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German and Czech soldiers are carrying out a military exercise In Lithuania.
The potential enemy: Russia.
Their mission: deterrence and a show of strength on NATO's eastern flank.
We will deter the enemy with all the means at our disposal.
The world is growing less secure and more confusing.
A renewed arms race with nuclear and conventional weapons is imminent.
Existing alliances are crumbling.
We need to be firm, we need to be strong to deter
any potential aggressor from attacking us to preserve the peace.
Germany and its neighbors could again be caught in the middle
between the superpowers.
Russia is laying claim to territory and for the first time since World War Two
a country is taking that territory by force.
This is a potential threat of the highest order.
And anyone who opposes a rearmament debate is not just naive.
That's incredibly dangerous.
Can the German military, the Bundeswehr, meet the new challenges?
I do believe that the German military is in a very dire and critical state.
The number of ships that can't sail, the number of planes that can't fly.
Can the western alliance system still guarantee security?
What role does Germany play in NATO and in the world?
When NATO sounds the alarm, the order reaches the
9th Armoured Demonstration Brigade in Munster in northwestern Germany.
This time the mail is about an exercise.
But the entire apparatus responds as it would in a genuine emergency.
The brigade provides part of the ground troops for NATO's
Very High Readiness Joint Task Force, the VJTF.
It was established in 2014 in response to Russia's annexation of Crimea.
I've received the alarm order, now I evaluate it.
And then I decipher the letter combinations in the order to find out
which alarm measures have actually been triggered.
For that I consult the Bundeswehr crisis response plan,
so I can see which alarm measures are behind the combinations of letters.
I'll check which measures are important for the VJTF brigade
and then I'll inform the chief and the brigade leadership accordingly.
Rapid response units are central to NATO's new threat scenarios.
In this instance an emergency situation that involves fighting off
an enemy attack will be rehearsed in a maneuver in Poland.
Within three days at the most,
2,300 soldiers from three countries have to be ready to move.
All the strands come together here in a high security area at headquarters.
It's a logistical challenge to coordinate the troops from
Germany, Norway, and The Netherlands.
We have to establish communication with the
First German Armored Division and the German-Netherlands Corps.
I want the initial results in 90 minutes.
The clock is also ticking for Major Marja Alm.
Nothing unususal to report in the area.
Very good.
The major heads a company of around 250 soldiers.
The biggest challenge for us is to be ready to move within 48 hours.
My soldiers have to load all the trucks,
the trucks have to be organized in convoys.
My heavy vehicles have to be prepared for rail transport.
48 hours is not a lot of time.
Major Alm is an experienced soldier who has served
on foreign missions in Mali and Kosovo.
Now she has to ensure that the command in Poland
will have a fully equipped workplace.
Around 600 vehicles —
including 70 tanks —
are setting off from garrisons around Germany to head for Poland.
The rapid response force is more important to NATO than ever.
But today, at a time when Europe again has to worry about security,
how united are the partners in the alliance?
Washington, April 2019.
NATO celebrated the 70th anniversary of its founding.
For seven decades the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has used its
deterrence capability to protect peace, freedom and prosperity
on both sides of the Atlantic.
A day before the ceremony,
the west's leading defense and foreign policy officials gathered at a meeting.
It was supposed to be a celebration of 70 years of NATO and transatlantic relations.
But then, US Vice President Mike Pence took to the podium to issue a rebuke.
More of our allies are now meeting their commitments.
But still too many others are falling short.
And as we all acknowledge, Germany is chief among them.
Germany is Europe's largest and healthiest economy.
It's a leading global exporter and it's benefited from
US protection of Europe for generations.
Germany must do more.
A not-so diplomatic attack on the alliance partner that has not invested
the agreed two percent of its GDP in defense.
The German foreign minister had to try to explain why his wealthy country
wasn't prepared to spend more on European security.
I know that our budgetary process is sometimes difficult
for outsiders to understand, and believe me not just for them.
However, we made a firm commitment to invest more money in defense.
And we intend to keep our word.
We in Europe know that we cannot take our security for granted.
A rather modest show of strength from the foreign minister.
Heiko Maas left the meeting by the back door to avoid unwanted questions.
