You would think that Germany would be the “Number One” in supporting NATO, but the opposite is true:
- They pay less than most other countries as a percentage of GDP.
- Their politicians procrastinate about giving urgently needed weapons and ammunition to Ukraine.
- Private manufacturers get to maximise their sales of weapons to the world as “Germany First”.
- Germans want to have a financial profits upfront from selling arms, at our expense, and yet be the last to fund our joint defence in NATO.
- According to most military experts, the German army is in shambles and is unprepared to defend Europe on an equal footing with the rest of the West if attacked.
- Germany spends just 1.4% of GDP on defence while small countries like Finland are already paying near to 2% and more.
- Finland’s border with Russia is longer than 1000 kilometres. A big defence budget is supported by a strong army with a huge pool of trained reservists. The military is well-equipped and well connected to NATO’s military system even before being accepted as a full member.
However, we still need to have our political parties are talking a lot about defence spending to the rest of Europe. We are just too small if Putin and his military want to attack us. We are in the process of joining NATO to get support from Europes armies to defend our boundaries in return for our promise to defend the boundaries of the others if threatened.
There can be no excuse for Germany’s behaviour. They are the biggest economy in Europe and always behave as if they are Europe’s leading light and God’s gift to the rest of us here.
We are absolutely within our rights to demand that Germany fulfils its obligations, especially when it has profited hugely from this policy of letting the rest of Europe pay for our joint defence.
Trump was right this one time when he demanded that Germany increase its defence budget to at least 2% of GDP. The united States already pays 4% of GDP or its military machine,. And is more than double than what Germany pays and can well afford!
Even though we have elections in 3 weeks time, it is interesting that there is not one Finnish politician demanding that Germany increase immediately its defence spending, when we are clearly exposed to a real threat from a war-mongering neighbour.
So Germany must increase its defence spending, and Finnish politicians should be making a lot of noise until this happens.
Photo; NATO and Graph: UK Parliament