As of: February 12, 2024, 4:45 a.m
By: Karsten Hinzmann
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Fewer troops, less material, less structure than promised.
The Bundeswehr is lagging behind on many of its commitments to NATO and must report now.
(Symbolic image) © Jens Büttner/dpa-Zentralbild/dpa/Symbolbild
Germany's top soldier will now report to NATO: The Bundeswehr can only deliver what it promised later.
If any.
Munich – Carsten Breuer is afraid;
Fear that Vladimir Putin reads German newspapers.
That's why Germany's highest-ranking soldier is only giving hints, but they are already reverberating like a clap of thunder: The Bundeswehr will only be able to realize some of the competencies it had promised to NATO later than planned, Inspector General Carsten Breuer told
Welt am Sonntag;
some now, but others “only in three or four years”.
The Munich Security Conference will take place in Munich from February 16th to 18th - for the 60th time, government and business representatives as well as experts from the military and science will meet to exchange ideas.
At the Hotel Bayerischer Hof, debates take place on an open stage about topics that threaten the world.
Breuer will report that.
In detail.
For example, he may have to explain why the digitalization of communications ended in Waterloo for the Bundeswehr: The federal government had promised NATO that the Bundeswehr would provide a fully equipped division with three brigades and 15,000 soldiers from 2025 onwards.
The preparatory exercises and certifications are already scheduled for this year;
For this, around 10,000 vehicles with digital communication according to NATO standards would have to be available, as Die Welt reported.
The devices manufactured in Germany are also ready for installation - but they do not fit into the intended vehicles and the adjustment takes more time than expected.
Lieutenant General Mais: Bundeswehr leadership doubts its own promises
Without this equipment, the division would not be able to lead with outdated, analog communications technology and would not be able to communicate securely with partner nations.
The commitment to NATO would therefore not be kept.
Germany wants to keep 35,000 soldiers on very high alert for NATO's new deterrence and defense strategy.
This includes a fully equipped and operational army division from 2025 and another division at the beginning of 2027 - such a large unit includes up to 30,000 soldiers.
A promise that Lieutenant General Alfons Mais dismissed as unreal to the
Süddeutsche Zeitung
last year: He assumes that this army division, which is supposed to consist of around 15,000 soldiers, will only be operational on a "conditional basis", said the inspector of the army branch.
“Excuse me, I am not convinced” – the Siko
The Munich Security Conference started in 1963 as a small-scale “international defense encounter” at the height of the Cold War as well as the Berlin and Cuban crises.
Conference founder Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist, who was a Wehrmacht officer in the resistance group led by Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg in 1944, gathered mainly representatives from NATO states in Munich.
Henry Kissinger and the future Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, among others, took part in the first conference.
She experienced memorable moments - like in 2003, when the looming war in Iraq exposed tensions within NATO.
The then German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer (Greens) questioned the US claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction on an open stage in Munich and called out to his counterpart Donald Rumsfeld: "Excuse me, I am not convinced." In 2007 he spoke to Vladimir Putin for the first time a Russian president at the Munich Security Conference.
– he attacked NATO sharply.
The Siko, as it is called for short, is privately organized and largely financed by sponsors and partners.
The federal government supports them in the context of public relations work - the Bundeswehr also helps;
it is considered a large contact exchange.
Source: Federal Ministry of Defense
The Bundeswehr is in short supply on everything: personnel, equipment, ammunition.
“At the moment, even if the stocks of the entire army were used, 256 of a total of 1,139 positions would be available at less than 60 percent,”
Bild
quotes from a letter from the army inspector.
According to him, the associations are incapable of ensuring national and alliance defense straight away: “We currently do not have a complete German brigade that would be able to carry out a combat mission over several weeks immediately and without a long preparation period,” he said
Süddeutsche Zeitung
.
A brigade with around 5,000 soldiers is actually significantly smaller than a division.
The statement shows how far the Bundeswehr is lagging behind the goals it has set for itself.
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Minister Poulsen: Panic is blowing from the NATO partner country Denmark
At the same time, panic is suddenly sweeping across Scandinavia: Denmark wants to accelerate its military investments after new evidence suggests that Russia is rearming faster than expected and that it could attack a NATO country within three to five years, said Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen the newspaper
Jyllands-Posten
.
“Russia’s capacity to produce military equipment has increased enormously,” he said.
It is conceivable that Russia will put Article 5 and NATO's solidarity to the test within three to five years.
“That was not NATO’s assessment in 2023, but new findings that are now emerging,” said Lund Poulsen.
Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) spoke of up to eight years of preparation time.
General Cavoli: Putin will build a large military force
NATO is also putting pressure on it: NATO Commander-in-Chief Christopher Cavoli swears to himself that Russia will emerge stronger in Europe after the end of the war and a pause in retrofitting, as the
Hamburger Abendblatt
quotes him: An aggressive Russia could be within five years of the end of the war Not only bring the army up to date, but also expand it into a larger and more capable armed force.
This includes a modernization program with new technologies that the West has to worry about - from the hypersonic glide weapon Avangard, which carries nuclear bombs to the target at several times the speed of sound and with an unpredictable course, to the nuclear-powered underwater drone Poseidon, which could trigger radioactive tsunamis.
The Bundeswehr, on the other hand, is currently shrinking: both in terms of personnel and material.
For example, Ukraine has received 18 Leopard 2A6 main battle tanks from German stocks, out of a total of 319 - but only some of them are operational, as Army Inspector Mais emphasizes.
The Ukraine support is therefore a noticeable bloodletting.
The Bundeswehr also has a massive personnel problem.
In principle, the force is expected to increase to 203,000 soldiers by 2031.
The Bundeswehr currently has just over 183,000 soldiers - a level at which it has been languishing for several years - and will continue to languish.
Fewer and fewer applicants are applying: in 2022 there were 43,900 people;
between 2010 and 2022 the numbers had always fluctuated between 52,000 and 59,000.
For Inspector General Carsten Breuer, there is no reason to be dissatisfied: The German armed forces - like NATO - are in a phase of upheaval, Breuer told Die
Welt
.
He added: "Honesty also includes the sentence: This will rumble a bit again - but in a positive sense."
Politician Wadephul: The Chancellor wants to wait out his own turning point
Union parliamentary group deputy Johann Wadephul (CDU) told the
German Press Agency
that Breuer's statements stunned him.
“Two years after the Russian attack on Ukraine, two years after the declared turning point, a year and a half after the National Security Strategy and over half a year after the historic NATO summit in Vilnius, the Federal Government’s top military advisor declares that Germany is in the alliance “It basically says nothing,” criticized the defense politician from the Rendsburg-Eckernförde constituency.
Wadephul sits on the Defense Committee and heads the German delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.
The federal government has formulated the right goal that the Bundeswehr should represent the backbone of NATO's conventional defense in Europe.
But it now looks more like Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) wants to “sit out” his own turning point, he said.
Secretary General Stoltenberg: NATO must do more for its security
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned in
Welt am Sonntag
that Russian President Vladimir Putin was preparing his country's economy for a long war.
He said: “Because Russia is gearing its entire economy towards war, we must also do more to ensure our security.”
From the perspective of its inspector general, the Bundeswehr must be ready for war in five years.
“Warworthiness is a process we will go through.
But we don’t have endless time for it,” Breuer told the
world
.
For the first time since the end of the Cold War, a possible war is being dictated from outside.
"If I follow the analysts and see what military threat potential Russia poses, then that means five to eight years of preparation for us." That doesn't mean that there will be war - but it is possible.
“And because I’m a military man, I say: in five years we have to be ready for war.”
Historian Neitzel: Olaf Scholz's promise is a deception
Ultimately, the goal is to be able to defend oneself and thereby set the risk for an opponent so high that they decide against attacking.
“This is deterrence;
For me, the special fund is an expression of the fact that this has arrived in politics,” said Breuer.
Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) also recently spoke of the need for Germany to become ready for war.
In new defense policy guidelines that he presented in November, “warworthiness is the maxim for action.”
But science has doubts, as the German military historian Sönke Neitzel made clear in the
ARD
podcast “Strategies and Armed Forces” using the example of increasing the arms budget: NATO demands that its partners pay two percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) annually, i.e To contribute a state's overall economic performance to NATO's defense.
What Germany also regularly underperformed and wants to change in the future due to the “turning point”.
That would be an estimated up to 30 billion euros per year in addition to current defense spending.
Neitzel thinks this is a rhetorical deception.
“Scholz can give important, good speeches at certain moments;
What comes next in politics is always worthy of interpretation.
And Olaf Scholz doesn't even know whether he will still be Chancellor in 2027, for example.
I think that was more of a signal to the opposition and the FDP to undermine the debt brake.
And that means he stays below the political pain threshold to, for example, take ten billion from citizens' money and put it into defense.
He won’t do that, he won’t take anything away from anyone.”