A fitting image of Germany's appearance at the NATO summit.
Germany has already promised its allies at three summits
to raise military spending as agreed.
The Defense Ministry would like to see a hefty rise —
to 54.7 billion euros a year.
But the Finance Ministry has other plans.
It even wants spending to drop in the coming years — to 44.2 Billion.
That corresponds to 1.23 percent of GDP—
so even further below NATO's two percent target.
Julianne Smith was a security advisor in the Obama administration,
and is a prominent expert on German-American relations.
I do think the NATO alliance has a Germany problem
because now one of its largest allies is unwilling or unable to meet
a commitment that essentially all allies made in 2014.
This is not a situation where the Trump administration is
fired up and frustrated with the German government.
We're now facing a situation where Democrats and Republicans alike
are quite critical of Berlin and its failure to meet that target.
I understand that almost all politicians would like to spend money on
something else than defense —
on health, on education, on infrastructure.
At the same time, we expect Germany to invest more in defense
because we all promised to do so back in 2014.
But Germany's governing coalition of conservatives and Social Democrats
has a different take on the numbers:
they say Germany has invested more than 30 billion euros in NATO since 2014,
provided the second largest contingent of troops in Afghanistan,
and taken part in many missions around the world.
The Social Democrats in particular oppose a sudden rise in the defense budget.
Foreign and defense policy expert Rolf Mützenich explains.
We provide suitable personnel to NATO.
We try to coordinate with our alliance partners and are guided by quality.
And back when the German government accepted this two-percent target,
we in Parliament said, 'Ultimately we — the lawmakers —
are the ones who will decide what will be in the annual budget.'
Carlo Masala, a professor at the Bundeswehr University in Munich,
advises the government on security issues.
He says economizing on military spending would be disastrous.
It's not just grossly naive, it's negligent and risky.
Here in Europe we are currently in a situation where
the Russian Federation with its armament efforts has an advantage
in strategic escalation that we currently can't compete with.
Vladimir Putin's Russia has changed the world in terms of security policy.
When the Cold War ended, it seemed unthinkable,
but the world is now once again in the middle of an arms race.
And Putin has been testng the limits of the NATO alliance
with the conflict in eastern Ukraine, the Russian annexation of Crimea.
Russia on the other hand feels provoked by NATO's eastern enlargement plans.
In April 2016, over the Baltic Sea, 130 kilometers from Kaliningrad.
Two Russian fighter jets carried out 20 mock attacks on a US warship.
And the number of provocations is increasing.
There are threats that we have to address or challenges we have to address
in the North Atlantic with increased Russian submarine activity
and our lack of sensors up there to understand what's going on.
There's definitely a threat stemming from Russia.
NATO takes that threat very seriously.
Its response has been, for example, the exercise in Poland
with the brigades from Germany, Norway and the Netherlands.
Four days after the raising of the alarm in Munster,
the VJTF rapid response troops are on their way to the Noble Jump exercise.
The more than 2,300 soldiers are being trained to ensure Europe's security —
under German leadership.
Noble Jump is basically all about NATO's rapid response troop.
The task is deterrence through a show of strength.
But if, at the end of the day, that doesn't help we have to clearly show
that we are in a position to defend the territory of the alliance —
and if necessary to restore the territorial integrity of NATO.
It's just after 4 o'clock in the morning.
The 9th armored demonstration brigade positions itself.
Helge Timm commands a Leopard 2 tank.
It weighs 64 tons and has a 1,500 horsepower engine.
We're here on a Leopard 2 battle tank.
We have crew of four men.
This is my driver.
He steers according to my orders.
The gunner is responsible for the exchange of fire.
And the loader is responsible for all the weapons on the tank —
including the machine guns.
I'm the commander — I coordinate everything.
Final preparations for the maneuver.
Helge Timm and his crew take up battle position.
Okay, sight gunner, swing the tower to the right.
You've got woods on the right.
Do you recognize.
Okay, swing more to the left.
Right there you can see the observation center of the platoon.
The mission here is to retake a village.
Even though no one wants to say it openly,
the rapid response troop is supposed to deter Russia.
