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Germany’s Merz vows to build Europe’s strongest army
(www.politico.eu)
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this post was submitted on 14 May 2025
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I think that's part of the plan too.
But maybe Germany want their own army strong, because they doubt the military capabilities of the other EU countries.
To be fair that would be quite justified from what we have learned from history.
If an EU army is to be any good, a strong German army in the center of it is very helpful.
In the same way that a strong American Army was the center and commander of NATO forces.
What about France, UK, Italy, Spain, Austria, Hungary, Poland, Netherlands...
A strong German army is a fairly recent concept or the past 200 years with the rise of Prussia and subsequent unification by conquest of Germany. Strong German armies are historically made to Invade and conquer the neighbors of Germany and they failed that more than they suceeded.
I think he means that Germany is a very recent country and nation (way more than the US) and was built by one of the nations it now encompasses (Prussia) invading the others under Bismarck. Before that, like Italy, what we call Germany was a mixed bag of principalities, kingdoms and free cities. The problem ,once unified, is that they kept advancing with that mindset, even when the area was no longer German compatible but German similar (Alsace, Lorraine, eastern Belgium, western Poland, Austria...) and got kicked back regularly.
A army's value is its deterrence. Not its capacity to invade the country's neighbours (or else, the US would have a much smaller one and spend less of its debt money into it, its neighbours being Canada and Mexico). Deterrence is what keeps the peace to pursue diplomatic and commercial actions with other countries, invasive action brings such a load of costs that even the most powerful armies have to abandon those conquests sooner or later.