this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2026
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Archived:https://archive.ph/20260223235809/https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2026/02/23/with-expected-us-retreat-germany-seeks-to-strengthen-its-role-within-nato_6750802_4.html

Berlin has invested hundreds of billions of euros to rearm since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and aims to play a major role within the North Atlantic Alliance, particularly as the US moves toward isolation.

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[–] Pip@feddit.org 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Thank goodness they read the writing on the wall!

[–] Anonymaus@feddit.org 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I don’t want to be that guy, but the last two times Germany increased its military spending, things didn’t end well.

[–] Pip@feddit.org 9 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Probably due to regime type and not due to the schnitzel. Germany has been a liberal democracy for several decades.

[–] DandomRude@piefed.social 7 points 21 hours ago

True. Unfortunately, however, the Nazi party AfD is quite strong in Germany, whose success is largely due to the fact that the same US corporations that enabled openly fascist candidates to win elections in the US also control the (social) media landscape in Germany.

If we want to preserve our democracy, I believe there is no way around finally putting a stop to the influence that mentally ill billionaires have on public opinion.

Otherwise, Germany will probably end up in a similar situation to the US: With a government made up of corrupt puppets whose Nazi ideology essentially serves to conceal the fact that they are pursuing disastrous, neo-capitalist policies that are exclusively in the interests of the top one percent.

[–] yucandu@lemmy.world 2 points 23 hours ago

It's decreasing democracy that leads to trouble.

[–] reabsorbthelight@lemmy.world 4 points 23 hours ago (3 children)

I don't have first hand knowledge, but I've heard they have major bureaucracy and logistics problem.

Is there any news on this front?

Upping their military spending is great, given some certain people a bit further east. Unfortunately if bureaucracy limits things, it might not be so great

[–] trollercoaster@sh.itjust.works 5 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

German military procurement bureaucracy could be used to win any war. If we could only figure out a way of implementing it in the enemy's armed forces.

There has never been and will never be any news on that, it's a state within the state that has defied any attempts at reforming it for decades. On top of that comes corruption, which runs deep in the business. A lot of logistics has been outsourced, maintenance is rarely done in house these days. This might or might not be a result of a certain Ursula von der Leyen, now president of the EU commission, unleashing a bunch of McKinsey consultants (among them a child of hers, did I mention corruption, by the way?) on the armed forces during her tenure as minister of defence.

Spending is always a bad measurement for capability, especially in an environment driven by corruption and nepotism.

[–] reabsorbthelight@lemmy.world 5 points 22 hours ago

... if that's true ... maybe the Germans military procurement should get trained on infiltration and Russian language ...

[–] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 3 points 22 hours ago

I don't know about the state of the German army internally, but for sure in European scale, there are bureaucracy that hinders effectiveness. These include countries having different procurement systems, different interest and culture, and each countries have to ask permission first before their own army crosses to another country. Even if Germany and France are more prepared, intra-national bureaucracy makes defense more difficult. The European integrationists wants a more unified army, but as I've mentioned, layers upon layers of reasons delay things.

[–] Melchior@feddit.org 2 points 22 hours ago

They actually placed some massive orders in recent years. Mostly of the sort of stuff you really need to win wars, but is not fancy enough to make it to front page news like ammunition, communication, intelligence assets and so forth. There are also a lot more orders in the works.

The main issue is that they can not hire enough soldiers.