Today the enemy only consists of dummies and decommissioned tanks.
Here on our left my platoon is in position.
Next to them is another platoon in position.
Further ahead in the left-hand section
there's also a Norwegian company in position.
They are all ready and waiting for the shooting to start.
Backward march!
Helge Timm's tank platoon is one of NATO's elite units.
It is a fully-equipped brigade —
which makes it quite an exception in the Bundeswehr.
By 2031 the military is supposed to have eight fully equpped brigades.
But at the moment not a single one is 100 percent ready for action.
Even the VJTF troops had to borrow material from all over Germany.
Everyone has realized that the way the system functions at the moment,
that we had to bring material from throughout the Bundeswehr
to Munster or other places to fulfill our mission,
that that is not an acceptable state of affairs.
This is not about buildup but adequate equipment.
Those eight brigades have to be fully equipped so that
they can be just as ready for action as this brigade is.
Fully equipping them will be costly,
but Germany has made a binding commitment to NATO.
The army estimates that the price for a single
brigade will amount to five billion euros.
But in recent years,
there has been practically no investment in material and equipment.
And even with a lot of money it will be hard to quickly rebuild
all the structures that have been dismantled over the years.
Last projectile
There are systems in the Bundeswehr that are older than I am —
and we still have the problem that when we are deployed in major NATO exercises,
we can meet our obligations,
but it comes at the expense of operations and exercises back home.
We no longer invested in large stockages of replacement parts nor of ammunition.
And now to fill up and modernize everthing in
the existing structures will take until 2031.
We will definitely need that many years to get to the point where
we can meet NATO and EU demands.
Sometimes even a piece of fencing can stop
60 tons of military high-tech in its tracks.
Tank commaner Helge Timm is not happy with the situation!
Go in there, turn the motor on,
give a signal to the front and then drive backwards a bit.
Time is pressing.
The tank crew has to get the vehicle back into position for the NATO exercise.
The scenario that is being rehearsed here is chillingly realistic:
The task of lIberating a village symbolizes the fear of an invasion by enemy troops.
Right here.
In Poland.
In Europe.
After five hours the maneuver is completed for Helge Timm and his crew.
The commander is 32, his comrades are under 30.
The Cold War is something they only know from history books.
When I joined up, the Bundeswehr was already involved in missions abroad.
But now the threat is different.
We see here that a completely battle-ready brigade has been formed
to engage in high-intensity combat, if necessary.
The idea of defending the alliance and their country
is no longer entirely theoretical.
Three-quarters of a century after the end of World War II
that has become an imaginable scenario for German soldiers.
I have been a soldier for 35 years.
I saw the Wall fall, I saw Europe being reunited.
I experienced Islamist terrorists occupying half the Middle East.
So at the end of the day one thing counts for me:
It doesn't matter who you're against.
At the end of the day there's only one thing that is lasting and forward-looking,
and that's what you're for.
And we are for peace and freedom.
Full stop.
Peace and freedom were the goals in the late 1980s
when the US and the Soviet Union agreed to ban their land-based
intermediate-range nuclear missiles.
US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed
the INF treaty in December 1987 in Washington.
After decades of Cold War,
it was a milestone in ending the arms race between the superpowers.
In 2019, after accusing Russia of violating the treaty,
the US formally pulled out of the INF.
And the New START, a 2010 nuclear arms reduction treaty between the US and Russia,
may not be extended when it expires in 2021.
Does this herald a new nuclear arms race?
The INF Treaty can't be saved because
neither of the parties to the agreement are still interested in saving it.
The United States would only want to rescue it if it is globalized —
meaning if China, India, and Pakistan join.
The Chinese have already made it clear that they see no reason to join it,
and the Russians have violated it.
In early 2019 Russia publicly unveiled its SSC-8 nuclear missile.
The ground-launched cruise missile is claimed by US Intelligence
to have a range of over 2,300 kilometers—
which puts it in violation of the INF Treaty.
The agreement bans the development and possession of ground-based missiles
with a range of over 500 kilometers.
For me it's also a question of security for Germany:
an end to the Treaty would mean that we again enter a threat mechanism,
that nuclear medium-range weapons will again threaten
areas extending to us in western Europe.
