Germany is increasing defense spending amid Russia threat claims, NATO tensions and plans to turn its forces into Europe\u2019s strongest army.<\/p>\n
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said European countries are being forced to\u00a0raise defense spending because of\u00a0what he\u00a0described as\u00a0a\u00a0supposed threat from Russia, Reuters reported.<\/p>\n
According to\u00a0Merz, the European Union still expects support from the United States and assumes that American troops will stand with European allies if\u00a0needed. He\u00a0said European states, including Germany, are spending billions to\u00a0rebuild their armed forces in\u00a0response to\u00a0the perceived Russian threat.<\/p>\n
Merz also pointed to\u00a0tensions between Donald Trump\u2019s\u00a0administration and European NATO partners. The dispute escalated after EU\u00a0members refused to\u00a0support the United States and Israel in\u00a0the war against Iran.<\/p>\n
The chancellor said that amid growing geopolitical instability, Germany is\u00a0taking on\u00a0a\u00a0special role: protecting its own security while also preserving European unity. He\u00a0added that Berlin intends to\u00a0transform the country\u2019s\u00a0armed forces into the strongest regular army on\u00a0the continent.<\/p>\n
According to\u00a0Bloomberg, Germany has already started repurposing some civilian infrastructure for military needs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Germany is increasing defense spending amid Russia threat claims, NATO tensions and plans to turn its forces into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11918,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9201,479,11746,393,5,5431,11747,8513,4416,7324,11745],"class_list":{"0":"post-11917","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-bloomberg","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-european-army","11":"tag-friedrich-merz","12":"tag-germany","13":"tag-germany-defense-spending","14":"tag-military-infrastructure","15":"tag-nato-tensions","16":"tag-reuters","17":"tag-russia-threat","18":"tag-us-support"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}