The Russian invasion in Ukraine is in the process of transforming Germany at an accelerated rate by breaking down all the locks which until now framed its policy in matters of defense and diplomacy.
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In recent days, the mobilization of Germans against the war in Ukraine has resulted in numerous demonstrations, particularly in Berlin where on Sunday, the organizers mobilized at least 100,000 people according to the police.
“The world has entered a new era” with the invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops, which constitutes “an infamous violation of international law”, insisted Chancellor Olaf Scholz, announcing a sharp increase in his military spending in the years to come, before the deputies gathered on Sunday in an exceptional session.
“The world after will no longer be the same as the world before,” he insisted, also promising the immediate release of an envelope of 100 billion euros to modernize his army, notoriously under-equipped. .
“We are going from now on, from year to year, to invest more than 2% of our Gross Domestic Product in our defence”, he specified, which therefore goes beyond the objective that fixed by the NATO countries, namely aiming for 2% of the national GDP.
Berlin is even ready for this to increase its debt.
Even more explicitly, the head of diplomacy, the ecologist Annalena Baerbock, recognized that Germany was “breaking with a particular and solitary form of restraint in foreign and security policy”.
“Naked” army
“If our world is different, our politics must be too,” she insisted.
The government of Olaf Scholz, in power for less than three months, is making a major change of course in a country which has significantly reduced the number of its army since the end of the Cold War and which, in recent years, has been dragging feet to comply with the commitments of the Atlantic Alliance in terms of military spending, regularly attracting the wrath of the United States.
Since the country’s reunification in 1990, the strength of the Bundeswehr has fallen from around 500,000 to just 200,000 today.
Deficiencies in the equipment of the Bundeswehr have been pointed out regularly for years, due to insufficient investment.
Army chief Alfons Mais even caused a sensation on Thursday by assuring that the Bundeswehr was “more or less naked”.
But the invasion of Ukraine acted as an electric shock in a country where pacifism has been deeply rooted in the population since the mistakes and horrors of Nazism and which relies largely on the United States for its military protection. .
The Greens, in particular, partners in Mr. Scholz’s tripartite coalition with the Social Democrats and the Liberals, have a long anti-militarist tradition.
On Saturday, Berlin had already agreed to deliver weapons to Ukraine at war after having refused to do so for a long time despite increasingly harsh reprobations, in particular from EU countries bordering Ukraine, in recent weeks.
Russian gas dependency
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who had not spared his criticism of Berlin on this highly sensitive subject in German opinion, welcomed this decision, even calling on German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to “continue like this” in “the anti-war coalition”.
Berlin authorized the delivery to Kiev of 1,400 anti-tank rocket launchers, 500 Stinger surface-to-air missiles and nine howitzers.
Since the Second World War, with rare exceptions, Germany has refused to deliver “lethal” weapons to conflict zones.
However, this position had become less and less tenable politically since the outbreak of the invasion of Ukraine on Thursday.
In another volteface, the German government finally accepted the exclusion of Russian banks from the Swift interbank platform, a key cog in global finance.
Berlin has so far feared being penalized in return for its deliveries of Russian gas, oil and coal, on which the country is closely dependent for heating.
But here too, the German position had aroused blame, particularly from Poland and Ukraine.
Berlin also announced on Tuesday the suspension of the pharaonic construction site of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, on which it was counting to accomplish its energy transition.