The Myth of Rearmament

Myth of Rearmament

Germany’s rearmament did not start in 2021; it was not a direct response to the war in Ukraine.
How military capital managed to make rearmament societally acceptable through targeted political interference, created the “underfunded Bundeswehr” myth, and initiated the new German values imperialism.

Reminder: The words highlighted in red are links to relevant Kritikpunkt articles.
We explicitly recommend reading our articles “Who Benefits from the War?”, about the capitalist interests behind continuing the war in Ukraine, “On the New Conscription“, which discusses the idea of a new military draft, and “Profits and Wars“, which addresses the power of the German arms industry.

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It’s been just over three years since Olaf Scholz announced the “Zeitenwende” (turn of the times) in his government statement.
And where the traffic light coalition failed to deliver the promised 400,000 new homes annually, to initiate the “mobilization policy” of the 2020s, or to rule for four years, at least the “Zeitenwende” has proven to be real.

Large Union as Interventionist Alliance

The restructuring of the Bundeswehr began in the early 1990s, as the collapse of the Soviet Union led to a new global hegemon.
The entire NATO started shortly after the Soviet Union’s fall, whose deterrence and “defense” had previously served NATO, to restructure its forces from large traditional formations into smaller, more mobile units.
In 1991, NATO decided, since the risk of a direct attack on NATO states was lower than ever, to adopt a strategic concept that would make it easier for member armies to conduct intervention wars—officially called “crisis management and conflict prevention.”
In 1994, Chancellor Kohl’s government adopted the first “White Paper of the Bundeswehr,” redefining the security concept and the purpose of the Bundeswehr in a unipolar world:
“From now on, all factors must be considered in a comprehensive political and strategic assessment. (…) Germany, due to its interests, international entanglements, and commitments, is affected by the full spectrum of risks. (…) An approach is required that considers political, economic, social, ecological, and military aspects for each specific case.” (White Paper, 1994)
In the same year, the Bundestag decided that the Bundeswehr could now be deployed outside NATO territory as well.

Interventionist foreign military operations of the Bundeswehr, which before 1990 were strictly humanitarian (e.g., in Ethiopia 1984, Agadir 1960), aimed to become more common.
At the same time, Germany’s first illegal war since 1933 was launched: against Yugoslavia.
Because, as Green Party leader and Foreign Minister Fischer said, “there should never be another Auschwitz,” the Bundeswehr joined the effort, under the pretext of stopping Milosevic’s war crimes, to benefit from the remnants of Europe’s last decaying real-socialist state.
Although France and Germany refused a land invasion for logistical reasons (the troop strength of 500,000 appeared too costly amidst ongoing NATO restructuring), Germany bombed Belgrade, Pristina, Novi Sad, Pančevo, and Podgorica with Tornados and diverted bombs in 428 missions.
The US call for Germany to “enforce a peaceful solution in Kosovo also with military means” (Gerhard Schröder) sent the Bundeswehr into Kosovo as part of KFOR after the war, to ensure Kosovo could establish itself as a state, seen by many as a stationary US aircraft carrier—since then, the Bundeswehr has been stationed in Kosovo for 26 years.
In 2001, Bundeswehr was also to invade Afghanistan under ISAF to fight Taliban, allegedly hiding Bin Laden.
After both the Soviet Union and the US failed to reshape Afghanistan to their liking, September 11 (also the origin of al-Qaeda from US-funded Mujahideen) provided the pretext to try once again to dominate Afghanistan.

The defense budget of the Federal Republic dropped from around 2.5% of GDP in 1991 to nearly 1.5% in 2001, troop numbers were reduced by about 51% (to 330,000), and many large formations not suited for the new intervention purpose were disbanded. The 2000 structural reform created a new “deployable forces” component for overseas missions—transforming the Bundeswehr from a NATO defense army into an intervention army capable of pursuing German interests abroad through smaller, more flexible, and professional units.

