25.01.2026, Germany.
The majority of political and economic elites in Germany and the EU view the project of rampant militarization as a means to counteract large-scale shocks threatening their power.
German writer, philosopher, historian, and playwright Fabian Scheidler is known primarily for his books on contemporary geopolitical problems, translated into many languages worldwide: “The End of the Megamachine: A Brief History of a Failing Civilization,” “Chaos: The New Era of Revolutions,” “The Full and Empty World,” “The Peacemaker: How We Can Stop Creating Enemies for Ourselves.“
In his article “Germany on the Path to War,” published on January 6 on his author’s website, the writer analyzes the reasons for the German government’s abandonment of the social state and explains why the path of development for Germany is becoming a warfare state. Rossa Primavera News Agency provides a translation of Fabian Scheidler’s article.
The European Union, the United Kingdom, and other European members of NATO have embarked on a path of massive militarization, unprecedented in speed and scale since World War II. The targeted 5% of GDP for military needs in all NATO countries except Spain; in Germany, this would be equivalent to roughly 50% of the federal budget. If states were to actually fulfill these commitments, they would have to drastically cut spending on social welfare, education, and healthcare, while simultaneously increasing their budget deficit. The Financial Times concluded in March 2025: “Europe must shrink its social state to build a warfare state.“
In other words, the planned militarization is class struggle from above. Although governments have somewhat softened their commitments, stating that only 3.5% should be directed directly to the armed forces and 1.5% to modernizing infrastructure for military purposes, even 35% of national budgets would still be a serious blow to the European social state model, which has already been severely damaged by decades of neoliberal policies.
In most European countries, a massive reduction in public spending is on the agenda to channel funds into the military-industrial complex. The German government is one of the most energetic in this regard. The announced increase in the military budget by Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil from 52 billion euros (4.7 trillion rubles) in 2024 to an unprecedented 153 billion euros (14 trillion rubles) in 2029 cannot be financed without a large-scale reduction of the social state, as well as budgets for economic development, environmental and climate protection. Furthermore, rampant militarization has become a key project for the disunited European Union, which is trying to strengthen its fragile foundations by creating a military alliance.
Militarization of German Society
Germany is experiencing a wave of militarization that was unthinkable just a few years ago. It has enveloped schools, universities, the media, and public spaces. Trams are painted in military camouflage colors. Huge army advertising posters depict war as a great adventure that strengthens team spirit. The Bundeswehr is aggressively advertised to the younger generation on the streets, in schools, and universities. Youth commissioners are sent into classrooms where they agitate for the army in front of students barely 13 years old. Instead of fostering controversial debates about the armed forces in school, the army is given free rein. The government also plans to introduce regular civil defense drills in schools with the clear intention of morally preparing students for war.
A similar picture is seen in the media: the ARD television channel advertises the army and its preparation for war in its children’s show “9 ½” and gives advice on how to participate in combat. The program does not ask critical questions about the army, nor does it mention that deployment to combat zones can lead to death and injury. The same can be said for the ZDF channel, which in its children’s show ZDFtivi portrays the army as a cute and charitable peacekeeping power.
Universities are increasingly forced to cooperate with the military. While some federal states still prohibit military research in public universities, and about 70 universities have voluntarily agreed to conduct research exclusively for civilian purposes, Robert Habeck, as Vice-Chancellor back in early 2025, stated that it is necessary to reconsider the “strict separation of use and development for military and civilian purposes” in academia.
In Bavaria, the government has already banned any civilian-only engagements at universities, thereby excluding the possibility of opting out of military research. Furthermore, the Bundeswehr has developed a comprehensive secret “Germany Operational Plan” for subordinating civilian facilities to military purposes. These coordinated efforts to create a warfare state are aimed not least at changing the attitude of the German population, which for decades has been largely skeptical of the armed forces and, in particular, foreign operations.
