Ulrike Franke is a defense analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
She's based in Paris, but she comes from Germany.
She joins us here at the Munich Security Conference.
So, Ulrike, thanks for speaking to DW here.
There's been a lot of focus on Germany's commitment to defense, both its own defense and the defense
of Ukraine this weekend.
Olaf Scholz is saying that Germany will finally hit the the 2% of GDP NATO spending target
this year, and he says that it will do that for every year to come.
He seems to be trying to, kind of give an impression of 'OK, we're on this.
We're on top of defense, our commitment to defense now, after years of shortfalls.'
Do you think he's right?
I wouldn't be quite so positive.
Of course, yes, it is true that Germany is going to meet the 2% goal more or less.
But of course, with the help of the Special Fund.
And there's always this question of what happens if the Special Fund, this 100 billion fund,
runs out.
Yeah, so let's just quickly explain the Special Fund.
Yeah, sure.
The 100 billion Special Fund is something that this government put in place after the
invasion of Ukraine.
So 100 billion extra money for the Bundeswehr, but it's not part of the normal defense budget.
And the question is, once this fund runs out, do we have enough money in the normal defense
budget?
So there's a question mark there.
So just quickly also to explain terms here: So the Bundeswehr is the German word for the
German military.
What kind of stuff do they want to spend this 100 billion on?
So the 100 billion were mainly spent so far on F35s from the US and other military equipment...
That's fighter jets.
Exactly, that's fighter jets from the United States and other military equipment.
It really is about modernising the German armed forces.
But you say that once that fund runs out, there's no sense of what happens then.
So what are the options?
And is the German government on the right path to to working out a longer term plan?
Yeah, and this is exactly what I'm worried about.
So we have had many short term measures, for example the deliveries to Ukraine were really
important and are really important.
Again, the Special Fund, very important.
But I still worry that we're not really putting everything in place for the next years.
And this is not just true with regard to money, but also with regard to industrial capabilities,
right, producing more military equipment.
It feels like we've lost at least a year, if not almost two to put those things in place.
And we have a lot of American voices particularly representing a potential future Trump administration
here in Munich this weekend really kind of banging the drum that the whole exercise still
isn't enough, that Germany has not really kind of got with the program, not just about
the new threats that Europe is facing, but also in terms of a fair sharing of the burden
with the United States.
It's quite possible that a Trump administration will come in saying you've got to spend more
than 2% of GDP.
So what are you hearing from Republican delegates here in Munich?
What do you think the demands will be from a potential new administration?
I mean, what I'm basically hearing from everybody, the Republican delegates, American delegates
in general, but also the Europeans, is that Europe needs to do more on defense.
The thing is – I've been hearing this for the last years at the Munich Security Conference.
This was always the main message.
And on the one hand, honestly, I think this has been heard and this has been understood.
And looking at the numbers, looking at what the EU has been doing, looking at what the
Europeans have been doing, we have increased.
But there is a question of, you know, if you go from 2 to 5, that's great news.
But if you need to be at 10, then that's not enough.
And I can't really answer whether it is sufficient right now, but it feels like we're still coming
short.
And so everybody here and this is very much preaching to the choir because this is the
security conference, but everybody here is emphasizing more needs to be done.
And Olaf Scholz, the German Chancellor, actually said, without security, anything is nothing,
nothing is anything, you need security first and then you can think about all the other
things.
And this is something that I think in Europe and in Germany we're currently relearning.
So let's talk a little bit more about the potential Trump administration in a moment.
I just want to touch on Ukraine of course we're talking about Germany's and Europe's
security.
So far, Germany is also, Olaf Scholz is also out there saying Germany's been a very big
provider of weapons to Ukraine.
He's implicitly pointing the finger at other European countries like, for example, France,
which is providing quite a bit less.
Are we entering a kind of a period of finger pointing within Europe about who's doing their
fair share with regard to Ukraine?
I think we've already had this over the last two years.
There's always been this kind of ranking produced who gives most.
And in a way I mean competition can help.
Some countries maybe did more because they didn't want to fall back too much in their
competition.
Of course, France on this specific reproach would say that they don't make everything
public and they are also delivering really important weapon systems.
But nevertheless, France is doing less than Germany.
I think that we can agree on.
There is a little bit of a competition.
Again, I don't think that that's the worst thing.
But overall, the most important thing of course is that the Europeans need to come together,
they need to ensure Ukraine’s defense and also, and this is really something that I
keep talking about, they need to build up their own capabilities, ideally together,
take advantage of economies of scale, all of these things.
And yeah, work together rather than, as you say, finger point.
And Olaf Scholz, do you think the attitude that this betrays, that he's sort of suggesting,
well, I would like other countries to do as much as us.
This seems to suggest that he feels ‘OK, we're doing enough now.’
And Germany's being criticised for not providing, for instance, the Taurus cruise missile.
Scholz seemed to be still stonewalling on this question.
Do you think Germany should go ahead with that?
And what do you think of this attitude that we seem to be detecting from Scholz?
I think since the beginning of the war, Germany really has been in the focus of a lot of criticism,
and at the very beginning that was warranted.
