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The German Military: Why So Little Bang, For So Much Buck?

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by Michael Trinkwalder

The Kampfpanzer Leopard 2 A5 of the German Army (Image source: Wikimedia)

In its current state, the German Armed Forces, or the Bundeswehr, are neither “structurally capable nor equipped” for the military defence of the NATO alliance. This is the damning verdict of the former German Parliamentary Commissioner of the Armed Forces Hans-Peter Bartels. In recent years, stories about the Bundeswehr’s poor level of readiness have become an all too familiar tale, with at times none of the country’s submarines being operational or Germany having only enough ammunition to arm just four of its Eurofighter aircraft, to name just some of the more egregious examples. Consequently, the current state of the German Armed Forces has not unjustifiably been characterised as “nothing flies, nothing floats, and nothing runs.” What is to blame for the embarrassing state of the German Bundeswehr?

A Funding Problem or an Efficiency Problem?

Internationally, coverage of this issue has mostly focused on Germany’s continued failure to reach the NATO military spending target of two per cent (as measured against the country’s GDP) – and the severe strain this has put on the German-American relationship. However, with the help of COVID-19, Germany’s 2020 defense budget of about €50.4 billion ($55,43 billion) is set to rise to 1.58 percent of its GDP. Even back in 2019 at just 1.36 percent of its GDP, Germany’s military budget exceeded that of every single member of NATO except the United Kingdom and the United States. Yet, for instance, France maintains a larger military, with thousands of troops deployed abroad, a nuclear strike force, etc. – with a defence budget that was €3 billion ($3.5 billion) lower than the German one. So, why does the German military get so little value for its money?

Accordingly, the German military does not just have a funding problem, it has an efficiency problem, with defense reforms and their lack of political direction often being the source rather than the remedy of the Bundeswehr’s problems. Since virtually all of these reforms were aimed at saving cost, with little thought being directed towards the retention of conventional warfighting capabilities. Thus, after reunification, military functions were privatised, conscription was suspended and the Bundeswehr was gradually reduced to its current strength of fewer than 185,000 soldiers.  The German military went from being solely focused on territorial and alliance defence towards an almost exclusive focus on out-of-area missions in Afghanistan, Mali, Iraq, or Syria. Arguably, it was only the annexation of Crimea and Russia’s increasingly belligerent behavior that prevented further cuts. Additionally, the post of the Minister of Defense is infamous for being a graveyard for promising political careers. Indeed, in the last two decades, only a single defense minister has managed to spend more than a single term on the aptly named ‘ejection seat.’ Therefore, those opposed to change could simply wait-out any serious reform attempt.

Bureaucracy Strangling Everything and Everyone?

However, Germany’s military efficiency problem goes beyond half-baked reforms or a frequently changing political leadership. In his recent reports to parliament, Commissioner Bartels blames a culture of overregulation within the Bundeswehr for smothering “everything and everyone” in thousands of self-imposed regulations and rules. It is not as if armament projects of other militaries weren’t also prone to delays and cost overruns, but in Germany the Bundeswehr’s culture of overregulation is compounded by a lack of qualified personnel in its procurement agency the BAAINBw.

As a result, virtually none of Germany’s military lighthouse projects, like the armored personnel carrier Puma, the A400M transport aircraft, or the F125 frigates were completed in time or on budget. Even routine repairs and maintenance is often impossible due to a lack of stored spare parts and the byzantine procurement process. Leading to serious technical problems down the line and forcing soldiers to cannibalize other weapon systems for parts. In fact, the Ministry of Defense estimates that it will take until 2031 to fully equip all of its soldiers – a prediction that is already looking increasingly shaky. Particularly, since the Bundeswehr might be heading for a new round of major budget cuts – courtesy of the COVID-19 recession.

Cause for Optimism?

Nonetheless, there is some reason for optimism, in April a new law went into effect aimed at facilitating the procurement of new equipment. The current Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer has been unwavering in her calls for Germany to meet the two per cent spending commitment – even if only by the year 2031. Arguably just as important is her announcement of a major upcoming reform of military procurement and maintenance that could among other things decentralize parts of the procurement process and return certain maintenance and repair capacities to the different armed services. Additionally, the German military has also distinguished itself in the current health crisis, which could spare the Bundeswehr from bearing the brunt of the coming COVID-19 budget bust-up.

Because of the lengthy time-frame of its military reforms, the German military will have to tackle its efficiency as well as its spending problem simultaneously. Considering, Trump’s plans to withdraw almost 10,000 soldiers from the country, Berlin better figure out how fast.  Germany and NATO can no longer afford a Bundeswehr that is at best only capable of “conditional operationality.”

 

Disclaimer: The author was a civilian employee of the German Armed Forces. The views expressed in the article are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the German Armed Forces, the German Government, or the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.