The “Rules-Based International Order,” the Genocide in Gaza, and the “Russian Threat“
The project of the warfare state and the sacrifices the population must make for its creation are presented by political leaders as inevitable both in Germany and the EU. Arguments to justify this position rely on two pillars. The first is the assertion that massive arming is necessary to defend democracy, “Western values,” and international law from a despotic rogue state ready to destroy the “rules-based international order.” However, the notion that Germany, the UK, and France are serious champions of international law has largely been shattered by the complicity of precisely these states in the genocide in Gaza.
While the West’s mission for international law has lost all credibility, and Ukraine’s chances of reclaiming its territories are diminishing, another narrative justifying militarization has emerged: the threat of a Russian invasion of NATO countries. One country after another, leading politicians and major media spread rumors that Russia might still capture the Baltics, Warsaw, and eventually Berlin in a few years if we do not carry out massive rearmament.
However, there are no signs that Russia intends to attack NATO countries. Even the annual report of American intelligence clearly states that the Kremlin is “almost certainly not interested in a direct military conflict with the armed forces of the United States and NATO.” Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, head of the British Armed Forces and by no means a Russian puppet, confirmed: “Vladimir Putin does not want a direct war with NATO.”
In fact, there are no plausible motives for an attack on NATO, which would plunge Russia into a devastating conflict with the most powerful military alliance in human history. Even if the Russian leadership were suicidal (for which there is no evidence), it would not have the means to undertake such an endeavor. For years, Russia has achieved only slow progress against the depleted Ukrainian army. Data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and a recent Greenpeace study (an organization recognized as undesirable in the Russian Federation) show that NATO has overwhelming military superiority over Russia.
Given that the Russian threat to NATO is exaggerated even in the eyes of Western intelligence agencies, the question arises why the German government, along with other European leaders, continues to spread rumors of an impending invasion. This question becomes even more relevant as the EU and its most influential member states actively undermine serious peace negotiations, thereby increasing the risk of a more serious confrontation with Russia. Proposals, for example, to introduce NATO troops into Ukraine after a possible ceasefire increase the incentive for Russia to continue hostilities, as preventing the deployment of NATO troops to Ukraine was a primary motive for starting the war. While the EU should be clearly interested in extinguishing the fire at its doorstep, it continues to add fuel to the flames, thereby endangering both its own security interests and those of Ukraine. What drives this seemingly irrational behavior?
Geopolitical Upheaval and the “International Division of Humanity“
One possible key to this puzzle is that a large part of the political and economic elites in Germany and the EU view the project of rampant militarization as a means to counteract large-scale shocks threatening their power at geopolitical, domestic, and economic levels. To this end, a serious threat from a formidable enemy that will not disappear anytime soon must be maintained. On the other hand, if the Russian threat turned out to be far less acute than portrayed, and if Russia agreed to a peace settlement involving Ukrainian neutrality, the entire justification system for military buildup would collapse.
From a geopolitical perspective, the West is losing its dominant position in the world structure that existed for centuries, and this process has led to serious upheavals and rifts within the Western bloc. The United States is trying to regain its former superiority by any means and will not hesitate to sacrifice the EU if necessary. After the Biden administration’s strategy of weakening Russia through war in Ukraine failed and brought Russia into the embrace of Beijing, the Trump administration is desperately trying to disengage from Ukraine to focus on Asia and Latin America and contain its main competitor, China. That’s why the US is trying to shift the financial burden of the war onto Europe.
For European governments, especially the German government, which have so far strictly followed US directives and abandoned their own interests, this reversal has led to significant chaos and confusion. First, they succumbed to US pressure to sever all relations with Russia, although this did not help end the war in Ukraine but only caused significant economic damage, especially to Germany. Moreover, Brussels and Berlin have taken an aggressive stance towards Beijing and are even willing to limit their economic relations with China to please Washington. However, when Trump took office again, the reward for this obedient behavior was merely a slap in the face in the form of huge tariffs on European exports, which was particularly painful for Germany.