And that has to be urgently prevented.
It's a crucial test for Europe.
For some years, Poland has been calling for nuclear weapons —
if necessary going it alone with the US.
Romania has invested billions of euros in US missile defense systems
to protect it from a potential Russian threat.
Is Putin deliberately exploiting the current power vacuum
and NATO's weakness to redefine his own role?
He's definitely fanning the flames in Central and Eastern Europe.
So it's not that I lie awake at night and worry about
some sort of conventional military escalation with Russia.
I think that's always a possibility.
But that's not what worries me the most.
What worries me the most is, his efforts to divide us and undermine
our values and our institutions that we've spent 70 years building
and he's succeeding on that front.
Russia is trying to destabilize the alliance and western democracies.
It influences elections and referendums, launches cyber attacks,
and wants to bind individual NATO partners to it more closely.
Does Putin see the end of the INF Treaty
as a way of driving a further wedge between NATO partners?
What is the aim of Russia's foreign and defense policy?
For years, journalist Alexander Golz has been observing and analysing
the Russian military apparatus and Kremlin policy.
He too finds Putin's motivation puzzling.
Don't ask me about logical argumentation for these reasons
because this argumentation doesn't exist.
But in Putin's mind and within the Kremlin's approach,
NATO is planning aggression.
You can name it paranoia.
God knows.
Moscow sees itself as a
victor of the military conflicts in Syria and eastern Uraine.
The annexation of Crimea also set a dangerous precedent.
Take what you want — you don't have to fear consequences.
Russia is a purely militaristic state.
One of the main features of a military state
is that the state gives a military answer to any challenge.
I think Mr. Putin as well as Mr. Trump
are very inspired by the idea
to possess this overwhelming force, this overwhelming nuclear might.
If I have this, I can do everything I want.
Mediators are urgently needed.
German chancellor Angela Merkel could take on the role.
But she is caught in the middle.
In Germany there is opposition to sanctions against Russia
while the US is calling for Berlin to take a tougher stance.
Germany can play the role of a negotiator,
but we should keep in mind that according to Mr. Putin's mentality,
Germany is not a self-confident player.
And indeed the governing coalition has been sending out
contradictory messages on foreign and security policy.
What should Germany's relationship with Russia be?
A partnership?
Or a stronger rejection of the Kremlin's provocations?
We discussed this in the defense committee
before the parliamentary summer break.
We have means of dialogue.
We have points of contact between the Bundeswehr and the Russian military.
There are policy talks on a ministerial level.
The contacts are there, but we also show clearly that we expect
the Russian side to abide by the Minsk II accords.
In February 2015, the Minsk II Accords were signed by leaders of
Ukraine, Russia, France, Germany, and Ukrainian separatists.
The aim was to end armed fighting.
It failed to hold.
And in the Baltic states, there is concern about a possible new Ukraine scenario.
The narrow corridor between Poland and Lithuania
with borders to the highly militarized Russian enclave of Kaliningrad
and Belarus is NATO's Achilles heel.
If the so-called Suwalki Gap were to be occupied by Russia,
it would cut off the Baltic states from the rest of the EU.
The defenses on Lithuania's border with Belarus
have been bolstered with millions of euros of EU funding.
They include 300 cameras along the over 650 kilometer long border.
Lithuanian border police Vadim Solovij and Ilona Sabel are on patrol.
Security on NATO's outer borders is a police matter.
The military can only approach within 5 kilometers of the border —
so as not to further provoke the neighboring country.
We are seeing if are there border violations, or signs of smuggling
and also illegal immigrants, or just people who don't know that
there is a border and are just coming here.
This is an alarm because we are close to the surveilance tower.
I just mentioned that they could turn it off.
Now they are watching us
No move goes unobserved.
The two sides watch each other suspiciously.
Border security here is also security for NATO.
The military alliance is less interested in smugglers and migrants
than in provocateurs sent by the Kremlin who might be entering to
prepare or even trigger a conflict.
Of course the system helps in gathering information
that could be of interest to our military.
Especially when military exercises take place in a neighboring state.
That is definitely on the rise—
more uniformed personnel on the border, and technical innovations.
