‘Paradigm shift': Germany says to meet Trump's NATO spending target
Germany under new Chancellor Friedrich Merz surprised NATO allies on Thursday by signaling plans to massively boost defense spending to five percent of GDP as demanded by US President Donald Trump.
The pledge, made by the foreign minister at NATO talks in Turkey, came a day after conservative Merz, in office for just over a week, said his government planned to build up 'the strongest conventional army in Europe.'
Security expert Roderich Kiesewetter of Merz's conservative CDU party called the move a 'paradigm shift', speaking to Bild daily, adding that 'it won't happen overnight, but it has to happen.'
For now those goals sound highly ambitious, given the dire state of the German armed forces which, defense experts warn, have been plagued by shortages of key weapons systems and faced trouble recruiting new troops.
Germany, with its dark World War II history, has long been reluctant to spend big on defense. Funding dropped off sharply after the Cold War as European countries relied on NATO heavyweight the United States for security.
Decades of lower military spending since the Berlin Wall fell, the so-called 'peace dividend', has reduced Germany's number of battle tanks and howitzers from the thousands to the hundreds.
In recent years, Germany's Bundeswehr, as it deployed in Afghanistan and Mali, was often mocked for equipment failures, including helicopters that couldn't fly and rifles that did not shoot straight.
The army, hoping to boost its troop strength to 203,000 by 2031, has struggled to find new recruits despite a social media advertising blitz, falling short last year by over 20,000.
The military still has 'too little of everything' -- from air defenses and drones to satellites and AI capabilities -- the parliamentary commissioner for the armed forces, Eva Hoegl, warned in March.
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