After 2006, when it became clear to the public that the Afghanistan war was accompanied by enormous humanitarian suffering and showed no end in sight, Merkel’s coalition declared the “culture of restraint” as the new military status quo.
The societal opposition to the military policy of the 1990s and 2000s was strong enough that Germany avoided participation in the 2011 Libya intervention—a decision that isolated Germany among its key allies; SPD criticized that abstaining meant “losing influence over the ongoing conflict”—a pity, indeed.
In 2009, German military spending was 1.31% of GDP, totaling €33.5 billion, up from its low of 1.07% (about €30 billion) in 2005, mainly due to the growing troop presence in Afghanistan and other overseas missions like “Operation Enduring Freedom” in the Horn of Africa and UNIFIL II in Lebanon.

“New Power – New Responsibility”

Following the Libyan abstention shock, between 2012 and 2013, the project “New Power – New Responsibility” was launched by think tanks “Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik” (SWP) and the “German Marshall Fund” (GMF), two influential semi-private think tanks with close ties to the arms industry.

Participants included some 50 representatives from the security policy establishment, representatives of the arms industry (including Martin Jäger of Daimler), officials from the Defense Ministry, Environment Ministry, Foreign Office, Bertelsmann Foundation, and Bundestag members such as Peter Beyer (CDU), Stefan Liebich (Left), Dietmar Nietan (SPD), and Omid Nouripour (Green).
The project aimed to become a key document for Germany’s foreign policy shift, stating:
„Germany has never been so prosperous, secure, and free as today. (…) With power and influence come responsibility. (…) Germany benefits more than almost any other country from globalization and the peaceful, open, and free world order that makes it possible“ – based on the realization that globalization has greatly enriched Germany’s “welfare“—meaning its GDP—leading to the conclusion that “Germany should see itself as a driver of international change in the long term (…) Germany will therefore be compelled to make compromises and concessions because the systemic interest in maintaining international rules and institutions is paramount (…) To protect the international order, Germany must be prepared to threaten or use military force if necessary.“

President Joachim Gauck then delivered his widely acclaimed speech at the 2014 Munich Security Conference, summarizing the core of the project: “Germany must be ready to engage earlier, more decisively, and more substantively in foreign policy. […] diplomatically, economically, culturally, and also militarily.”
The gradual decline of US global dominance in favor of China and Russia prompted Germany to initiate its new era of “values imperialism.”

At the same time, the NATO summit in Wales in 2014 developed the “Readiness Action Plan,” which envisaged permanent troop relocations to Estonia (under UK), Latvia (under Canada), Poland (under the US), and Lithuania (under Germany).
In addition to troop movements, NATO countries agreed to increase the “Spearhead Force” from 13,000 to 40,000 troops, and to establish eight “Ultra-rapid Reaction Forces” in Eastern Europe.
The number of exercises increased from 162 in 2014 to 280 in 2015.

Following the “New Power” concepts, the escalation of conflicts with Russia, and the massive increase of NATO presence in Eastern Europe, the Bundeswehr’s new White Paper in 2016 shifted its focus from an explicit intervention army to strengthening national and alliance defense capabilities, while maintaining intervention capacity.

The 2018 Bundeswehr concept included establishing a fully equipped heavy brigade by 2023, stationed in Lithuania in 2024—though enough soldiers for a permanent stationing have yet to be found.
By 2027, a division with three brigades and about 15,000 to 20,000 soldiers was planned to be ready; long-term, by 2032, the Bundeswehr aims to provide three fully equipped divisions for overseas missions.
Another new division, already realized under “O-Plan Deutschland,” is the “Home Defense Division,” inaugurated a few weeks ago, serving “internal security in crises” (including the ability to confront “non-peaceful” populations in wartime).

For the first time since 2006, the defense budget in 2016 increased significantly—an indication that the claim the German state “slashed” the Bundeswehr is false; quite the opposite.

