Old reflexes are stirring across Europe.\u00a0When German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told the Bundestag\u00a0last year\u00a0that Germany must field the strongest conventional army in Europe and\u00a0backed\u00a0that promise with bigger defense budgets than any of the country\u2019s neighbors could afford,\u00a0the specter\u00a0of German military power\u00a0began to haunt Europe once more.<\/p>\n
Behind closed doors, some French and Polish\u00a0officials ask whether a rearmed Germany really solves Europe\u2019s dependence on the United States\u2014\u00a0or merely\u00a0swaps\u00a0one hegemon for another. Others wonder whether European NATO members are heading toward a genuinely integrated defense\u00a0of their continent\u2014or simply back to rival national armies now that the United States no longer leads.<\/p>\n
The reflex against a reaming Germany,\u00a0however, is as much industrial as it\u00a0is\u00a0strategic.\u00a0In June, Berlin withdrew from\u00a0a\u00a0Franco-German-Spanish\u00a0program to build a new fighter jet\u2014in part\u00a0because Germany\u00a0would no longer let\u00a0a French company\u00a0claim the lion\u2019s share of the work\u2014and\u00a0scrapped a major contract with a Dutch-led consortium for naval frigates, ordering new ones from a\u00a0German defense\u00a0contractor instead.\u00a0Thus, two\u00a0of\u00a0Europe\u2019s\u00a0biggest defense contracts\u00a0are now\u00a0flowing to German industry on German terms.\u00a0Some of the\u00a0huffing\u00a0over a remilitarized Germany is really about\u00a0France\u00a0losing\u00a0the German\u00a0money pots\u00a0and strategic deference that\u00a0it long took for granted.<\/p>\n
Unease over\u00a0Germany\u00a0going it alone is as old as the Bundeswehr itself: In 1955, West Germany was permitted to rearm only inside a tight alliance corset precisely so that German power would never stand alone again.\u00a0Hundreds of thousands of\u00a0U.S., British, and French\u00a0occupation\u00a0forces-turned-allies\u00a0remained on German soil for several decades to underline those strictures.<\/p>\n
But those who worry about a mighty Germany going it alone need to face an uncomfortable truth: NATO needs a powerful German military backed by the continent\u2019s biggest economy and deepest fiscal pockets. A corollary to this is that only Germany has the potential to replace the United States as the military backbone and integrator of the bloc. But today, the Bundeswehr is far from strong enough to play that role. The paradox is that in order to bolster Europe\u2019s collective defense and act as an eventual integrator that other countries\u2019 forces can plug into, the German military\u00a0needs to be able to stand on its own first\u2014and be less\u00a0integrated into the alliance\u00a0than it is now. In certain respects, it is in Europe\u2019s collective interest for Germany to go it alone.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s because NATO\u2019s current multinational force structures are a relic of Europe\u2019s post-Cold War peace era. They are poorly suited for a potential high-intensity, 21st-century war with Russia. NATO\u2019s European forces are already burdened by disjointed structures, national caveats, and cumbersome chains of command\u2014and the way they have been assembled into multinational forces is a product of intra-alliance diplomacy during peacetime, not of a laser focus on effectiveness in war. With the United States dropping out as NATO\u2019s integrator and technological enabler, the disadvantages of the alliance\u2019s current structure will multiply.<\/p>\n
The Bundeswehr must achieve cohesion as a fighting force. Coalition warfighting in the style of post-Cold War NATO expeditions to Afghanistan, Bosnia, or Libya\u2014with\u00a0convoluted chains of command, national caveats,\u00a0and\u00a0a separate rule for every flag\u2014is simply not suited to a\u00a021st-century fight against Russia, where the tempo of operations will not wait for a coalition to reconcile its\u00a0opinions.<\/p>\n
Above all, the Bundeswehr needs to force a change at the level of the NATO corps.\u00a0The alliance maintains roughly nine multinational European corps headquarters, each able to command up to 60,000 soldiers on paper. Each of these corps is led by one or more \u201cframework nations\u201d and assigned to a separate geographical region, including several corps along the bloc\u2019s northeastern flank. Above the corps level, there are land commands to synchronize multiple corps and fix wartime responsibilities in advance.<\/p>\n
The demands on these corps are changing fast. A possible NATO-Russia war could well be fought at an operational scale and intensity that NATO has by and large forgotten since the end of the Cold War. Can NATO\u2019s current multinational corps and divisions really sustain cohesion in such an environment? They have never been tested in combat at that scale. Yet that is precisely how NATO envisions a future fight.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s more, NATO\u2019s corps are paper tigers. Rather than being fully equipped formations, they are essentially headquarters waiting to mobilize, integrate, and command artillery, air defense, and deep-strike assets that, for the most part, they do not have in the quantities needed.<\/p>\n
