Power Without Mandate: The Perils of Germany’s Military Ambition
In March 2024, CDU leader Friedrich Merz declared that Germany would build “the strongest conventional army in Europe.” The statement was not simply an escalation of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s 2022 Zeitenwende speech, it was a redirection, from moral posture to military ambition, from reactive coalition partner to self-conscious European power. For a nation long conditioned by constitutional pacifism and historical restraint, this shift signals something tectonic. And yet, the deeper question persists: not whether Germany can build such a force but whether it can do so with legitimacy, strategic clarity, and European coherence.
“What, exactly, is Germany rearming for?”
The rearmament now underway is unmatched in postwar German history. A €100 billion Sondervermögen (special budget), enacted in 2022, has been followed by structural increases in defence spending, with projections indicating a sustained rise above 2% of GDP, potentially reaching 3%, according to Hans Christoph Atzpodien, head of the BDSV - Bundesverband der Deutschen Sicherheits- und Verteidigungsindustrie (German Security and Defence Industry Association). Germany has committed to contributing seven brigades to NATO’s New Force Model, a programme aimed at readying 300,000 troops for high-readiness deployment by 2026. Permanent stationing of Bundeswehr troops in Lithuania has begun. And Defence Minister Boris Pistorius has reopened the debate on conscription. Yet despite this momentum, Germany’s military transformation appears to be unfolding faster than its strategic imagination, and far ahead of its political consensus. This is not a question of military capability alone. It is a question of mandate. What, exactly, is Germany rearming for? And can this ambition be stabilised - conceptually, institutionally, and democratically - before it begins to destabilise the very order it intends to defend?
The current Bundeswehr remains materially underpowered despite its growing budget. As of February 2025, only around 50% of Germany’s land forces are operationally ready, according to internal reporting cited by Reuters. Bundeswehr Inspector General Carsten Breuer, in statements to the Bundestag, has warned that Germany must prepare for a Russian military threat “within five to eight years”, yet his institution still lacks sufficient vehicles, long-range munitions, digital command systems, and deployable reserves. The Bundesrechnungshof’s (Federal Audit Office) 2025 audit confirms these deficits. Of the €100 billion fund approved in 2022, less than one-third has been effectively spent. Chronic inefficiencies in procurement, infrastructure degradation, and inadequate digitalisation have left key units unable to deploy. The 2024 Armed Forces Commissioner report by Eva Högl cites command posts still relying on analogue communication, barracks in structural disrepair, and logistical systems dating to the 1980s. This is not merely a question of underfunding. It is a structural and cultural failure: a force expanding in volume but not in function.
“Amnesia obscures a crucial insight: Germany’s constraints are not merely normative, they are historical, operational, and institutional. They require not just new budgets but new thinking.”
Germany’s military is not without precedent in overseas deployments. In Afghanistan, under the NATO-led ISAF mission, the Bundeswehr was the third-largest contributor. In Kosovo, German troops played a key role in NATO’s KFOR stabilisation force. Maritime operations under EU NAVFOR and NATO’s Operation Ocean Shield saw German vessels involved in counter-piracy off the Horn of Africa. These operations revealed Germany’s capacity for limited projection, yet also its political caution: strict caveats, limited rules of engagement, and an aversion to sustained combat exposure. And yet today’s debate unfolds as though Germany’s strategic posture is being constructed from scratch. That amnesia obscures a crucial insight: Germany’s constraints are not merely normative, they are historical, operational, and institutional. They require not just new budgets but new thinking.
The Bundeswehr’s growth has not been matched by strategic clarity. Unlike France’s long-standing doctrine of expeditionary autonomy (outlined in its Livre Blanc) or the UK’s Integrated Review, which prioritises rapid deployment and global influence, Germany lacks a published defence doctrine that defines the Bundeswehr’s strategic purpose. The 2023 Verteidigungspolitische Richtlinien (defense policy guidelines), Germany’s latest high-level framework, repeats familiar abstractions: “capability,” “readiness,” “partnership.” But these are not doctrine, they are descriptors. The German Institute for Defence and Strategic Studies (GIDS), in its 2024 position paper Kampfkraft ohne Kompass (combat power without a compass), called for a comprehensive doctrinal foundation grounded in deterrence, hybrid threat response, and European force integration. That call remains unanswered. What, then, is the Bundeswehr for? Territorial defence? Crisis intervention? Cyber-resilience? The lack of clarity undermines planning, procurement, and operational readiness. As political philosopher Michael Walzer noted, the morality, and by extension the legitimacy, of war begins not with violence but with intention.
“It is not hard to imagine a future in which Berlin and Warsaw compete, not coordinate, for operational leadership on NATO’s eastern flank.”
