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President Donald Trump launched his campaign for Europe in general and Germany in particular to spend more of their budget on defense during his first term, and this is beginning to have benefits in Europe’s economic engine, the Federal Republic of Germany.
Germany’s coalition government – the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union and the Social Democrats – has agreed on a new system of incentives for voluntary military service after a heated debate last week to address the growing Russia threat on the European continent.
Incentives to generate recruitment include free access to driver’s licenses. The cost of a driver’s license can reach several thousand dollars. The second incentive is an increase to the current pre-tax salary by approximately $3,000 per month at the entry level.
America gets a shock as Germany’s defense budget plans fall short
North Rhine-Westphalia, Ahlen: Recruits during combat training as part of a media day for basic training in Reconnaissance Battalion 7 of the Bundeswehr. Politicians from the CDU/CSU and SPD have agreed on a nationwide draft for a new military service. (Federico Gamberini/Image Alliance via Getty Images)
German conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced at the start of his term that Germany’s armed forces would be transformed into “the strongest conventional army in Europe,” Jens Spahn, the parliamentary leader of Merz’s CDU party, told reporters on Thursday. “We want to win the hearts of more and more youth to serve the fatherland.”
Spann said that if the voluntary model does not secure enough military troops and personnel, “we will need to make it mandatory,” Spann said, however, the move toward mandatory conscription would mean a new law would need to be passed.
David Wurmser, who worked for the U.S. Naval Reserve as an intelligence officer, as a lieutenant commander and was a former senior adviser on nonproliferation and Middle East strategy to Vice President Dick Cheney, told Fox News Digital that “Europe is finally starting to look at defense in a more serious way.”
“Although this has never been its official policy, over the past few decades, Europeans have come to accept both the American overhang and the unimaginability of war as substantially reducing any defense burden they might share, while simultaneously positioning themselves as a kind of moral conscience dominating the world right up to pacifism and impossible moral perfection. It is a good thing that they are now forced to think seriously about their own defense and what it might involve.” Is.”
President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz meet in the Oval Office of the White House on June 5, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Brandon Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
‘Make NATO great again’: Hegseth pressures European allies to step up defense effort
He further stated that “It is important that we in the United States begin to understand that the center of gravity of European civilization is shifting eastward. The fact that Germany, before Britain and France, appreciated the danger it faced and the resulting need for a more robust defense is emblematic of the shift eastward.”
According to Wurmser, “Symbolically, Germany’s actions represent a realization that is long overdue, but not yet universally understood. What happened in February 2022, as well as what is happening in the Middle East against Israel, are merely local versions of a much larger, dangerous, and potentially lethal global competition, led by a number of nations opposed to Western civilization.”
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Russian President Vladimir Putin, center, watches a Victory Day military parade marking the 75th anniversary of the Nazi defeat in Moscow. (Sergey Gunayev/Host via photo agency AP, file)
He said, “That axis represents a fusion of communist, Islamist and fascist ideas. That unholy alliance, an unlikely alliance, is based first of all on hatred of Western civilization. The West will not survive until it realizes that, and what Germany is doing is to some extent a first small step in that direction.”
Trump urged Germany to pay more to the US for Germany’s military defense during his first term.