Michael Trinkwalder is the 2020 Young Professionals in Foreign Policy Europe Fellow; he is a Research Assistant at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, where he focuses on EU-NATO cooperation, defense innovation, and the implications of the rise of China. He holds an M.A. in International Relations from the KU Eichstätt-Ingolstadt and a B.A. in International Business Studies from the FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg. You can follow him on Twitter: @m_trinkwalder 

 

 

Conscription Reform and the Future of Military Manpower in Turkey

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By Onur Kara

12 February 2019

A Turkish soldiers stands guard in Anıtkabir, Ankara.(Photo credit: Wojciech Olkusnik)

 

The military draft is making headlines again following several decades in decline. France seeks to re-introduce the national service and several gulf Arab states went ahead with implementing conscription despite their relatively small populations. Even Tunisia, known for maintaining a modest army, had a debate about making the military more attractive to its youth.

Turkish security bureaucracy, however, spent a good portion of 2018 working on a paid conscription exemption — a one-off payment of 15,000 Turkish Liras (roughly £2000 at the time of writing), for which people born before 1994 are eligible. This ‘exemption’ allows the reduction of military service to 21 days of mostly symbolic training instead of a 6-month minimum. The response was overwhelming; over 600,000 people applied by the time the government closed applications in November 2018. It also revealed that the Turkish military has a severe recruitment problem which remained under the radar, highlighting the strenuous interaction between politicians and the army.

Military service is a politically sensitive topic in Turkey. Military service exemptions were a talking point for many political figures before the July 2018 elections, while one analyst argued that the paid exemption supporters constituted the best organised lobby group in the country. They are very visible with their Twitter campaigns, supported by a dedicated association which attracts a wide following, constituting a large pool of voters with a very clear demand in mind.

Electoral politics, however, cover only one part of a larger story. Turkey’s defence and security establishment has been undergoing substantial change after the failed coup attempt in 2016, and the defence doctrine is not exempt from it. The manpower policy in particular is due to change, which feeds the second largest land army in NATO and one the strongest in its region. In a topic where available literature is a thin and anecdotal evidence is the norm, the issue of military service buyouts provides some insight.

Turkey’s conscription model is universal. It is not possible to opt for civilian service, or opt out due to religious or family reasons. Conscientious objection is not recognised, which often means a long legal struggle for objectors. The only practical way of total exemption is (apart from dropping the citizenship altogether) a medical discharge. All other methods result in deferrals, which does not remove the obligation and there is no cut-off point where the state stops tracking one’s military service status.

The key issue is that the manpower policy of the military no longer corresponds to the needs of the nation. Prime Minister Yıldırım announced that 5.5 million people still carried the military obligation in 2018, which denotes all men of the military age who still need to go through their military service. He also stated that the required force level of the army was 350,000. In a country of 80 million people with a large youth population, it means processing a very high amount of young men every year. The bureaucracy of enlistment and discharging previous cohorts alone causes several months’ gap between one’s application to enlist and the start of the actual service. So, 600,000 applications for the November 2018 exemption suddenly clogged the system, causing the government to announce a mobilisation-demobilisation schedule stretching to January 2020.

In June 2018, President Erdogan announced a commitment to a more professional and high-tech military as the paid exemption was being launched. The structure of the military has already changed considerably in the last years; the army no longer uses conscripts in most combat units, and the Gendarmerie declared that it will stop enlisting conscripted troops altogether after 2019. The Gendarmerie alone employs around 120,000 drafted personnel, which presents a substantial challenge on its own. Hence, a conscript today is unlikely to see combat, and the military experience remains limited to support roles.

How further professionalisation will be achieved, however, is still in question. The government is unlikely to abolish the military service altogether. Political cost of such a step is very high in an environment where nationalism is on the rise, and the armed forces itself could disagree. Stopgap measures in the past also proved themselves to be problematic: there were several cases in the 2000s where the army pushed for further professionalisation, especially for enlisted men ad NCOs. These were much less successful than anticipated and the armed forces usually could not recruit as many candidates as they wanted.

As a result, the military service became increasingly filled with variations and exceptions: differences between university graduates and non-diploma holders, special rules for dual-citizenship holders and Turks living abroad, and so on. The practice of paid exemptions contributes to this pattern while not finding a solution to the underlying structural issues. It also raises moral questions since those with the wherewithal end up not serving.

The armed forces themselves are aware of these problems. Hulusi Akar, the Minister of National Defence, recently made a statement declaring that the military service is to be reformed — which will unify the currently fractured system into a single training program where educational attainment and employment status will not make a difference. Such a reform would help alleviate the sense of injustice coming from the current system; however, it also requires the coordination of several government ministries.

Any concrete proposals for military service reform will become clearer after the local elections scheduled for March 2019. The manpower policy of the Turkish army is evolving as the society changes and the security policy evolves towards favouring a different kind of force structure. The end result is likely to be a form of compromise between the civilians and the military, which hopefully won’t be the worst of both worlds.

Onur Kara is a PhD candidate in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. You can follow him on Twitter @on_kara. 

Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Turkish_soldier.jpg