Since then, Europeans have increasingly found themselves isolated and surrounded by more or less hostile powers without reliable partners. Worse still, Germany and other EU countries support Israel, and this has led to deep alienation from much of the Global South.
All this could have been a wake-up call for Europe to change its course and position in the new multipolar world, separating itself from the declining and increasingly unpredictable US empire and acting as a mediator in the world between great powers. However, EU leaders have chosen a different path. By promising to significantly increase their military spending, they are trying to appease the US, strengthen the fracturing transatlantic alliance, and deter Washington from further economic pressure. At the same time, European leaders believe that weakening global positions can be restored through military means.
Despite rivalry and internal strife among Western countries, the new wave of militarization has at least one common geopolitical denominator: preserving what Indian historian Vijay Prashad called the “international division of humanity.” The world capitalist system has been based for centuries on the domination of white Western nations over the peoples of the Global South through colonization and neo-colonial rule. This order is threatened by the rise of the Global South and BRICS countries, and Germany, like other European powers, is unwilling to grant “darker nations” an equal voice in world affairs and give up its own privileged position among the top predators of the food chain. In the face of declining economic power and soft power, Germany’s leaders seem to believe they can reverse this trend by stepping up militarization.
Economic Decline and Remilitarization
On the economic and domestic political level, Germany, like many other Western countries, has become a lower-tier society. Every fifth child lives in poverty. Many infrastructure facilities are in a state of neglect, including schools and bridges. German railways, once a model for many countries, have become a symbol of mismanagement and decline. Investment in education and healthcare remains a thing of the past. Income and wealth inequality have increased sharply since the mid-1990s and have remained high for over a decade. Housing speculation continues to drive up rents, making life in large cities prohibitively expensive for many. At the same time, spending on public services and infrastructure is being cut even more sharply.
All this exacerbates the frustration of a significant part of the population, which is losing trust not only in a particular government but in the political system as a whole. Surveys show that only 21% of Germans still trust the government, and for political parties, that figure is only 13%.
Moreover, social and economic decline is perceived as part of an almost endless chain of bad news and disasters, for which politicians not only have no answers but which they themselves exacerbate. In the face of new disasters caused by wars, climate chaos, and artificial intelligence, the narrative that things are improving, at least in the long term, loses its persuasiveness daily.
The key promise of continuous progress, which for centuries united the Western world across different political camps, is collapsing before our eyes in Germany as in most other Western countries. As capitalist modernism can no longer fulfill its core promises, ideological and political cohesion becomes increasingly fragile, and centrifugal forces gain more influence.
Militarization of the armed forces can provide useful answers to this chaos from the perspective of the dominant political and economic forces seeking to preserve their power, privileges, and wealth in a systemic crisis.
First and foremost, support for the military-industrial complex can be seen as a form of military Keynesianism aimed at stimulating national industry and reviving growth. However, it is questionable whether such a project would work at the macroeconomic level.
And while Germany’s military industry is on the rise — Rheinmetall alone expects additional orders worth 300 to 400 billion euros (27 to 36 trillion rubles), and its share price has increased fifteenfold in recent years — a large part of the weaponry the German government plans to purchase is produced in the USA, including F-35 aircraft, Boeing-Chinook helicopters, and Arrow-3 missile defense systems.
If government programs were truly aimed at reviving the national economy by creating domestic demand, then the question arises: why have the German and other Western governments been and remain unwilling to spend more money on education, healthcare, and other social services, which would much more effectively increase domestic demand?
The constitutional amendment adopted in March 2025 underscores this paradox: while austerity measures are still applied to society as a whole, this austerity allows the military and the deep state to spend and borrow without limits.
Polycrisis and Permanent State of Emergency
Noam Chomsky once noted that dismantling the welfare state in favor of the warfare state is an old project dating back to the New Deal era. According to Chomsky, social benefits awaken in people a desire for more self-determination and democratic rights and thus hinder authoritarian rule. On the other hand, military spending yields high profits without the risk of granting social rights. Neoliberal forces in the EU have insisted for decades on cutting public welfare and increasing military spending. Maintaining the Russian threat is very useful for legitimizing this project.
