Merkel Urged NATO Countries To Arm Themselves

• 2.07.2025, 20:23

Under her leadership, German defense spending was being cut.

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel called the agreement of NATO countries to increase military spending to 5% of GDP logical and necessary. She said this on July 1 in Schwerin on the RND vor Ort talk show.

She believes that NATO countries should become "capable of peace," and this goal can be achieved by increasing military power, Deutsche Welle quoted Merkel's speech as saying.

"2% of GDP for defense has long been insufficient. We must become capable of peace through military force," the former chancellor said.

Merkel, who served as Germany's chancellor from 2005 to 2021, justified Germany's significant cuts in defense spending over the past two decades, Tagesschau news service reported. The former chancellor said it was the right thing to do given the circumstances at the time. But now, she said, Germany must invest significantly in defense.

"If we had to spend 3.5 percent of GDP on defense since 1990, rebuilding the new federal states would certainly be much more difficult," Tagesschau quoted Merkel as saying during a speech in Schwerin.

While in the 1980s, i.e. the last years of the Cold War, between 2.5 percent and 3 percent of Germany's GDP was spent on defense, according to the federal statistical office, this share fell to just under 1.4 percent of GDP by the end of the 1990s, the media outlet said.

Merkel believes that attacks are easiest to prevent by creating a deterrence effect while maintaining diplomatic contacts, Deutsche Welle noted.

"This is how we got through the Cold War, and this is how we need to get through the times to come," Merkel said, adding that it is good that negotiations with Russia are going on again. "Without negotiations, this war will definitely not end," she said.