As it became clear that President Trump was in earnest about reducing America’s military commitment to NATO and European defense, many leaders on the other side of the Atlantic were in a state of shock. Within a three-day period in mid-February, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth addressed the Ukraine Defense Contact Group and Vice President JD Vance spoke at the Munich Security Conference. Their message to Europe was unvarnished: It’s up to you to spend more.
One of the results of the stark change in mood is that the new chancellor of Germany, Friedrich Merz, recently declared his intention to make the Bundeswehr the strongest armed force in Europe.
“This is more than appropriate for the most populous and economically strongest country in Europe,” he told the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament. “Our friends and partners also expect this from us, and what’s more, they are actually demanding it.”
It was partly in support of modernizing and expanding the Bundeswehr that Merz rushed legislation through the outgoing parliament in March to amend the Basic Law, Germany’s constitution, to allow the structural budget deficit to increase beyond 0.35 percent of GDP, the nation’s so-called “debt brake.”
This has been a long time coming. The previous chancellor, Olaf Scholz, gave a stirring speech days after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 that promised a historic turning point — a “Zeitenwende” — in Germany’s defense and security policy. Despite a special €100 billion fund for military modernization, however, the Bundeswehr remains underfunded, poorly equipped and below strength.
Many of the military’s vehicles and much of its equipment are out of date, including the Luftwaffe’s Tornado strike aircraft and the army’s Marder infantry fighting vehicles. A decade ago, there were humiliating reports of broomsticks standing in for machine guns on exercises, while the defense minister, Ursula von der Leyen (now president of the European Commission) admitted that most of the Luftwaffe’s combat aircraft were not deployable.
A quip attributed General Lord Ismay, NATO’s first secretary general, is that the alliance was created in 1949 “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” The first of those imperatives is now as pressing as ever. The second has failed. The third seems to be the opposite of the current direction of travel.
The Bundeswehr faces a number of challenges. Recruitment is a major problem. The armed forces are currently just over 180,000-strong, but will need to expand to over 200,000 within the next few years to take on the responsibilities laid out for them by politicians. There are shortages in a number of specialist roles, and the Bundeswehr has yet to find an effective way of making itself a more attractive prospect for young recruits.
Until 2011, Germany had compulsory military service — although, with a nod to the country’s difficult history, there were many exemptions and it required only a six-month period. The defense minister, Boris Pistorius of the Social Democrats, is introducing a scheme under which 18-year-old men must complete a questionnaire on their willingness and fitness to serve in the Bundeswehr; they may then be invited to enlist, but it will remain voluntary. Pistorius has warned, however, that he could consider the reintroduction of conscription if voluntary recruitment proves insufficient.
These are all measures of which Washington should approve. However, German rearmament means substantial procurement of new equipment, and it may be here that Trump has created adverse effects. The talk in NATO and the EU now is of fostering the European defense sector through domestic acquisition, lessening dependence on the U.S.
In this respect, a modernizing Bundeswehr is not the major issue. Germany does not buy a great deal of American military equipment. The Luftwaffe has ordered 35 Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II strike aircraft (although there have been calls to cancel the purchase); it is procuring 60 Boeing CH-47F Chinook helicopters; and the German manufacturer Rheinmetall partners with Lockheed Martin in the Global Mobile Artillery Rocket System.
Elsewhere in Europe, America’s defense industry has always found good customers. Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Belgium and Poland are all F-35 purchasers, with orders pending from Finland, the Czech Republic, Greece and Romania. A dozen European countries still operate the M113 armored personnel carrier, and many smaller nations have a long history of relying on American military vehicles for reliability and interoperability.
Trump is often said to worship at the altar of the deal. Yet his personality is oddly unsuited to the compromises and trade-offs that deal-making necessarily involves. It may be, however, that Chancellor Merz’s determination to make Germany great again, to adapt a phrase, will encourage Europe to attend to its own defense, as the president has so long wanted.
The end result may be that Europe buys much less military equipment from major U.S. manufacturers. Lockheed, RTX, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Boeing and others will just have to understand.
Eliot Wilson, the co-founder of Pivot Point Group, was a senior official in the U.K. House of Commons from 2005 to 2016, including as clerk of the Defence Committee and secretary of the U.K. delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.
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