Who is afraid of Germany?

French President Emmanuel Macron is meeting German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on July 17 for what is officially touted as the friendliest of summits. The leaders of the European Union’s biggest economies claim to be the “engine” of European integration, the indispensable allies on which the security of the continent depends.

To underline this point, Merz and Macron will chair a meeting of what is grandly entitled the Franco-German Defence and Security Council on a German air force base.

Yet behind all these public expressions of friendship lurks a different reality. France’s political elite is growing increasingly suspicious of Germany’s fast-rising military power.

The French have spent decades asking Germany to do more for the continent’s defence.

But now that the Germans are finally obliging by pouring large sums of money into their military, the French – as well as a handful of other European nations – are discovering that while they wanted Germany to rearm, they forgot to ask what comes after that.

Old arrangements

Since the end of World War II in 1945, Europe has twice confronted the same German Question: What role should the strongest country at the centre of the continent play? On previous occasions, the answer was provided not by the Europeans but by the US.

The US encouraged the rise of a new democratic state out of the ashes of Nazi Germany. And when the Berlin Wall, which divided Germany during the Cold War, fell in 1989, it was US president George W. Bush who persuaded the Europeans that they should embrace a reunited German nation without hesitation or preconditions.

None of this diminishes the significance of what the Europeans accomplished on their own. Without the EU, Germany would not have prospered. And without the political reconciliation and close cooperation between France and Germany, the ghosts of a horrible past would have still haunted the continent.

Still, the initial impetus for these integration processes came from the US. Without the constant and very visible presence of the US security umbrella, Europe’s accommodation with Germany would have been much more difficult.

And it is also a fact that the Franco-German relationship, which was at the core of many European efforts, was based on an implicit but firm division of labour, under which the Germans exercised most power on economic matters but pretended not to do so. At the same time, the French had the upper hand in European security questions and bragged loudly about it.

It was an arrangement that worked for decades because it suited both sides. Berlin was delighted to let others pour money into their militaries while Germany developed its civilian industries, while the French were keen to be seen as Europe’s greatest power.

Sadly, this arrangement no longer works. The return of war to the European continent requires a massive rise in Europe’s defence expenditure of the kind that heavily indebted France cannot afford. While Germany’s defence expenditure soars, France’s pretence to lead Europe’s security debate looks increasingly threadbare.

To make matters much worse, the US is no longer there to shepherd the Europeans into a new consensus about how to deal with Germany, the continent’s rising military power. Europe’s nation-states must do so on their own and, at least for the moment, they are failing.

New German power

The numbers explain the unease felt in France and a handful of other European states. Germany’s 2026 defence budget, at €82.7 billion (S$122.2 billion) plus another €25.5 billion from a special fund, tops €108 billion – the largest military budget in the history of the Federal Republic and a rise of roughly a third on 2025.

German defence spending in 2026 matches that of France and Britain combined, and by 2030, it is projected to exceed it comfortably. Merz’s stated ambition – to build “the strongest conventional army in Europe” – is no longer rhetoric.

The Bundeswehr is set to grow from 180,000 to 260,000 soldiers, backed by 200,000 reservists, by 2035.

While there is no mandatory military conscription, a new law obliges young men to register and undergo medical assessment. German men aged 17 to 45 must also obtain authorisation for extended stays abroad. 

Meanwhile the assembly lines of Volkswagen, the car manufacturer, are being retooled to build weapons. And Germany has adopted, for the first time in its modern history, a national military strategy, pointedly titled “Responsibility for Europe”. It is that word – responsibility – which is beginning to grate in Paris, but also in Warsaw, the capital of Poland, another country with a troubled historic entanglement with Germany.

The misgivings come in layers and often contradict one another, which is precisely why they are so difficult to handle. The Poles manage to hold two opposing fears simultaneously: that a rearmed Germany will not fight for them, and that one day, Germany may be tempted to reach an accommodation with Russia at the expense of the central Europeans.

The French anxiety is more mercantile but no less real. Germany’s defence industry is already Europe’s largest by revenue. If Berlin channels its new billions into its own ecosystem of defence-tech firms, it could eventually displace France as the world’s second-largest arms exporter.

Real strategic differences

The rapid influx of German capital has fuelled a “go-it-alone” industrial approach in Berlin, leading to the collapse of several joint European initiatives. The most glaring casualty is the Future Combat Air System (SCAF), a joint Franco-German fighter jet programme launched in 2017 that was recently abandoned.

