Head of the German Military Association Calls for Preparations for 'A Decade of War'

The 'GMA' is Germany's chief military lobbying group akin to the American Legion, and its chief made these claims in an interview last Sunday in Germany's largest tabloid

It has happened before, and it is all happening again.

Today, I’ll give you what Col. André Wüstner (48), Head of the German Military Association (Deutscher Bundeswehrverband) told Germany’s largest tabloid BILD on Sunday, 26 Feb. 2023.

As always, translation and emphases mine, as are the bottom lines.

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By Burkhard Uhlenbroich, 26 Feb. 2023

Head of the German Military Association sounds the alarm:

To date we have not ordered a single new self-propelled howitzer

Training, equipment, and motivation. Colonel André Wüstner (48), Chairman of the German Military Association, knows what the soldiers think and criticise.

In BILD am SONNTAG, the officer talks about the state of the Bundeswehr and the threat posed by Vladimir Putin on the anniversary of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s (64, SPD) ‘turning point’ [Zeitenwende] speech on Monday.

BILD am SONNTAG: Mr. Wüstner, how long will the war in Ukraine last?

André Wüstner: It would be naïve to believe that the war will be over this year. Putin will not deviate from his war aims for the time being. He will continue to try to destabilise Europe. Domestically, he is preparing the Russian population for a long-term systemic conflict with the West. We are experiencing a decade of war in Europe. NATO and Germany must strategically align themselves for a decade of threat.

BILD am SONNTAG: What does that mean for Germany and the Bundeswehr?

Wüstner: We must continue to support Ukraine and at the same time re-arm the Bundeswehr itself more rapidly. This is the only way we can ensure credible deterrence together with NATO. If you deter, you prevent war. If you don’t deter, you invite. [reminds me of of that War of Terror sloganeering by the US Neocons, ‘weakness is provocative, strength deters’]

BILD am SONNTAG: How important is the support of the USA for Ukraine?

Wüstner: Without the USA, Ukraine would have lost the war long ago. Europeans have shed too many military capabilities in recent years and simply relied on the US. With a President Joe Biden, the transatlantic alliance is holding, but I am worried about what will happen after his presidency. All Europeans must now do their homework and grow their contributions [in the period I study, the early modern era, ‘contributions’ means military taxes imposed on a servile peasantry who was taxed without representation] to the European security architecture.

BILD am SONNTAG: Is the Bundeswehr currently fully operational and ready for defence?

Wüstner: No. The Bundeswehr was not at the beginning of the war in Ukraine. Currently, it is fulfilling the assigned missions, but that is nothing compared to what we will have to contribute to NATO in the future. The many and necessary material deliveries to Ukraine have created further gaps. I doubt whether we will be able to fulfil the commitments to NATO from 2025 if we do not finally speed up. Germany has pledged around 60 aircraft, 20 ships, 20,000 soldiers, and 7,000 vehicles.

[There you have it: the Bundeswehr is quite ‘demilitarised’ already and, on its current track, cannot ‘fulfil the commitments to NATO’ two years hence.]

BILD am SONNTAG: The Bundeswehr has handed over a lot of material from its own stocks to Ukraine. How quickly can tanks, howitzers, and ammunition be replaced?

Wüstner: It is still going much too slowly. To date, we have not ordered a single self-propelled howitzer that we handed over to Ukraine last year, let alone new spare parts packages for them. As a result, more of our few remaining howitzers are already being decommissioned and used as spare parts depots. Moreover, the material readiness of the artillery force continues to decline. The 18 Leopard 2s that we are handing over to Ukraine will also have to be reordered in the next few weeks. Of the approximately 300 Leopard tanks of the Bundeswehr, only 30 per cent are currently operational.

BILD am SONNTAG: Can the arms industry deliver so quickly?

Wüstner: Germany must think bigger again when it comes to armaments. We need strategic planning coordinated at the European level that will allow the industry to move back into series production. There will only be a turnaround in production if the industry is told early on how many battle tanks, ammunition, and guns the Bundeswehr will need in the next two to five years and is given purchase guarantees for them. It must be possible for ten Leopard tanks to roll off the production line again every month instead of three. [so, Germany builds 3 tanks per month, and wants to build 10 per month for 2-5 years; let’s do the math together: 10 [tanks per month] for 5 years = 600 tanks]

BILD am SONNTAG: The new Defence Minister Pistorius has promised support for the troops. Can he keep his promise?

