GERMANY - German militarism is assuming ever more openly aggressive forms. Following the German parliament’s (Bundestag) decision on Friday to massively increase the military budget, a discussion has now been launched about providing the German army (Bundeswehr) with nuclear weapons.
In Monday’s edition of the conservative daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, co-editor Berthold Kohler called in a piece headlined “The utterly unimaginable” for the new foreign minister to “subject German foreign policy to an overhaul, particularly with regard to its security policy aspects.” A “simple ‘same as before’ along the well-worn path” could not be permitted.
The new “path” advocated by Kohler consists of “higher spending on defence,” the “revival of compulsory military service,” and something which was for “German minds completely inconceivable, the question of our own nuclear deterrent.”
Kohler’s demand reveals what has been intensively discussed and prepared behind the backs of the population. Just a few days earlier, Christian Democratic Union (CDU) security policy expert Roderich Kiesewetter called in an interview with Reuters for the construction of a European nuclear deterrent, focusing above all on the expansion of the French and British nuclear programmes.
The FAZ is now going one step further. According to Kohler, the “French and British arsenals [are] too weak in their current condition.” Like Der Spiegel prior to the US election, he raised the demand for Germany’s own nuclear weapons and justified this by citing the alleged “withdrawal of America from the world,” which would continue under a future President Trump and further encourage China and Russia “to expand their areas of domination and spheres of influence.”