On March 13, 2025, a public hearing was held in the budget committee of the German Bundestag on the planned amendment to the German constitution for a massive increase in military spending. Peace activist and expert Reiner Braun was invited as an expert witness and submitted a written statement in which he critically questions the justification for the armament – Russia’s alleged aggressiveness.

On the basis of data from Western intelligence reports and analyses by renowned research institutes, he shows that NATO is militarily far superior to Russia and that a Russian attack on the West appears highly unlikely. Instead of escalating and rearming, Braun calls for a policy of common security and peace negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. We are publishing his statement in full here.

German Bundestag Budget Committee Mr. Chairman
Prof. Dr. Helge Braun, MdB
By mail: haushaltsausschuss@bundestag.de
Reiner Braun
International Peace Bureau Marienstraße 19-20
10117 Berlin

Written statement

in preparation for the public hearing of the Budget Committee of the German Bundestag on 13 March 2025 on the draft law to amend the Basic Law (Articles 109, 115 and 143h) Bundestag printed paper 20/15096

Dear Sir or Madam,

The elephant in the room, or the central justification for the planned massive rearmament, is the assertion of a fundamental aggressiveness on the part of Russia and that Russia wants to and will attack the West in a few years – the West/NATO will in turn have to defend itself.

In my article, I want to question and refute this statement.

Since so far only the BND is cited as a secret source of the knowledge of a Russian threat for the planned rearmament, a publication by 17 US intelligence agencies should also be consulted, in which it can be read: “Russia almost certainly does not want a direct military conflict with US and NATO forces”. (“Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community”, February 5, 2024, page 14) Why ignore this statement?

1. Is Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine proof enough of an impending war of aggression against Europe?

Even if Russia will “win” this war for a variety of reasons, it has blatantly exposed the weaknesses of the Russian military before the eyes of the world. This military is supposed to attack a NATO that is many times superior? That would be – to put it mildly – more than unlikely and, from Russia’s point of view, suicidal madness.
However, this war has once again made one thing clear: if the security interests of a country are permanently violated and never taken seriously, despite the fact that the policy of common security and the Charter of Paris provide for this, and then Russia is pushed with its back to the “political wall” by NATO’s eastward expansion, irresponsible and unjustifiable reactions may occur. Responsible peace and security policy must therefore always follow the idea of détente policy, according to which one’s own security is only guaranteed if the security of the other is also guaranteed (Olof Palme Reports 1-1982 and 2-2022). The first shot in a war is always the failure of diplomacy and this is never a one-sided responsibility.

2. Yes, but Putin: Can we trust Putin?

The question can also be formulated the other way around: What should Russian President Vladimir Putin think of the West after all the agreements not kept by the West? The list of broken promises/pledges/contracts is long: NATO’s eastward expansion in violation of the letter and spirit of Paris, the pledges of well-known Western politicians and presidents from 1990 to 1992, the denunciation of arms control treaties, the Minsk Agreement not as a peace treaty, but, as admitted by former Chancellor Angela Merkel and former French President François Hollande as well as his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko, as an interregnum of rearmament in preparation for the next war against Russia, etc.
It was never Russia that was the first to withdraw from arms control and disarmament treaties such as ABM, INF, Open Sky, CFE.
Isn’t it time to take Putin at his word and talk to each other about a security architecture? Almost all countries in the world outside Europe are talking to Putin with political success. Demonization and the culture of the enemy prevent a realistic approach to problems and conflicts, and obstruct international solutions to global challenges.
Trust is good, control is better. But this only applies when negotiations are taking place, when dialogue is decisive and agreements are made that can then be verified. It is precisely the outgoing federal government that is refusing to accept this concept of dialogue, which has earned us great recognition in the past for peaceful conflict resolution. This has already done enormous damage to our country’s reputation in the world.
Instead, the incoming coalition of CDU, CSU and SPD is escalating even before taking office by lifting the budget limits of the defense budget.

3. Is German politics oblivious to history?

Historically, Russia has almost always been attacked from the west, but western Europe has not been attacked from the east. The Soviet Union made a decisive contribution, at unimaginable cost, to Germany and Europe being liberated from fascism. The nation of the perpetrators, in particular, should not forget this.
The three invasions in the last 200 years – Napoleon in 1812, World War I and the invasion of the German Wehrmacht in 1941 – have left a deep imprint on the mentality, culture and consciousness of the Russian population and certainly continue to have a significant influence on Russian politics today. From the Russian point of view, NATO’s encirclement is part of this tradition.

