Chancellor Friedrich Merz currently considers it unlikely that the US will supply Germany with Tomahawk medium-range missiles promised by then-president Joe Biden in 2024.
“As I see it at the moment, objectively speaking, there is hardly any possibility of the US supplying weapons systems of this kind,” Merz told public broadcaster ARD on Sunday.
“If I am not mistaken, the Americans do not have enough themselves at the moment,” the chancellor added. The issue has been under discussion for months, “so far without any commitment from the US,” he said.
At the NATO summit two years ago, Biden promised Germany that, for the first time since the Cold War, medium-range weapons with conventional warheads would be stationed in Germany as a deterrent, capable of reaching as far as Russia.
He held out the prospect of deploying Tomahawk cruise missiles with a range of up to 2,500 kilometres, SM-6 missiles and newly developed hypersonic weapons by 2026. President Donald Trump has so far neither publicly endorsed Biden’s decision at the time nor retracted it.
According to US media, however, the US Department of Defence has withdrawn plans to deploy a unit to operate, maintain and service the medium-range missiles as part of the planned reduction of US troops in Germany by 5,000.
Merz did not appear surprised by the US government’s decision to reduce troop numbers. “What we’ve been hearing over the last few days isn’t exactly new. It may be being played up a bit, but it’s nothing new,” he asserted.
Following his meeting with Trump at the White House in March, however, the chancellor had sounded quite different. Trump had “reassured him once again that the US would maintain its military presence in Germany,” he said at the time. “That is good news, but I wouldn’t have expected anything else.”
Merz conceded that the Bundeswehr is currently not in a position to fill the gap left by a withdrawal of US forces.