It was hardly if the word “peace” has been pronounced. The fiery debates in the Bundestag, on March 18, on the constitutional reform aimed at unlocking funds to rearm Germany focused on the risks of debt, on the ideological turnaround of the conservatives led by Friedrich Merz, on the campaign promises not held … But almost not on the heart of the subject: the hundreds of billions of euros thus released to finance over the duration of the German army. As if the need to massively rearm the country is now consensus. Or that opposing it had become impossible, even for these elected officials who, like many of their fellow citizens, grew up in the 1980s with the famous slogan “to make peace without arms” (Frieden Schaffen Ohne Waffen), a rallying cry of an anti -militarist Germany with Protestant roots.
Would Germany have finished with pacifism? The ideological turning point dates back to the “change of time” (Zeitenwend) Theorized by Chancellor Olaf Scholz three, days after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and invoked to prepare the country for the need to invest in his defense. But even then, voices still called to avoid a “world armament spiral” and at “Aspire to world peace”,, As thirty intellectuals asked for it in an open letter to Olaf Scholz in April 2022. The victory of Donald Trump and his manifest disinterest in Europe came to accelerate the awareness of a country not yet ready to ensure militarily, without its historical protector.
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Source: Lemonde