55bn defence budget finances the country’s fleet of nuclear bombs, jets and submarines as well as Europe’s most capable military, for Germany “the keyword is ‘catching-up’”.
Lange, the former adviser at the defence ministry in Berlin, adds that Paris should worry more about German inertia than German dominance.
“Everybody in the system suddenly has big trousers because of the money, but the inclination is to change nothing,” he says.
“The structures, the people and the military bureaucracy are the same — why would you expect it to produce different results?”
Indeed data suggests Berlin is prioritising existing systems, with more than 80 per cent of future defence spending earmarked for legacy capabilities, according to the Kiel Institute.
The share of planned spending in new defence technology will not exceed 5 per cent of total investments and the share of research and development will stagnate.
Ultimately, the real dispute between Berlin and Paris may be over financing.
German officials suspect Paris is invoking fears of German dominance to get Berlin to back EU-level joint borrowing for defence.
The idea is championed by Macron but opposed by Merz, who is worried about a backlash from his Christian Democratic Party or CDU.
The EU has offered the €150bn Security Action for Europe fund, which provides cheap loans to invest in defence.
But Paris is pushing to broaden the approach to areas such as satellites, intelligence and deep-strike capabilities — which form the backbone of modern warfare.
German officials and senior CDU MPs reject the notion, arguing that Merz’s spending plans have already all but exhausted his political capital with his debt-averse party.
EU joint borrowing would be the quickest way to propel the AfD to power in the debt-averse nation, one government insider says.
Some in the German establishment strongly disagree, however.
Moritz Schularick of the Kiel Institute, who advises the German defence ministry, has called for joint EU financing as a first step to foster joint procurement.
“Germany needs to realise that it cannot lift Europe’s military capabilities alone,” says Carlo Masala, professor of international politics at the Bundeswehr Munich university, adding that “even the CDU needs to make the extra mile” on joint borrowing.
From Washington, Fix also argues that domestic politics, not Europe’s interests, is holding Merz back.
“Our political leaders don’t see the risk of involuntary hegemony,” she says.
“They have forgotten about the big European bargains: if we are getting bigger, we should ask ourselves what we can offer to the other EU countries.”
Additional reporting by Raphael Minder in Warsaw
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