Germany has no right to lecture Britain on defence

As Rishi Sunak prepared to visit Berlin, there was extraordinary mood music coming from the German government suggesting that the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, would “encourage” the prime minister to commit to greater spending on defence.

It is, with agonising slowness, becoming more widely accepted that Britain simply has to spend more on our military. Although we currently meet the NATO target of committing two per cent of GDP to defence, we only just do so. Nevertheless, it is a level we have only dropped below very briefly, in 2017-18, since the Second World War, and we have been one of the few NATO member states to fulfil that commitment. Even this year, the alliance only expects 18 of its 32 members to do what they have all agreed they must do.

An admonition from Olaf Scholz is, however, remarkable and shameless. Grim historical precedent means no-one who holds his office will ever be the “worst German chancellor ever”, but his approach to defence and especially to Ukraine has been shoddy, craven and vacillating.

Three days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Scholz addressed the Bundestag and announced a Zeitenwende, or historic turning point, in Germany’s military and strategic posture. A €100 billion fund would be used to increase spending on defence. Aggression against Ukraine, he told his parliament, required Germans to ask themselves “whether we have it in us to keep warmongers like Putin in check. That requires strength of our own.”

This was punchy stuff, given that he had only suspended co-operation with Russia on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline 48 hours before Russian tanks rolled into that part of Ukraine not already annexed. A week before that, he had been in Moscow, parlaying with Vladimir Putin. But joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, as the Good Book tells us.

Nevertheless, a few observations are in order. In February, the German defence minister, Boris Pistorius, said he was “proud” that this year his government would spend two per cent of GDP on defence. That commitment is welcome, but it was a figure agreed by NATO leaders definitively in 2014, reinforcing a pledge first made in 2006. Remember that the UK spent two per cent or above in 16 of those 18 years. Germany had not met that mark until this year since the end of the Cold War.

It has been noted that Germany’s armaments commitment to Ukraine is now almost double that of the UK. That is true. Scholz has declared that “We stand unwaveringly by Ukraine’s side”. However, he consistently refuses to supply Taurus cruise missiles, long-range weapons which can deliver a powerful warhead to targets more than 300 miles away, despite the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, making his position, and his country’s desperate need, absolutely clear.

“I just don’t understand the logic behind it when… one of our partners has weapons that Ukraine needs today in order to survive. And I don’t understand why they won’t provide it to us.”

In addition, Scholz delayed the supply of main battle tanks to Ukraine, despite the Bundeswehr possessing a fleet of around 350 Leopard 2s. Not only did the chancellor drag his feet, only agreeing to send 14 tanks as the war reached its first anniversary, but he had previously used contractual re-exporting rights to prevent other countries like Poland and Finland from supplying similar vehicles to Kyiv.

The hollowness of Scholz’s Zeitenwende speech has been highlighted repeatedly. One senior journalist did not mince his words. “It's become clear that the best way to describe Scholz’s much-ballyhooed slogan is with a blunt Americanism: bullshit.”

Germany’s defence expenditure has long been modest given its economic and industrial heft. Spending fell below three per cent of GDP in 1984 and never rose above that level again. (The UK spent more than three per cent until 1995.) In 2014, German soldiers on a NATO exercise were so poorly equipped they had to use broomsticks to stand in for heavy machine guns.

Since the invasion of Ukraine, Scholz, after his grandiloquence to the Bundestag and apparent revolutionary fervour, has temporised, hesitated, compromised and underperformed. He has done so again and again for fear of antagonising Russia further than it must.

Remember that the Nord Stream, the gas pipeline financed by Russian state energy giant Gazprom, was chaired by Scholz’s SPD colleague and former chancellor Gerhard Schröder from 2006 to 2022. Less than three weeks before the invasion of Ukraine, Schröder was nominated to the board of Gazprom but, aged 77, finally found some shame and declined the role.

Britain needs to spend more on defence, certainly moving swiftly to 2.5 per cent of GDP and thence to three per cent, and the government has been long on aspiration but short on commitment and delivery. We must hold their feet to the fire on this. But it is certainly not Olaf Scholz’s place to do so. He must get his own house in ordnung first.

Eliot Wilson was a clerk in the House of Commons from 2005 to 2016, where he worked on the Defence Committee and was secretary to the UK Delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.