As western frontline states vis-à-vis their powerful neighbor,
the Baltic countries followed Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014
with a heightened sense of threat compared to other European countries.
Having experienced decades of Soviet occupation,
many Lithuanians have unpleasant memories of the Cold War era.
I served on a submarine in Murmansk.
I know their system.
I know how they tick.
They would take Ukraine, Lithuania, everything
that was part of the former Soviet Union.
Their influence extends to Belarus, which they can use for their military aims.
They are stretching out to Belarus
and Belarus is a country that they can use for their military advancement.
We see what happened to the Ukraine and we don't want any of that here.
We'd rather have tractors than tanks, to farm the land, to give us bread —
to serve the people.
Not these tanks.
What are they good for?
The NATO presence is vital for us to survive, and actually
if we didn't have NATO soldiers, we would be vulnerable.
In the capital Vilnius
there is little to be seen of the 1,000 NATO soldiers.
But they are present in people's minds.
And their numbers are set to rise.
We have already increased the readiness of our forces,
tripled the size of the NATO Response Force.
We are now implementing a new readiness initiative.
And Germany is part of that
and this year is leading the high readiness force of NATO.
This reflects that we are now in a totally different security environment
than we were the years after the end of the Cold War.
But deterrence depends not only on troops and military equipment
but also on the enemy's belief that the alliance
will stick together in an emergency.
The current US President views international organizations
as superfluous at best.
His advisors seem to have difficulty preventing him from
fundamentally questioning the Alliance.
I would caution Germans against assuming that it couldn't happen.
I think it could happen.
And the fact that we recently saw a newsbreak that
certain members of the Pentagon and the State Department were tasked with
looking into the possibility of giving Germany a bill for stationing US troops
to me indicates that that is a process that could lead to
the United States at least distancing itself.
American troops during an exercise in the Baltic.
But how much longer will they be there?
If the worst comes to the worst would the Americans withdraw from NATO?
And would Europe then hold Berlin responsible and not Washington?
He is basically using Germany as a whipping boy
for the issue of the burden sharing in NATO.
If the US president says out loud that the US is no longer interested in NATO,
that the US will not stand by its obligations under Article 5,
then two parties are responsible —
the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany.
Article 5 of the NATO treaty commits members to consider
an armed attack against one member state to be an attack on all of them.
Donald Trump has awakened doubts about his solidarity with the alliance.
And Russia is trying to divide NATO still further.
Turkey orients itself towards Moscow, and has made an arms deal with Russia.
Italy's government has been flirting with the west's greatest rival, China.
The giant country doesn't need an alliance —
China plays its own game.
And China sees its autocratic political model
as a blueprint for the world of tomorrow.
The masterplan by the leadership in Beijing aims to make China
the first modern socialist global power by 2050.
China's New Silk Road project is designed to revive the ancient trade routes
across Central Asia and the Middle East to Europe.
It's the biggest infrastructure investment program of all time,
including high-speed railway lines,
deep-water ports,
gigantic tunnel and bridge projects,
oil and gas pipelines, electricity grids, and European harbors —
from Greece to Italy to Germany.
We must further facilitate and liberalise trade and investments
and reject protectionism outright.
China checks all the boxes.
I mean obviously there we have military and security concerns about China.
But we also have concerns about the political model that China
is putting forward as an alternative to what the West
has put its faith in for many many many decades.
Economic policy is also military policy.
With the exception of the US, no country in the world spends as much on arms as China.
In 2018 it amounted to some 142 billion euros.
Our military must regard combat capability as the criterion to meet
in all its work and focus on how to win when it is called on.
We will take solid steps to ensure military preparedness for all strategic directions
and make progress in combat readiness in both traditional
and new security fields.
The Chinese president said very clearly at the 19th Party Congress
that he wants a world-class military.
He doesn't need a world-class military if it's just about Asia,
if it's just about defending Chinese territory.
He needs a world-class military if the scenario is a possible
military escalation with the United States.
China has gone on the offensive.
And is flexing its muscle.
This martial footage is part of a promotional video
from a Chinese arms manufacturer.
It could almost have been shot in Hollywood.
