https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/g...army-rcn6vjlvq
Germany’s Greens back creation of European army
The Green Party’s candidate to succeed Angela Merkel has called for “steps towards” a European army as she set out the first detailed account of her foreign policy agenda.
Annalena Baerbock, 40, an MP with no ministerial experience, is coming under greater scrutiny as polls suggest that she has a credible chance of becoming her country’s first Green chancellor. Two surveys published over the weekend indicate that her party has pulled level with Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
A third poll, of 1,500 business executives and public-sector “decision-makers”, found that 27 per cent intended to vote for Baerbock but only 14 per cent supported her
CDU opponent, Armin Laschet, 60.
The prospect of a Green-led German government has drawn increased attention to the party’s foreign and defence policies. Traditionally pacifists who campaigned for Germany to withdraw from Nato and banish US atomic weapons from its territory, the Greens have adopted a more atlanticist tone in recent years.
The party has strongly criticised Moscow and Beijing and called for an end to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany. One of its leading intellectuals recently suggested that it should abandon its opposition to the American nuclear umbrella.
Yesterday Baerbock left open the possibility that US atomic bombs could provisionally remain on German soil as she criticised the “foreign policy passivity” of Merkel’s government.
She argued that Nato could offer to give up its “first strike” option — the freedom to launch a pre-emptive nuclear attack — in exchange for Russia withdrawing its atomic warheads from Kaliningrad, an exclave on the Baltic coast.
“A world free of nuclear weapons would be a safer world,” Baerbock told
Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. She called for the creation of joint EU military units under the control of the European parliament.
“In my view we have to bundle our capabilities together more strongly as Europeans,” she said. “Europe’s defence spending is three or four times as high as Russia’s but our capabilities are limited because we duplicate a lot. That’s inefficient.”
She avoided a question about arming Ukraine with anti-aircraft guns after a build-up of Russian troops on its border and described Nato’s defence budget targets as outdated and absurd.
China, she said, should be handled with “dialogue and steeliness”, but she noted that it was too large a market for Germany to risk cutting off trade......