Nowhere is this strategic ambiguity more consequential than in Germany’s relationship with Europe. Paris, long the advocate of European strategic autonomy, has expressed open frustration with Berlin’s procurement choices. Germany’s selection of Israel’s Arrow 3 missile system and U.S. F-35 aircraft (as replacements for the aging Tornado nuclear-capable fleet) has come at the expense of European systems such as the Franco-Italian SAMP/T and the delayed but symbolic Future Combat Air System (FCAS), a trilateral effort between France, Germany, and Spain. The result is fragmentation. As Le Monde reported in 2024, French officials now privately question whether Germany’s rearmament truly serves Europe’s collective interest or reflects a return to national primacy under a European flag. And while the European Union’s Strategic Compass calls for joint procurement and operational interoperability, Germany continues to channel most of its investments outside EU frameworks. Meanwhile, Poland has become an assertive counterweight. With defence spending at 4.3% of GDP in 2025 and over 1,000 newly acquired K2 tanks, HIMARS rocket systems, and F-35 aircraft, Warsaw now fields one of NATO’s most rapidly expanding land forces. But Poland’s vision is national-realist, not integrationist. It is not hard to imagine a future in which Berlin and Warsaw compete, not coordinate, for operational leadership on NATO’s eastern flank. Germany, in seeking to lead, risks unbalancing the continent it aims to secure.
One of the most ethically volatile elements of Germany’s rearmament is also the least discussed: its continued role in NATO’s nuclear sharing programme. With U.S. warheads stationed at Büchel Air Base and the Bundeswehr acquiring F-35s as their future delivery platforms, Germany remains an integral link in the alliance’s nuclear deterrence chain. Yet there is no parliamentary debate, no public referendum, no civic deliberation. Political scientist Ulrike Franke has argued that this silence undermines democratic legitimacy. In a country where nuclear weapons remain a cultural and constitutional taboo, their continued presence, without any public reckoning, poses a strategic paradox: a state participating in deterrence while denying it moral ownership. This is not a merely procedural omission. It risks turning Germany into a strategic actor by stealth, a democracy wielding force without democratic validation.
“The Bundeswehr suffers from an internal culture misaligned with its goals.”
At home, the Bundeswehr faces not hostility but distance. According to a 2025 Allensbach Institute poll, only 41% of Germans aged 18–29 support reintroducing conscription, even as the Defence Ministry explores phased models inspired by Sweden and Finland. Recruitment continues to fall short of target levels. Bundeswehr University scholar Frank Sauer notes that the infrastructure for conscription (training centres, administrative logistics, legal oversight) has largely been dismantled. More fundamentally, the Bundeswehr suffers from an internal culture misaligned with its goals. Studies from the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik highlight persistent hierarchies, limited mission command implementation, and an aversion to decentralised leadership; all features ill-suited to hybrid warfare and rapid deployment. Unlike France’s expeditionary Commandement des opérations extérieures (commandment of external operations), the Bundeswehr lacks an agile operational identity. Without cultural reform, even advanced platforms risk becoming institutional dead weight. This legitimacy gap is not only a recruitment issue, it is a civic one. In a state that sees diplomacy as identity, warfighting cannot simply be funded, it must be justified.
“Power without trust may intimidate enemies, but it also unsettles allies.”
Some will argue that in an age of Russian revanchism, German rearmament is overdue and doctrinal debates are distractions. They will say doctrine can follow capacity. That deterrence does not wait for deliberation. That is not wrong, but it is incomplete. Power without trust may intimidate enemies, but it also unsettles allies. Without clarity of purpose and civic engagement, military expansion will generate suspicion abroad and apathy at home. A rearmed Germany that is not also a strategically transparent Germany risks losing the very legitimacy that underpins its deterrent value.
To close the gap between ambition and mandate, Germany must now act with intent. It must produce a public-facing, parliament-endorsed defence doctrine, like France’s Livre Blanc or the UK’s Integrated Review. It must revitalise FCAS, invest in modular European procurement platforms, and condition acquisitions on strategic interoperability with European partners. It must open Bundestag debate on nuclear policy, reintroduce civic education on deterrence and European security, and invite younger generations into national service frameworks modelled on Sweden’s civil conscription. And it must retool the Bundeswehr itself, not only in hardware, but in leadership, agility, and institutional culture.
Germany is rearming. But to lead Europe’s defence, it must first lead in defining what defence means. That requires clarity, humility, and imagination. The test before Germany is not technical but ethical: will it become a power that Europe can trust, or merely one that it must tolerate? The question is not whether it can build the strongest army in Europe. It is whether it can do so while remaining recognisably European. Power without purpose is provocation. But power anchored in democratic mandate, doctrinal clarity, and European cooperation, that is the foundation of true leadership.
Sources
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