“Such Junk Is the Bundeswehr”

The consequences of private-sector production of war materials, which is fundamentally what a capitalist army entails, were presented to the Bundeswehr in 2014: Overpriced and defective.
Especially after the events in Ukraine 2014, notably the legitimate but also Western-funded overthrow of pro-Russian President Yanukovych and the subsequent illegal annexation of Crimea, Germany saw its role in the EU as requiring all means to prevent Ukraine from returning to Russian control.
This included, besides the restructuring of the Bundeswehr back into a force capable of interstate war, a risk analysis of its weapons systems:
“Weapon systems are years late, billions over budget—and often don’t work properly or have defects.” (State Secretary for Equipment, Katrin Suder)
The arms industry not only delivered late but often supplied junk: “We don’t want to pay for mistakes made by industry,” criticized former Defense Minister von der Leyen.
The subsequent “confrontational course” against the arms industry (SZ) aimed to address and fix these deficiencies: The major arms projects examined were €12.9 billion over budget on average, with delays averaging 51 months.
The attempt to reassert political control over the arms industry failed spectacularly; the current 2024 arms report shows a cost overrun of €14.02 billion.
What could be spun from the public “junkyard debate” was the delusion that the Bundeswehr lacked funds—despite the clear risk analysis revealing that the “deterioration” was just normal private-sector quality decline.
The bourgeois press (notably the Springer press, which frequently receives funds from arms corporations, but also Die Zeit, Deutschlandfunk, SZ, etc.) took these studies and propagated the idea that the Bundeswehr lacked money—even though the Defense Minister had not claimed so.
The arms lobby responded with its own press release: “The study confirms the need for the industry’s long-standing demand for sufficient funds (…) The future operational capability of the armed forces also depends on this.” (BDI)—lol.
In a dialogue involving 70 representatives from the Defense Ministry and arms industry from November 2014, the development of military spending was discussed. The first report, published in June 2015, emphasized that a “gradual increase in the defense budget (Part 14) and its investment share” was necessary.

The myth of Bundeswehr underfunding was created; the media coverage of the “chronically underfunded” Bundeswehr paved the way for a new status quo, making a massive increase in military spending acceptable: “Who is responsible for the Bundeswehr resembling a junkyard? (…) The blame lies with a post-war society that never cared about its soldiers and has comfortably settled into pacifism. (…) The excuses must end.” (“For a new military culture!”, Focus)
This myth, and this is no speculation, resulted from arms industry initiatives to reframe the risk analysis results to their advantage.

Zeitenwende

The coalition government of 2021 adopted the costly NATO commitments for heavy large formations in its coalition treaty and announced plans to invest accordingly.
However, by early 2022, a significant funding gap emerged:
The Defense Ministry reported a need for about €38 billion more by 2026 compared to the Finance Ministry’s plans.
In 2023 alone, over €6 billion was missing, and this gap continued to grow in subsequent years.

Today, we laugh at the mere €6 billion because of Chancellor Scholz’s “Zeitenwende” speech, delivered just a week after the Ukraine invasion, in which he announced: “Better equipment, modern operational gear, more personnel – that costs a lot of money. We will set up a special fund for the Bundeswehr (…) The 2022 federal budget will allocate this special fund with €100 billion once.“
Since the defense budget gaps (which, again, are not organic but based on rearmament for a war against Russia) were already clear, this once-in-Germany special fund “Bundeswehr” was to be spread over several years to fill the gaps—although it makes little sense, as the fund is naturally credit-based. The shock in Europe over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine kept societal resistance low.
Especially German tank manufacturers quickly saw their chance for a billion-dollar deal and presented their offers.
On the very next day, Handelsblatt reported that Rheinmetall offered the government a €42 billion comprehensive arms package—including ammunition, helicopters, and tracked and wheeled vehicles, according to CEO Armin Papperger.
Competitor KMW also quickly made an offer, presenting a proposal worth up to €20 billion—including the Puma infantry fighting vehicle, modernization of the Leopard 2, the RCH 155 artillery system, and a combat vehicle based on the Boxer with the turret from the existing Puma.
Another note from Scholz’s announcement was the procurement of 35 F-35 fighter jets from the US, explicitly designed for nuclear warfare: “The (nuclear participation, KP) is only possible with fighter aircraft certified by the US government. Only the F-35 can bridge the gap in time before Tornados reach their age limit at the end of the decade” (Pistorius, 2025).