NATO needs to fundamentally change how its corps are built, and a Bundeswehr focusing more than it does now on its national capabilities is central to that change.<\/p>\n
First, each NATO corps needs to have its own suite of weapons and other equipment provided by the lead nation of the corps. These include corps artillery, precision fires, air defense, logistics, as well as intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance provided by the lead nation of the corps. That looks very different today. For example, the 1st German-Netherlands Corps has an established headquarters but\u2014unlike a fully equipped U.S. corps\u2014no permanent corps-level artillery, air defense, or intelligence. In case of war, many of these and other capabilities would have to be generated and bolted onto the corps from the Bundeswehr, the Royal Netherlands Army, and the militaries of more than a dozen other nations during a sudden mobilization. Standing up a headquarters is the easy part. Generating actual capabilities with operational reach\u2014beyond a plan to cobble them together only after a decision to mobilize\u2014is the much harder one.<\/p>\n
Perhaps Germany ought to take Poland as an example<\/a><\/span>.\u00a0NATO\u2019s Multinational Corps Northeast,\u00a0which Poland anchors alongside Germany and Denmark, does not have any more of its own assets than the German-Dutch one. But it sits atop a fast-expanding Polish national force of mass artillery, long-range fires, and soon Apache attack helicopters. Anchored on a single strong national backbone and command, the Polish-led force may end up with readier access to corps-level combat power than the German one assembled from various countries\u2019 contributions.<\/p>\n Second, in order to maintain cohesion as a fighting force, a corps needs a national headquarters to which allied units are subordinated. Only a corps leadership directly commanding all of its own full-spectrum capabilities can have fast, unconditional, and fully integrated access to those capabilities. Under NATO\u2019s framework-nation arrangement today, those capabilities are contributed by partner nations that retain national command authority, apply their own caveats, and can withhold or withdraw their assets. This means that every task and targeting decision risks hitting a veto in one capital or another.<\/p>\n The alliance\u2019s record shows what happens under the current arrangement. When Germany abstained from NATO\u2019s Libya intervention in 2011, it pulled its crews out of the alliance\u2019s jointly manned AWACS fleet\u00a0within days. A critical shared asset was thus\u00a0left partially unmanned\u00a0by a single capital\u2019s political choice, even as Berlin backfilled NATO\u2019s AWACS crews in Afghanistan to soften the blow. During the war in Afghanistan, approval loops running back to European capitals routinely delayed operations, with the Bundeswehr among the most restricted.<\/p>\n Some may argue that such caveats and frictions would largely evaporate in a Russian attack on NATO. Perhaps. But\u00a0a defense built on the hope that national politics suddenly disappears under fire is a risky gamble.\u00a0Consequently, if Berlin is serious about strengthening European defense and deterrence, it needs to change its own cumbersome decision-making process and press others to get rid of national caveats, too.<\/p>\n None of this means that individual allied units cannot be folded into a corps led by Germany or another nation. Dutch brigades, for example, already serve inside German divisions, a Czech brigade is affiliated with the German 10th Armored Division, and a Romanian brigade is assigned to Germany\u2019s Rapid Forces Division.<\/p>\n Third, to be an effective fighting force, a corps needs authority over its units, regardless of their nationality, long before the shooting starts. Affiliation today is largely on paper and remains episodic in reality: Allied units assigned to German ones, for example, exercise with them occasionally but remain by and large garrisoned at home. Cohesion is built in peacetime or not at all. The shared drills, common terminology, and mutual trust between staffs that enable orders to move down the chain at wartime tempo cannot be improvised after the shooting starts.<\/p>\n The Dutch 43rd Mechanized Brigade, which trains, plans, and deploys as an organic part of Germany\u2019s 1st Panzer Division, shows what proper integration looks like; unfortunately, this example is not widely replicated. What is needed is year-round practice of training to lead-nation standards under a lead-nation chain of command. And it must be practiced in the field, not in command-post simulations. Corps-level live maneuvers, largely abandoned after the Cold War, are where a NATO framework-nation corps either becomes real or is exposed as a paper tiger. Tabletop exercises are not sufficient.<\/p>\n If Berlin genuinely wants to become\u00a0an anchor and\u00a0integrator\u00a0of Europe\u2019s deterrence and defense, its military\u00a0paradoxically\u00a0needs to become more national.\u00a0A Germany that can\u00a0lead a complete corps\u00a0under wartime conditions\u00a0is a Germany that the rest of Europe can actually plug into.\u00a0But that requires\u00a0the command architecture, doctrine, and deep-battle assets\u00a0to be\u00a0German-owned and unconditionally available to a commander fighting an aggressor\u00a0in the 21st\u00a0century.