Tag Archives: German power

When Angela Merkel took office as Federal Chancellor in 2005, she was more prepared for the challenges on the EU’s eastern border than any other West European head of government. However, Berlin had, already before Merkel’s take over of the chancellorship, sent wrong signals to the new neo-imperial leadership in Moscow by inviting Putin to the Bundestag in 2001 and starting the Nord Stream projects in 2005. Consequential missteps before and after Merkel came to power put German Ostpolitik on the wrong path in the new century. In 2014, there was only a partial correction of the Russia course set by Germany’s 1998-2005 Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Today, politicians, diplomats and experts in Moscow likely wonder what has gotten into the Germans since the annexation of Crimea: Weren’t Russian special rights in the post-Soviet space an unwritten law of post-Cold War Eastern European geopolitics accepted by Berlin?

The first decade of the 21st century confirmed that the armaments industry has begun to play an important role in the economy of the country and performs a crucial function for the FRG. The armaments industry still serves four basic functions: satisfies the current needs of armed forces when it comes to arms and military equipment, provides the appropriate readiness of the mobilization base, conducts the research and developmental activities regarding the new types of arms and military equipment and increases the prestige of the country in the international arena. However, because of the global economic crisis of 2008-2010, when thinking about the armaments industry, it is the economic logic that is playing an increasingly important role, while the military logic is slowly loosing ground.