In a time when the whole world is under economic pressure due to COVID-19, the German government discusses spending billions on purchasing and maintaining 30 new nuclear flight jets (F18F).
Disclaimer: This post doesn’t contain any original research, but it sums up information that is generally available around this topic.
Nuclear weapons in Germany? No way, we don’t do nuclear, right? Well…
The German government itself refrains from producing atomic weapons as part of the “Two Plus Four Treaty". However Germany participates in something called “Nuclear Sharing” (“Nukleare Teilhabe”). This gives the USA the ability to command nuclear air strikes, while German soldiers and jets execute these commands.
The German fight jets “Tornado” are the jets which are supposed to support this endeavour. Build in the 1980s, they are now somewhat of an old-timer. According to unpublished documents of the German ministry of defense, simply maintaining these old jets amounts to 600 million €, just for 2019. This is why earlier this year, the discussion of replacing them with an entirely new fleet has come up (source).
A podcast of NDR Info (official German news channel) released yesterday (18.04.2020), states that the German ministry of defense aims to purchase 30 new nuclear fight jets from the US of the type F18F. Purchasing them will require billions, while maintaining them will cost additional billions of €s.
In the podcast the German reporter himself admits that obeying the Nuclear Sharing pact may no longer make sense, since the USA no longer needs to ask for European permission, even if it intends to strike European sites. The German perspective according to NDR Info is more or less summarized in a statement from Karl-Heinz Kamp from 2017 (also part of the podcast). He more or less stated: Germany is part of a system … and we’d like to keep it that way. The magic of speaking while saying nothing…
The F18F by the way is a fighting jet sold by the US, which had trouble selling due to its high price and slight technological disadvantages according to nationalinterest.org. What is still pending is to have that jet certified to be allowed to deliver atomic weapons. I’m sure with billions of $ and a global atomic warfare presence at stake, that certificate is going to pop out of somewhere.
So to summarize, we are buying fight jets from the US to carry their atomic bombs possibly to another European country, spending billions in a time of COVID-19?
Meanwhile like always Germany has a blind eye towards the US or its own military business. These kind of news simply get mentioned, people who do notice get upset for a while and then forget about it. Is this the kind of nation we really want to be?
Interestingly, a particular German scientist working for the SWP (a German institute which supports political decisions), has made up her mind rather clearly around this topic. The head of the research group titled “National Security Policy”, Dr. Claudia Major, continuously states the importance of working together with the American military in order to exercise military dominance. Only recently (16.04.2020) she published an article about this, mentioning the Cold War and hinting at Russia taking over the world (source).
She has also published a rather interesting article over on carnegieendowment.org (a site which in their “about” section claims to offer decision makers ideas to advance international peace), titled Germanys Dangerous Nuclear Sleepwalking, which I highly recommend everybody to read. How can we have such people advising our political leaders?
Who believes in peace through atomic bombs in 2020?
When was this ever a good idea?