\u00a0Once you get over your old reflexes about German might,\u00a0this is good news for deterrence.\u00a0We finally need to think of NATO as a wartime alliance, not a peacetime alliance-management tool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Old reflexes are stirring across Europe.\u00a0When German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told the Bundestag\u00a0last year\u00a0that Germany must field the strongest conventional army in Europe and\u00a0backed\u00a0that promise with bigger defense budgets than any of the country\u2019s neighbors could afford,\u00a0the specter\u00a0of German military power\u00a0began to haunt Europe once more. Behind closed doors, some French and Polish\u00a0officials ask whether […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37095,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/germany-nato-military-bundeswehr-GettyImages-2225280933-e1784217434680.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11611],"tags":[13670,5873,7944,26717,2261,12371,1488,9497,4025,953,14479,155],"class_list":["post-37094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spyballoon-global-news","tag-audio-embed","tag-defend","tag-europe","tag-german","tag-germany","tag-homepage_regional_europe","tag-military","tag-nato","tag-power","tag-russia","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-war"],"rttpg_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/germany-nato-military-bundeswehr-GettyImages-2225280933-e1784217434680.jpg",0,0,false],"landscape":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/germany-nato-military-bundeswehr-GettyImages-2225280933-e1784217434680.jpg",0,0,false],"portraits":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/germany-nato-military-bundeswehr-GettyImages-2225280933-e1784217434680.jpg",0,0,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/germany-nato-military-bundeswehr-GettyImages-2225280933-e1784217434680.jpg",150,150,false],"medium":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/germany-nato-military-bundeswehr-GettyImages-2225280933-e1784217434680.jpg",300,300,false],"large":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/germany-nato-military-bundeswehr-GettyImages-2225280933-e1784217434680.jpg",1024,1024,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/germany-nato-military-bundeswehr-GettyImages-2225280933-e1784217434680.jpg",1536,1536,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/germany-nato-military-bundeswehr-GettyImages-2225280933-e1784217434680.jpg",2048,2048,false],"post-thumbnail":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/germany-nato-military-bundeswehr-GettyImages-2225280933-e1784217434680.jpg",370,265,false],"kava-thumb-s":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/germany-nato-military-bundeswehr-GettyImages-2225280933-e1784217434680.jpg",150,85,false],"kava-thumb-s-2":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/germany-nato-military-bundeswehr-GettyImages-2225280933-e1784217434680.jpg",230,230,false],"kava-thumb-m":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/germany-nato-military-bundeswehr-GettyImages-2225280933-e1784217434680.jpg",400,400,false],"kava-thumb-m-vertical":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/germany-nato-military-bundeswehr-GettyImages-2225280933-e1784217434680.jpg",370,500,false],"kava-thumb-m-2":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/germany-nato-military-bundeswehr-GettyImages-2225280933-e1784217434680.jpg",570,450,false],"kava-thumb-l":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/germany-nato-military-bundeswehr-GettyImages-2225280933-e1784217434680.jpg",1170,650,false],"kava-thumb-xl":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/germany-nato-military-bundeswehr-GettyImages-2225280933-e1784217434680.jpg",1920,1080,false],"kava-thumb-masonry":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/germany-nato-military-bundeswehr-GettyImages-2225280933-e1784217434680.jpg",600,999,false],"kava-thumb-justify":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/germany-nato-military-bundeswehr-GettyImages-2225280933-e1784217434680.jpg",640,640,false],"kava-thumb-justify-2":["https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/germany-nato-military-bundeswehr-GettyImages-2225280933-e1784217434680.jpg",1280,640,false]},"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"#RiseCelestialStudios","author_link":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/author\/ralph-c\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":"SPYBALLOON GLOBAL NEWS<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"Old reflexes are stirring across Europe.\u00a0When German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told the Bundestag\u00a0last year\u00a0that Germany must field the strongest conventional army in Europe and\u00a0backed\u00a0that promise with bigger defense budgets than any of the country\u2019s neighbors could afford,\u00a0the specter\u00a0of German military power\u00a0began to haunt Europe once more. Behind closed doors, some French and Polish\u00a0officials ask whether…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37094"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37096,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37094\/revisions\/37096"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}