Donald Trump’s shift towards Russia’s position on Ukraine, if maintained, will force Friedrich Merz’s victorious Christian Democrats to make painful and historic policy shifts on German military leadership in Europe, debt-financed defense spending, the deployment of troops to Ukraine and nuclear deterrence.
A day after his qualified victory in German’s general election, Merz faces more of a revolution than a Zeitenwende, the turning point declared by his predecessor three years ago.
“For me, the absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that we can achieve true independence from the USA, step by step,” Merz said in a TV discussion after his victory. “I would never have thought I would say something like that” but Trump’s comments make it clear “that the Americans, at least this part of the Americans, are largely indifferent to the fate of Europe.”
European leaders were stunned by the Trump administration’s decision to freeze Europe out of peace talks on Kyiv’s future, casting doubt on NATO guarantees to allies, alleging that Europe is more threatened from within than by Russia or China, and acknowledging Russian demands by saying Ukraine can’t join NATO.
Ukraine is now only one element of a broader European security crisis triggered by the comments of Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who said the US can no longer be “primarily focused on the security of Europe.”
German geo-strategic necessities will collide with the question of means. Merz faces powerful headwinds including the country’s ailing economy; a crisis of migrant terrorist attacks; lack of money; a dilapidated Bundeswehr; and the unwillingness of many Germans to face up to strategic realities after 75 years of outsourcing security to Washington.
Merz has pledged to send Ukraine Taurus air-launched cruise missiles, something steadfastly rejected by outgoing Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz. But doing more for Ukraine is no longer just a matter of supplying advanced arms. If Trump and President Vladimir Putin impose a peace deal on Ukraine, west European countries may be pressed to deploy troops. Former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen says such a guarantee should consist of a European air defense shield for Ukraine and non-combat troops.
Merz is wary about German peacekeepers for Ukraine but, for now at least, there is no immediate pressure to do so. That may follow later and Germany would face enormous pressure to become involved.
More pressing is the issue of defense funding. Germany is now probably in its third year of recession and this means less money for things like Ukraine and an intensive political focus on fixing the economy. To start with, there’s no cash available and only two available options — more borrowing or radically cutting other state spending.
The early elections were triggered by the government collapse over a missing €25bn ($26bn) for the federal budget. Scholz’s SPD and the Greens wanted to borrow to make up the gap. The pro-business Free Democrats rejected this – Germany has a strict brake on new debts – and called for cuts to social welfare spending. The popularity of that idea might be reflected in the FDP’s failure to win Bundestag seats in the February 23 vote.
Merz hinted during the election campaign that he might be flexible on the debt brake. There’s now no choice: it will have to go at least for national defense spending and he will probably also be forced to agree to common European borrowing for military procurement.
Repeated attacks by migrants is the other issue inflaming German political discourse. A knife attack, allegedly by a Syrian migrant at Berlin’s Holocaust memorial two days before elections, seriously injured a Spanish tourist. State prosecutors said they suspect an anti-Semitic motive. There have been a series of attacks by asylum seekers and migrants including an SUV driven at high speed by a Saudi national into a Christmas market in Magdeburg that killed six and injured 300.
Merz also faces the headache of the so-called Putinversteher — those who claimed to varying degree to understand Putin and embraced trade ties with Russia — among his likely SPD coalition partners. They include German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, SPD General Secretary Matthias Miersch, an acolyte of the most pro-Russian SPD figure, former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, and Mecklenburg-West Pomerania Premier Manuela Schwesig, who was a powerful backer of the Nord Stream II gas pipeline from Russia to Germany. Countering this is outgoing SPD Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, who has been a powerful pro-Ukraine voice in Germany. A big question is what role Pistorius might have in the next government.
And then there are the unashamed Putin-huggers on the extreme left and right. The most significant is the Alternative for Germany (AfD) which doubled its share of the vote to win a stunning 20.8% and 152 seats in the 630-seat Bundestag, making it the second biggest bloc after Merz’s Christian Democrats. There’s also Die Linke, the Left party (the renamed former ruling East German communists) with 8.8% percent and 64 seats. In total, more than 30% of German voters back pro-Russia parties. While they may not be in power, they add to pressure against further moves to help Ukraine.
The German military is in a miserable state. “Merkel and Scholz have left behind a largely defenseless republic — and a huge task,” said the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Germany urgently needs to re-arm and expand the Bundeswehr in light of the Russian threat and Berlin’s future mission as the conventional armed forces anchor in central Europe. Military conscription will have to be reimposed.
The next government faces massive costs including for air defense, command and control, more tanks and aircraft, drones and anti-drone systems and hardening infrastructure. This will lead to bitter guns versus butter debates in one of the world’s most well-funded social welfare states. The German public’s strategic frivolity, fueled by decades-long certainty that war cannot threaten Germany, will make this a hard sell. Every interest group will fight tooth and nail to defend its subsidy, benefit or state handout.
And beyond all this lies the issue of nuclear defense and the possible removal of the US guarantee. The sheer scale of the threats now facing Germany made Merz suggest possible talks with the UK and France over the extension of their nuclear umbrellas to Germany.
But nuclear issues are poisonous in Germany: The country shut the last of its nuclear power plants even after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the mysterious destruction of Nord Stream II. A serious debate about European, let alone possible German nuclear weapons, will rock Germany to its political foundations. But this discussion must come.
Is there any good news in all this for Merz, Germany and Europe? Well, maybe. Trump, as everybody knows, is transactional and liable to swift changes of tone and policy. But even if an EU-US trade and security deal were to ease Trump’s rupture with Europe, one thing must be clear: German trust in the US has gone. It’s unlikely to return even with a new and more Europhile administration.
Germany and the Europeans have been warned. The question is whether they have the political will to shoulder the staggering costs of defending themselves.
Leon Mangasarian worked as a news agency reporter and editor in Germany from 1989 with Bloomberg News, Deutsche-Presse Agentur, and United Press International. He has a PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics and is now a freelance writer in Brandenburg, eastern Germany.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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