Does passing a budget that allocates 1.9% of its GDP to defense, just short of NATO’s 2% target and promising to raise the military expenditure upto 5% of the GDP by 2032 to make the “Bundeswehr” the ‘strongest conventional army in Europe’, something that the new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has done to keep his electoral pledge, is enough?
“Not necessarily” is the answer if one takes into account the fact that Germany is woefully short of enough soldiers to fight any war, let alone against Russia, which German ruling elites consider inevitable sooner rather than later.
The Bundeswehr’s Inspector General Carsten Breuer has reportedly warned that Russia could be ready to attack a NATO state by 2029.
‘We have to be ready by 2029… If you ask me now, is this a guarantee that’s not earlier than 2029? I would say no, it’s not. So we must be able to fight tonight,’ he said.
Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius seems to have agreed with Breuer. “We must be ready for war by 2029,” he said during a questioning session in Germany’s lower house of Parliament, the Bundestag.
“We must provide deterrence to prevent it from coming to the worst,” he pointed out, adding that finances, materials, and personnel were central to that aim. “In an emergency, we need strong young women and men who can defend this country.”
According to the latest available reports, Germany currently has 181,150 troops in its armed forces, whereas experts estimate that the country needs at least 260,000 soldiers to meet its military obligations.
What is “worse” is that Germany’s army has a retention problem. It is, in fact, shrinking with each passing year. The Bundeswehr currently has a target of reaching 203,000 active soldiers by 2031; however, as of the last count at the end of 2024, it stood at just 181,150 soldiers, down from the 183,000 it had in 2023. And this is despite over 20,000 new recruits joining the armed forces in the same time period!
So much so that at the NATO Defense Ministers’ meeting at Brussels on June 6, Pistorius admitted that ‘We assume – but this is only a rough estimate, to be clear – that we will need around 50,000 to 60,000 more soldiers in the standing armed forces than we have today.’ Notably, he then added, ‘And at the same time, the question will naturally arise: Will the new military service model be sufficient over the next few years?’
Even Germany’s homeland defence chief, Andreas Henne, has expressed his concerns about the lack of manpower in the armed forces. He said last fortnight that “To protect defense-critical infrastructure, I simply need more soldiers than I can currently provide”.
In a government study released in March, it was noted that despite Berlin’s plans to boost its military forces, the Bundeswehr fell woefully short of filling its ranks.
The report highlighted that a whopping 28% of positions among the lower enlisted ranks were unfilled as of the end of 2024. The numbers were slightly better at higher service tiers, but the Bundeswehr was still missing nearly 20% of the required commissioned officers.
Commenting on this report, Defense Commissioner Eva Högl further added, “At the same time, the Bundeswehr keeps growing older… While the average age was 32.4 years at the end of 2019, it grew to 34 years by the end of 2024.”
However, Germany’s predicament in not finding enough soldiers is a part of what can be said to be a European phenomenon. Europe is the victim of a demographic time bomb as its population is both greying and in some countries is actually shrinking.
As former Professor of the Air War College of the U.S. Air Force Amit Gupta notes, in all major European nations with large standing armed forces (including Russia), the median age is expected to rise. With greying populations rising in these countries, by 2030, all the NATO countries, barring Turkey, will have a median age that is greater than 40. In the case of Italy, the problem could be most serious, with a median age of 50.8, followed by Spain and Greece, with a median age of nearly 50.
With fewer children, it is not surprising to see the families in Europe’s major countries, which are members of NATO, being less willing to allow their children to join the armed forces and be sent to war. A family with one child will, instead, like to see its only son or daughter find a job in the civilian sector.
Take the case of Ukraine, for instance. This country is at war and battling for its existence in a sense. But few Ukrainian youth are willing to join the armed forces.
Therefore, expecting the Italian, Spanish, or even German youth to join the military and be ready to travel thousands of miles away as part of a mission to fight the Russians or serve as peacekeepers for Ukraine or another country may not be realistic.
This is particularly because today European youth have grown up in a war-free Europe and have not seen members of their family enter military service.