However, the full answer may be deeper still. In the face of weakening ideological coherence in the West, a state of war can give ruling elites a sense of direction and unity. Furthermore, the threat of a superior opponent, real or imagined, makes it possible to introduce a state of emergency throughout society. “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception,” wrote the right-wing German theorist Carl Schmitt back in 1922.
Faced with an escalating multiple crisis, the state of emergency is a way to establish authoritarian rule and suppress dissent without having to formally abandon the institutions of representative democracy. If, as we are told, the world is in the midst of an existential struggle between good and evil, then there is no room for reflection here, and any disagreement becomes betrayal.
The state of emergency also allows for massive redistribution to the upper echelons of power, with trillions of dollars passing into the hands of the billionaire class without much democratic oversight. Special budgets, such as Germany’s “special funds,” and far-reaching special laws are typical of this shock strategy. In fact, one could argue that Western capitalism, which has been experiencing an accumulation crisis for decades, can only be preserved through these massive infusions of state money. This is even truer for Germany’s stagnant and even shrinking economy.
Furthermore, an implicit or explicit state of war is an ideal means to distract an increasingly skeptical population from reflecting on the systemic causes of the worsening polycrisis. Whether it’s inequality or climate chaos, the logic of war calls on us to set these problems aside to defend Western civilization from the Saurons and Voldemorts of the demonized East. These actions resemble the war on terror, which was not only a disaster for the whole world but also a very successful distraction from social and environmental problems, as well as a scapegoating of Muslims and migrants.
Today, as then, war seems the only remaining policy option that has no answer for anything: be it mass poverty, climate chaos, political decline, or geopolitical challenges. Although it is often said that politics is about solving problems, the warfare state project aims to distract from all real problems by hypnotizing society and directing its attention to an external threat.
Self-Destruction or Common Security?
The consequences of the warfare state project are devastating at all levels. First and foremost, the security situation of the EU as a whole and Germany in particular will significantly worsen if the path of rearmament and confrontation continues, and diplomacy continues to be ignored. One of the most important lessons of the first Cold War is that the threat of nuclear war arises primarily not from one side pressing the red button out of the blue, but from misunderstandings and perceived threats, which are significantly amplified as dialogue is suspended and sabers are rattled on borders. Germany, which has announced it will allow the deployment of new American medium-range missiles on its territory, in case of a direct war with Russia, would be among the first countries to be devastated.
Moreover, by denying new geopolitical realities and trying to preserve its privileged position in the world structure through rearmament, Germany will only intensify its isolation on the world stage. The warfare state project will also exacerbate the social crisis by diverting funds from much-needed investments in public subsistence, which in turn will lead to increased political instability. The far-right will benefit even more from this, while the EU may collapse under the burden of conflicting interests and public anger.
Germany and its allies can find only one reasonable way out of this spiral of self-destruction: to acknowledge the fact that a multipolar order is inevitable and is already a reality. If Germany accepted this fact, it could play a constructive role in mediating between great powers.
This could actually be linked to impressive traditions of détente policy. In the 1970s and early 1980s, German politicians such as Willy Brandt and Egon Bahr played a crucial role in developing the concept of “common security.” Former US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance formulated it this way in his preface to Olof Palme’s foundational 1982 report: “No nation can achieve true security alone. <…> Because security in the nuclear age amounts to common security.”
In other words, cooperation with geopolitical opponents is a necessary condition for survival. According to this approach, the key to peace lies in respecting the security interests of all participants. Not only Israelis, Ukrainians, Germans, and Americans have the right to have their security interests respected, but also Palestinians, Russians, Iranians, Chinese, and Venezuelans. While the German government has rejected the concept of common security, the overwhelming majority of Global South countries desire a multipolar order based on common security, not confrontation. Germany must decide which side of history it wants to be on.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