The message is clear:
we are big, we are powerful, we take what we want.
Taiwan is a primary focus of China's power play.
The Chinese leadership wants reunification with what it sees as a breakaway province.
And it's willing to take on Taiwan's protective power, the United States.
Now we're seeing the same problem with Taiwan that
we discussed in reference to the Baltic states.
Look at China —
an 800 pound gorilla in Asia —
and this tiny little bird— territorially speaking —
that is Taiwan.
What is the likelihood that the United States would go to war
with China with the potential of a nuclear escalation
to prevent this little bird from being taken by an 800 pound gorilla?
Very unlikely.
So Taiwan could become one of the big conflicts in Asia in the future.
Few experts doubt that China will try to pursue
its plans for reunification with Taiwan.
Beijing has not ruled out using military force to achieve that aim.
And China is an increasing threat to the western alliance in other areas as well.
Military aspects are becoming increasingly important in cyber technology.
How great is the danger for Germany?
I think it is clear that China not only intends to become an economic world power.
And of course we are concerned about this development.
In the area of digitalization,
we have the question of which Chinese companies we should allow
to build up our infrastructure.
I think there's a lot of sensitivity on the European
and German side when it comes to dealings with China
The US warns of Chinese companies like Huawei and ZTE.
They say their technology can be used by Beijing for espionage.
And in fact the Chinese government can force companies
to take part in espionage operations and sabotage European networks.
The threat in cyberspace:
it's not primarily a classical military threat,
but it is a threat to our critical infrastructure, as we call it.
It's a threat to everyone in that we are all exposed to hacker attacks
without actually knowing where the attacks are coming from.
It was consequential and challenging in ways that are hard to imagine today.
The Cold War had a whole host of challenges.
But we had essentially kind of one adversary
and we were looking at it through the lens of state to state conflict
and through a conventional military lens.
Now we've taken that and we've blossomed it.
What worries me is that we're still operating in government structures
and in institutions that were designed for a very different era.
Is NATO ready to meet the new challenges?
Does the western alliance system still guarantee security?
The 70 year old foundation of foreign policy on both sides of the Atlantic
is showing more and more cracks.
The one-time promise of shared values has been watered down.
Europe's governments are trying to find the least common denominator.
We have to make it clear in the alliance that
we have an interest in approaching Russia,
and China with the support of the US to say,
'The world will be a safer place if we agree on a new,
comparable arms control system.'
For that we need to have the US as a partner.
As Europeans, we see ourselves as part of NATO, as part of the western alliance,
but as Europeans we also want to make a stronger contribution to this alliance.
To remain transatlantic, but become more European.
But how would that work in practice?
French president Emmanuel Macron dreams of a European army
under French-German leadership.
Could such a European Army fill the power vacuum that would result
if the US pulled out of NATO?
At the moment the EU is —
politically and militarily —
a small entity on US life support.
If Europe starts to go it alone it will divide Europe from North America.
But it will also divide Europe.
So to go alone is not good for United States is not good for Europe.
Two world wars, the Cold War, the fight against terrorism
have taught us that we need to stand together.
Honestly, I can't imagine Europe being able to guarantee its own security
in the forseeable future.
We need the US.
And when I look around the world, I can't see any power that is
as close to us culturally and economically as the United States.
That's why I think it is good for us to hold on to it.
But the fact that we sometimes wrangle with the Americans,
that we sometimes have different points of view,
means that the Europeans have to get more involved
and make a more effective contribution.
Only then can we have a say.
The new threats don't permit Europe to go it alone.
NATO is being forced to stick together, as shown by the rapid reaction force.
Tank Commander Helge Timm's working day is coming to an end.
He and his crew have been involved in this exercise for several weeks now.
But they're not necessarily expecting an emergency.
Of course shooting exercises are different,
because the cardboard targets don't shoot back.
But I know my training was so good that if I were facing a real tank,
I'd react just as well.
It's still an exercise.
But the world has become more confusing.
The old structures are fading.
Germany will have to invest more —
and not just financially.
To be a reliable partner Germany will have to take responsibility
and send soldiers on combat missions.
The tasks are growing larger and beoming more dangerous.