As of: February 13, 2024, 5:30 p.m
By: Georg Anastasiadis
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Merkur editor-in-chief Georg Anastasiadis comments on Donald Trump's statements about a possible US withdrawal from NATO commitments and the debate that has now ignited about a European nuclear defense shield.
© Julia Nikhinson/AFP//Klaus Haag
Trump's statements about NATO shock Europeans threatened by Putin.
The debate that has now ignited about the EU having its own nuclear deterrent is long overdue.
A comment by Georg Anastasiadis.
It probably took the detonation of Donald Trump's verbal atomic bomb to get the long-overdue debate about a European nuclear defense shield going in Germany.
Hopefully the shock is healing: Europe, regardless of Trump, will have to pay more attention to its own security in the future because its big brother, the USA, is tired of its role as world policeman and its forces are increasingly tied up in Asia.
Previous offers of talks from France's nuclear power had always fallen on deaf ears in Berlin;
People there liked to rely on America and otherwise went about their business with its rivals Russia and China.
But the question of nuclear deterrence is an elementary part of every security concept, even if the potential opponent has full nuclear arsenals, as Putin's Russia does.
The urgently needed billions cannot be mobilized casually
Of course, a lot would have been gained if Germany had more to counteract a possible aggressor in a conventional way than just the willingness to sacrifice the neighboring Poles and the Bundeswehr's unfit to fly bombers.
At most, people in the Kremlin are laughing their asses off at this. There was also a move worth considering yesterday.
CDU defense expert Roderich Kiesewetter annoys his party with the suggestion that the Union should agree to tripling the Bundeswehr's special funds to 300 billion euros.
Opposition leader Friedrich Merz thinks very little of the idea of opening up new budget leeway for the cash-strapped traffic lights with a two-thirds majority in the Bundestag.
He would rather see the traffic light in the dispute over money dismantle itself in the next few weeks and the FDP, which is insisting on a 2030 Agenda, leave the unpopular coalition.
But that's just one, tactical side.
The other is the enormous challenges posed by the changing times and the criminally neglected investments of the Merkel era.
The urgently needed billions for armament, corporate tax reductions to secure locations and the renovation of the ailing infrastructure could hardly be mobilized casually from the budget even if the SPD and the Greens were not so vehemently opposed to savings in the social budget.
At the latest when it governs itself again, the Merz Union will also have to make this oath of disclosure.
George Anastasiadis