4. NATO has a three to seven times superiority in all central military areas in Russia

The figures for 2023 from the most renowned peace research institute, SIPRI (SIPRI Report, 22.04.2024), refute the myth that “Europe” is militarily on its knees and urgently needs to be “rearmed”, as the name of the EU program “ReArm Europe” suggests. This is also confirmed by an overview of military spending presented by the NATO-affiliated International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London in February 2024. The EU increased its military spending in 2024 by 11.7 percent year-on-year to $457 billion. This was, of course, not even half of the budget of the US armed forces, which amounted to 968 billion US dollars last year. The largest increase was in German military spending, which – including special liabilities – amounted to approximately 90 billion. The Russian military budget in 2023 was 145.9 billion US dollars.
In the study prepared for Greenpeace by renowned peace researchers Herbert Wulf and Christoph Steinmetz, the following conclusion is drawn:

  • NATO’s superiority in numbers: NATO’s military capabilities exceed Russia’s in almost all aspects. The NATO countries spend about ten times more on defense than Russia – $1.19 trillion compared to $127 billion. Even without the US, NATO remains financially superior. Even when weighting for different purchasing power, the European NATO countries have an arms spending advantage of $420 billion to $300 billion over Russia.
  • Technological and operational superiority: In the assessment of weapons technologies, NATO has a clear advantage in key areas such as combat aircraft and tanks. Russia’s efforts to develop modern systems are severely limited by economic and technological bottlenecks. For example, NATO as a whole has 5,406 combat aircraft, the European NATO partners without the USA alone have 073, while Russia has 1,026. In the case of battle tanks, there are more than 6,000 European tanks compared to 2,000 Russian tanks. (NATO with the USA even has over 9,000 tanks.) The following picture emerges for artillery systems: European NATO countries 15,399, NATO total: 22,145, Russia 5,399.
  • Troop strength and readiness: With over three million active duty personnel, NATO also has the advantage in troop strength. Russia can only mobilize 1.33 million active duty personnel, a large number of whom are still stationed in or on the border with Ukraine. In addition, Russia is facing increasing losses and a shrinking
  • Imbalance in the arms industry: The arms industry plays a crucial role in military strength. While NATO has a robust and innovative high-tech defense environment, Russia is struggling to maintain its production capabilities, which hinders the introduction of modern weapons systems.

I am leaving out the nuclear weapons, with the ability to mutually destroy each other multiple times.

Will this still be true in four years? Even then, Russia’s economic strength and technological capabilities will still not be sufficient to wage a war of aggression. Moreover, neither the president nor any serious political force has formulated the political will to do so. Such a war would contradict the logic of Russian foreign and security policy. The war in Ukraine has led to significant attrition and losses. The sheer number of satellite systems (e.g. Starlink with 7,000 satellites) and drones makes the thesis of a possible attack by Russia extremely unlikely.

5. The unanswered question: why would Russia attack the West?

To ask this question is to answer it in the sense of the above: out of suicide or out of intrinsic madness?
Despite all political, economic, ideological and human rights differences, a policy towards Russia can only be a policy of good neighborliness, dialogue and cooperation. Never – and history should have taught us this – a policy of aggressive rearmament, even of preparing for war. Therefore, the present draft laws of the CDU/CSU and SPD to amend the Basic Law for unlimited rearmament are to be rejected and a policy of common security in the tradition of Willy Brandt is to be demanded.
In view of the peace talks initiated by the USA, the decision to continue the war in Ukraine is sheer madness. The German government and the EU Commission are reckoning on the deaths of hundreds of thousands and further destruction in Ukraine, with the risk of further escalation and the escalation into a major war in Europe.
In contrast, peace efforts to end the war in Ukraine should be supported and Russia should be offered talks on joint disarmament efforts, also with a view to reducing its own military spending and possibly ending self-damaging economic sanctions.

The plans to give nuclear weapons to Germany must be rejected. This would be a blatant violation of the Two Plus Four Agreement and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and would destroy it once and for all.