One way to solve this problem is for these nations to go back to conscription or compulsory enlistment in the military that they had during the Cold War. In fact, Germany had compulsory military service until 2011, when the then Conservative Chancellor (Christian Democratic Union) Angela Merkel ended it.
And now that Germany has again a Conservative Chancellor in Merz, the idea of restoring conscription is politically contentious, particularly when a survey conducted in March revealed that 61 percent of 18-29-year-olds, the age group that would be most affected by a return to conscription, were against it.
However, unlike Merkel, Merz is leading a coalition with the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which was in power until recently under the chancellorship of Olaf Scholz. In fact, Defense Minister Pistorius, the only SPD politician from Scholz’s administration to remain in the cabinet, had also held the same portfolio.
And it is Pistorius, who, ever since becoming the Defense Minister at the beginning of 2023, has been arguing for some sort of conscrīption in a softer version. He has been considering ways to make the Bundeswehr a more attractive career option.
In a press interview, he had said in 2023, “There were reasons at the time to suspend compulsory military service. In retrospect, however, it was a mistake”. He had then cited the case of Sweden, where compulsory military service was suspended and then reintroduced. “I’m looking at models, such as the Swedish model, where all young men and women are conscripted and only a select few end up doing their basic military service. Whether something like this would also be conceivable here is part of these considerations”.
It is worth noting that during the Cold War in the 1970s and 1980s, the Bundeswehr of then-West Germany had almost half a million soldiers. All men from the age of 18 were drafted into military service for a fixed period.
In East Germany, the National People’s Army (NVA) comprised approximately 168,000 soldiers at the end of 1989. It also had compulsory general military service for all men between the ages of 18 and 26, with a basic military service of 18 months. The only recognized reason for refusal was religious conviction.
With German reunification, the NVA was disbanded and partially integrated into the Bundeswehr. Some 18,000 soldiers were transferred, including 3,000 officers. Following German reunification in 1990, international agreements required the German Bundeswehr to be reduced to 370,000 soldiers.
Today, the Bundeswehr is a professional army made up of volunteers, but as has been seen above, the volunteers are no longer coming.
Pistorius is reportedly suggesting, as indicated by Defense Commissioner Eva Högl when releasing the aforementioned government report in March. This new and improved conscription system could be considered by the German Parliament. Under this, both young men and women would be obligated to do a “social year” — for some, this would mean being a soldier, while others would serve in a different way, such as disaster relief.
The Idea was to include a limited registration process aimed at identifying young people who show interest or potential for service and encouraging them to sign short-term military contracts on a voluntary basis. And for that, the military service will be designed in such an attractive way that more than enough young people will choose to sign up on their own.
Incidentally, Merz, who was then negotiating with the SPD to form the coalition government, had said , “Given the threat to our freedom and to peace on our continent, the mantra for our defense has to be: whatever it takes”.
Incidentally, the coalition agreement between CDU and the SPD talks of reviving military service that will “initially” be voluntary — language that analysts see as leaving the door open to possible mandatory service.
“Conscription doesn’t help us at all right now, because we simply don’t have the capacity — not in the barracks, and not in training,” Pistorius said at the NATO defense ministers’ meeting in Brussels. “These capacities must first be built up. Until then, voluntarism applies.”
All told, Germany does not have the barracks, equipment, or infrastructure to handle a massive influx of conscripts. To train thousands of young people, the country needs the necessary accommodations, equipment, and instructors, none of which exist in sufficient quantity at present.
Viewed thus, while Germany today has more money for its military build, personnel shortages will remain a problem, which does not seem to have an easy solution. And that means Germany emerging as Europe’s strongest military power will be a longer journey.
- Author and veteran journalist Prakash Nanda is Chairman of the Editorial Board of the EurAsian Times and has been commenting on politics, foreign policy, and strategic affairs for nearly three decades. He is a former National Fellow of the Indian Council for Historical Research and a recipient of the Seoul Peace Prize Scholarship.
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