Myth of Rearmament

Now one might ask: what does all this have to do with the war in Ukraine?
First, it’s necessary to break the idea that rearmament is a consequence of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The new German rearmament did not begin in 2021 but at the latest in 2014 with the “New Power – New Responsibility” project, where the German arms lobby actively, visibly, and deliberately ended the era of “restraint” in military policy.

The fact that last week the largest arms package in the history of the Federal Republic was approved, and the broad public criticism is not about simply allocating 500 billion euros to rearmament but about the fact that these funds are credit-based and “our children will have to pay for it,” is a result of the “Junkyard Bundeswehr” debate, which in turn was initiated by arms capital interests.

This incredible farce—that Germany is fighting the war in Ukraine because “our freedom” is being defended there— is just as much a consequence of the new “values” militarism established by the “New Power” project.
One must realize: before this new “values imperialism” era, there was no societal support for war.
The German participation in Afghanistan was rejected by most of the population from the start; by 2009, only 27% supported continued military involvement (Spiegel).
Meanwhile, 75% of Germans did not trust the information about Afghanistan, which claimed that Germany was contributing to a just war.
The vast majority of the population did not trust the state’s war ambitions.

From 2014 onward, through think tanks and lobbying, the German arms industry has driven such an incredible shift in military discourse that today, it is the status quo that Germany (and its allies) defend democracy with their wars.

While the war in Afghanistan was still openly called an “intervention,” the German government already spoke of “responsibility for global democracy and peace” during the Mali intervention.
The direct and indirect influence on media coverage of the new rearmament era (notably through Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, who moved from the German Marshall Fund to the Federal Presidency and wrote the speeches of President Joachim Gauck, in which he first called rearmament a “democratic duty”) as well as massive lobbying have established a cultural norm of “rearmament against rogue states.”

When the SPD claims that “Germany benefits more than almost any other country from a rules-based international order and a globalized, interconnected world (and therefore) should credibly take on a leading role to defend these principles,” no one questions why.
The rearmament is no longer something that faces massive public resistance; it has become normal.

If one considers the fact that Russia’s main military budget of 126 billion USD is less than a tenth of NATO’s 1.5 trillion USD, or questions the idea that Russia will “simply continue after Ukraine,” then one is labeled a conspiracy theorist or Putin sympathizer.
And when Trump openly stated that the US supports Ukraine not out of charity but to serve its own imperial claims for resources, liberal opinion called that “blackmail” (Zeit) and a “disgrace for democracy” (SZ)—even though the EU pursues the same, if not more ruthless, capitalist interests in Ukraine.
The complete disappearance of any opposition to rearmament, or any chance to end the war in Ukraine that would prevent further slaughter of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian workers and poor, is not an organic phenomenon but a direct consequence of arms capitalist influence.

That this development, with the SPD’s approval of the 500-billion war credits, now also affects the left wing of the Bundestag, is also a result of this process.
The Left, which recently gained many new members, knows that a radical opposition to arms interests is not well received by those who have not yet broken with liberal expert opinions—and they don’t want to lose these new members either.

“Germany and Europe must rearm, even if the consequences for public finances will be dramatic. (…) How much more money would we have to spend? Based on other countries, an increase of military expenditure to €150 billion annually by the end of the decade seems realistic. (…)
How can and should such a package be financed? In the medium term, there is no alternative but to make tough budget decisions between ‘guns and butter'” (ifo chief Clemens Fuest).