Is it the political context? While in a few days new regional elections are due to be held in Brandenburg, which should be marked by the strong rise of parties hostile to supporting Ukraine, the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel) published an alarming report on Germany’s military spending on Monday 9 September, the conclusions of which will not fail to interfere with the debate on the 2025 budget that is opening in the Bundestag.
The document takes a stark look at Berlin’s rearmament efforts since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, highlighting the contrast between the promises made, in a context of great emotion, and the money actually spent. “The world has entered a new era, said Chancellor Olaf Scholz in a historic speech in the Bundestag on 27 February 2022. It is clear that we must invest much more in the security of our country, to protect our freedom and our democracy. With a clearly stated objective: “An efficient, ultra-modern and progressive federal army that reliably protects us.”
Two and a half years later, the results are disappointing, and are worrying experts at the Kiel Institute. “Germany did not substantially increase its investments in the eighteen months from February 2022 and only accelerated them at the end of 2023”The authors note that it will take the German army 100 years to regain the level of equipment it had in 2004, the year taken as a reference, although the capabilities of the Russian arms industry have significantly increased losses in the past two years, even beyond the equipment losses in Ukraine. Moscow could produce the entire arsenal of weapons for the German army in just over six months.
4,000 tanks in 1992, 339 in 2021
This latest effort by Germany is considered “too weak to reach it”while the federal government can barely replace the equipment sent to Ukraine. In short, “The change of era is, for the moment, only an empty word”said IfW Kiel President Moritz Schularick: “Despite the rhetoric of changing times [die Zeitenwende]The gap between the military capabilities of Germany and Russia continues to widen. »
The institute documents the significant decline in Bundeswehr equipment since the 1990s, across all six main weapon categories: Germany had 4,000 combat tanks in 1992, then another 2,400 in 2004, but only 339 in 2021, while the number of combat aircraft has halved in twenty years (to 226 in 2021). A “peace dividend” that would have allowed the country to save between 400 and 600 billion euros over the past three decades.
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