The French blame German intransigence for this failure. But the reality is far simpler: The French and Germans are failing to cooperate because they have differing strategic visions and priorities.

Take the aircraft industry as an example. France requires a new multi-role jet capable of operating from aircraft carriers and delivering nuclear weapons, while Germany primarily needs an aircraft for airspace defence over central Europe. France urgently needs to replace its current fleet of Rafale jets, whereas Germany recently purchased American F-35s and faces less time pressure. Unsurprisingly, their joint fighter jet project failed.

Behind these industrial divorces lie fundamentally different philosophies regarding European defence. France champions what it likes to call its “strategic autonomy”, by which it means the creation of a sovereign European defence industry capable of operating independently of the US and – unsurprisingly – dominated by big French industrial concerns.

Germany, however, views defence primarily through a transatlantic and industrial lens, prioritising swift capability acquisition – often utilising American and Israeli military technology – and maintaining strong ties with Washington.

As General Holger Neumann, the chief of Germany’s air force, put it last week: “If the task is to be ready as soon as we can, we may have to procure commercially available systems”, by which he means US fighter jets. “Developing our own capabilities takes time. Right now, we do not have time,” Neumann added.

For the Germans, this makes perfect sense. But for the French, the idea that Europe’s rearmament may end up meaning that the continent buys more rather than fewer US-made weapons remains anathema.

Facing new realities

Over the past few weeks, a steady stream of senior French diplomats and influential commentators have lamented the emergence of what they see as a selfish and increasingly assertive Germany. This chorus is boosted by a number of German academics who are also warning about the supposed dangers of rising German power.

In various articles and in a new book, Liana Fix, a German historian working at the Council on Foreign Relations in the US, warns about the rise of a new German “hegemon”, which will allegedly crowd out the rest of Europe’s nations.

She is also worried about the possibility that the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is friendly to Russia, may come to power in Berlin, and tilt Europe’s biggest military power towards Moscow.

Fix’s arguments were recently picked up and amplified by influential US commentators. Writing in The Washington Post last week, Fareed Zakaria warned about the “anxieties” which Germany’s rearmament is generating in Europe.

Yet many of these ideas are not only off the mark; they are also misconceived. The suggestion that there is something in the German character that makes this nation inherently untrustworthy is an old European argument which boils down to a racist trope. There is nothing militaristic in Germany’s current posture, and there is plenty of evidence that the country’s current rearmament is still facing major doubts and even opposition from the German public.

A recent survey conducted by INSA, a top German research institute, found that only 17 per cent of respondents believe Germany’s armed forces could adequately defend the country, and only 37 per cent said they are worried about the possibility of a Russian attack. This is hardly a nation just waiting to don its military boots and start marching across Europe, as old anti-German stereotypes suggest.

Besides, although the German economy certainly dwarfs that of other European nations, it is facing its own big problems. For the first time, Germany is now recording growing trade deficits with China. And the famed German car industry is being decimated by Chinese producers. The question is, therefore, not whether the Germans will succeed in becoming a military “hegemon” but rather, whether the current German defence plans are sustainable.

And while the possibility of an AfD victory in Germany is clearly a danger, chances are higher that the far-right National Rally – equally pro-Russian – will take over France in 2027, when the French will elect both a new president and a fresh Parliament.

What remains beyond dispute, however, is that Germany is correct in moving fast to fill the defence gaps created by the US military withdrawal from Europe. With the abandonment of the SCAF fighter-jet project and the faltering of a joint Franco-German tank project, Germany has pivoted towards a “Nordic hub”, forging new air defence and fighter-jet partnerships with Sweden and its manufacturer, Saab.

By pooling group purchases with Finland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, Germany is aggressively diversifying its supply chain well beyond its historical partnership with Paris. And by buying equipment off-the-shelf from the US, Germany is moving fast to address Europe’s vulnerabilities.

The French will still be able to leverage their possession of nuclear weapons against an inferior conventional military capability. But Paris will also have to accept that its old dream of running Europe is no longer realisable.

For eight decades, France’s German policy rested on a comfortable paradox: Paris wanted a Germany strong enough to pay for Europe, but never strong enough to lead it. That Germany no longer exists. The question haunting Paris is not whether Berlin will use its new power wisely, but whether anyone in Paris still has the means to shape how it is used at all.