And now it is no longer justified, I would say because Germany really has been doing
a lot.
Again, how much is enough is very difficult to tell.
But yeah, with the Taurus missiles, I think we're too focused on kind of specific weapon
systems, always kind of building them up as if these are the solution to this war.
Would Ukraine have good use for the Taurus missile in their defense?
Most certainly.
I don't quite understand why there is this stonewalling of this specific proposition.
That being said, would Ukraine win the war tomorrow if they got Taurus missiles?
I highly doubt it.
We already had similar discussions about Leopard tanks and other things.
And so I don't.
I don't think it's particularly useful and Boris Pistorius, the German defense minister,
said as much, to kind of keep focusing on this one weapon system.
Germany is doing a lot.
It should be doing more.
Other countries should be doing more.
This is all really important.
We need to step up.
OK, so let's turn back to Trump and what he said recently, which really sent a kind of
a chill through Europe, these comments where he suggested that if he felt a particular
country was not spending enough, then he would just say to Putin, OK, you know, do what you
want with them.
This has led to a lot of chatter about whether the nuclear deterrence that Europe benefits
from, from the United States, would really be strong enough under a Trump administration.
Whether he tries to pull the US out of NATO or not, but simply rhetorically, there are
kind of cracks in it.
First of all, how concerned are you about that kind of rhetorical threat to NATO, of
language like that undermining the credibility of Article 5 and nuclear deterrence?
I'm very, I'm very worried.
I think already these statements right now, the rhetoric we're hearing right now is undermining
NATO security guarantees and trust in NATO.
Even if nothing follows from them because this is a former US President, the likely
Republican candidate possibly the next US President.
So just him saying these things is already bad news.
And it could kind of encourage an actor like Russia to test NATO to see you know let's
see whether or not they really defend each other.
Now I still very much believe in NATO, but I think this is yet another wake up call for
the Europeans that maybe in the long run, we need to be able to do more things ourselves.
That doesn't mean that the transatlantic relationship is breaking.
But I think it is clear that in the long term the US is at least also looking at other parts
of the world and this is also something we've heard here at the conference.
And so again, Europe needs to step up its own capabilities.
I would argue mainly conventionally, but we're also having these kind of nuclear debates
now.
Yeah, so let's touch on that, these nuclear debates, this idea that Europe kind of needs
a Plan B for, for nuclear deterrence if it gets really shaky with the United States.
Obviously, France and Britain both have nuclear weapons.
Talk to me about what the options might be.
There's a lot of discussion, particularly about things that Emmanuel Macron, the French
President, has been saying.
Yeah.
And we've had a few absurd debates, especially in the German media recently.
So I want to say this now: I don't think that discussions about an EU bomb are useful or
likely or really lead us anywhere.
In the European Union there are countries that have even signed the nuclear ban treaty.
So they're against nuclear weapons in general.
So the EU is not going to get a nuclear weapon.
Could European countries cooperate on nuclear capabilities?
Again, we also have all signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, so I don't expect
any new nuclear states to emerge.
But, and this is kind of the third option in this, I think it is worth discussing with
the UK and especially France whether or not there can be some kind of enlarged nuclear
European deterrent.
What that would look like is a big question.
I don't think we're going to have nuclear sharing in the way that we have now with the
US with you know forwards based nuclear weapons with the US bases, nuclear weapons in Germany
and Italy and other European countries, I don't think we may be seeing this, but talking
about kind of joint trainings, how do we make sure that France’s nuclear deterrence is
understood as being more European than just, you know, French.
I think that would be useful.
But these are baby steps.
This isn't for tomorrow.
And again, I think the conventional capabilities are more important.
And I mean, we're talking about thinking about this because the US is looking potentially
politically unpredictable, unreliable.
And yet in France, there could soon be a President, Marine Le Pen.
The UK has left the EU.
There was Brexit.
Are France and Britain and the rest of Europe really politically in a solid enough place
to come up with the kind of solemn, really profound commitments that would be involved
in such an arrangement?
I mean, the honest answer is we don't quite know.
And of course, you know, in democratic states, you always have the possibility of governments
not just changing but changing quite dramatically.
So far over the last decades and decades there has been a commitment to European unity and,
yeah, to European trust and defense to some extent among Europeans, and this is not going
to break tomorrow.
I mean even with say a Le Pen presidency in France, these are very fundamental elements
of European cooperation and I don't think are just gonna disappear.
And by the way, in a way the Trump presidency in the UK, sorry, in the US was an example
for that because even though Donald Trump was you know by far the most critical president
of all things transatlantic defense, the lines did not break because it’s a very fundamental
relationship between states.
So I don't think we should be completely panicky and say we can't work with anybody because
governments may change, but of course there is an element, there is an added element of
uncertainty at this time in Europe and in the world in a way, because there's a rise
of certain especially right-wing actors and so yeah, that's the world we're living in.
Which may again kind of point also countries to do more themselves nationally.
But I do believe in the European cooperation and even with other actors coming to power
I don't think that this these kind of very fundamental truths of the European corporation
are going to break apart.
Ulrike Franke, thanks very much.
Thank you very much.