Wüstner: The new minister is well regarded by the troops. Clear language, clear edges, no rash decisions. He is working to figure things out at full speed [meaning: he doesn’t know much, if anything about the army]. But many also know that the minister cannot decide alone on budgetary issues or legislative procedures, but needs the support of the entire federal government. And the troops are still sceptical about that—too often, things have been announced but not implemented. Boris Pistorius deserves every support, because even if some still don’t want to admit it, we have to do more for peace and freedom again—also militarily.

BILD am SONNTAG: Chancellor Scholz announced the Zeitenwende a year ago. What has improved for the soldiers?

Wüstner: Nothing has improved noticeably for the soldiers since then, which is hardly possible in the short time available. Nevertheless, more speed is needed. Whether in terms of material, personnel or infrastructure, we need a real turnaround in this legislative period that can be felt by the troops, otherwise there goes the turnaround.

BILD am SONNTAG: Do we need more funds than the promised 100 billion euros?

Wüstner: Every expert politician [lol] knows that the 100 billion euros are not enough. The Commissioner for the Armed Forces has rightly said that the Bundeswehr needs 300 billion euros in the next few years [perspektivisch, which means for the foreseeable future; Wüstner is vague about this, but I’d guess it means 300b until 2025 at the very least…]. Therefore, it is important that the special funding vehicle [those 100b really: war credits] is implemented this year and that the defence budget increases by about ten billion. Otherwise, the Federal Government will not be able to keep its promises to Ukraine and NATO. That would be irresponsible.

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Bottom Lines

Make no mistake, ladies and gentlemen, the Bundeswehr has been itching to get more money for decades. Mismanagement and opaque appropriations akin to the US model, however, have made the process of buying a new weapon system very expensive. The effectiveness and combat-readiness of these ‘products’ is currently field-tested in Ukraine, and, without prejudice to whatever Russian forces are doing, it’s not going too well.

If Covid was a huge gravy train—remember: all matters Covid are a multi-billion dollar industry on top of the ‘regular’ earnings of Big Pharma, war appropriations and the greasing of the military contractors is ‘the major league’ here. Corruption, already the hallmark of military acquisitions, will run rampant, esp. since the judiciary and parliamanentary oversight have been diminished by three years of Covid mindf******.

Still, what Col. Wüstner says is important, I’d think, for he clearly tells everyone that the German military isn’t nearly ready for combat. Sure, they have consultants (remember Grafter Uschi von der Leyen? She was a contender for Merkel’s succession, but due to her mismanagement as defence minister, she was deemed too toxic—and exported to Brussels; we’ve seen how that worked out…), a dedicated Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion office, and much more—except for working equipment or manpower, to say nothing about fighting spirit.

If anything, post-1945 occupation and partial liberation—see this recent NYT piece (archived, accessible version here) have gone a long way to make Germans ‘soft’ and despise militarism. In that regard, US policies have worked, until the Neocons figured out that to fight Russia (and have others do the dying), they’d need the Germans to don combat fatigues again. It neatly illustrates the delusion of US ‘planners’.

Final point: as admitted to by Col. Wüstner, Germany has a hard time fielding ‘60 aircraft, 20 ships, 20,000 soldiers, and 7,000 vehicles’ in 2025 (!). Let that sink in for a moment and contemplate that Russia was able to mobilise 300,000 soldiers in a couple of months.

I’d conclude by noting that, thankfully, there won’t be a real war vs. Russia anytime soon, if only because Western politicians and media ‘experts’ have bet on the very wrong horse in the race: Neoliberalism is no more, and I’d suspect that this is quite an accomplishment.

As I noted in the beginning, Neoliberalism isn’t new, it’s been tried before, most notably after WW1, and now it’s more recent iteration has shown itself to be useless in terms of military readiness.

Welcome back to the final years of the Interwar Period.