BERLIN: US President Donald Trump’s demand for Nato allies to boost defence spending is driving an election-year dispute between Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives and their centre-left challengers led by Martin Schulz.
It is a sensitive debate in Germany, where guilt over World War II and the Holocaust has created a strong pacifist tradition, but which has been under pressure, and increasingly committed to, playing a greater security role matching its economic strength.
Washington has long urged Nato allies to spend more on collective defence, but Trump sharpened the tone when he branded the alliance “obsolete” and accused European members of getting a free ride while the US provides 70 percent of spending.
US Vice President Mike Pence stressed this week in Brussels that “the president expects real progress by the end of 2017”.
Firmly in the crosshairs of Trump’s challenge is Germany, the top EU economy, which runs a trade surplus with the United States and just reported a public budget surplus of 24 billion euros for last year.
Merkel has reiterated that Germany remains committed to raising military spending from 1.2 percent of gross domestic product now to two percent by 2024, in line with commitments made at a 2014 Nato summit in Wales.
But while this remains the agreed goal of both Merkel’s centre-right CDU and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), there is discord about how quickly Germany must rush to achieve the target and heed Trump’s stern demand.
“Even in an election period, we must remain realistic,” said new Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel of the SPD, adding that meeting the goal now would cost Germany 25-30 billion euros a year.
Gabriel warned against an “arms spending spiral” and cautioned that more weapons do not necessarily equal more security. So far, of the 28 Nato members, only the United States, Britain, Poland, Greece and Estonia meet the two percent target.
At last week’s Munich Security Conference, Gabriel questioned whether it was a good idea for debt-stricken Greece to reach the target “when they can’t pay pensions” and asked whether this really will “improve stability in Greece”.
