First of all, I suppose I need to say that I'm European, living in a country with a very tiny military force. I understand why Germany, in particular, does not want to be a strong military power anymore.

Britain and France seem less reluctant, probably taking some pride from standing up to Hitler in 1939, and this contributing to them seeing their armed forces primarily as defensive instruments. (Disregarding their long histories as colonial powers.)

Germany's latest experience with a large army was from a time it was used offensively, with catastrophic results for Germany. Nobody argues that Germany should build up that kind of force again.

But if peaceful countries are not able to protect themselves and each other from expansionist aggressors, seeing to annex territory, the world will most likely revert to something we've not really seen since the 19th century, just this time with nukes.

And with internal strife and polarization seeming to mostly pacify the US's ability to provide protection, combined with an increasingly powerful China flexing in East Asia, Europe may have to take some of the responsibility for maintaining the strength needed to guarantee peace.

Well, the German army was significantly downsized since the end of the Cold War and Reunification. Once Germany had thousands of modern tanks for example. Now we are down to fraction of that. We called it the Peace Dividend, not sure if it actually saved any money so.

The reason why the German Army was that big was the USSR and Warsaw pact. They were supposed to check any Soviet advance long enough, preferably before the Rhine, for the bulk of the US forces to show up after being shipped over the Atlantic. It would suck if that becomes necessary again, the high level of militarization during the Cold War was decidedly not a good thing.

During the cold war, the Soviet Union was the only threat. Present day Russia is merely the second most dangerous threat facing the free world. China is becoming a much more potent economic as well as military power.

This means that this time, Europe need to realize they have to be able to defend against an increasingly aggressive Russia _without_ significant US support, and may even have to have strength to spare to aid vs China. In other words, countries like Germany need to have military strength at least at the level they had during the cold war to do their part in providing safety and stability to Europe.

If this doesn't happen, I think Germany must expect that more and more countries in the area develops their own nukes, as that is the only alternative way to deter a power like Russia. How will Germany feel if Poland, Hungary, Rumania, Greece and Turkey suddenly all had their own nukes?

I guess the tricky thing about a military, as german history shows, is its cultural impact. Would the Nazi regime have been possible without Hindenburg? Would Hitler have become prominent without Ludendorf? Ludendorf and Hindenburg essentially created the stab-in-the-back idea. The outsize respect given to military figures, the allure of uniforms, the outsize rights and trust given to ex-soldiers - all these things made the nazis and their precursors very hard to push back on. When you think of organizations like the Freikorps, it's hard to avoid noticing the radicalizing effect of military service.

I would be more of a fan of a pan-EU force than a return to traditional national militaries.

I suppose there were plenty of cultural ties between the Imperial German Army and the rise of Hitler. But for Germany to still not possess a credible defence force due to those ties is hard to justify, especially if the US no longer can be relied upon.

Personally, I don't care much whether there is a pan-EU force or national militaries (tied together by both the EU and Nato) that fills this role, but I see it is a problem if Europe lacks the strength to properly defend countries such as the Ukraine. If Putin is, through military aggression, able to eventually gain full control of the Ukrain, I expect other "leaders" with similar dispositions will try similar actions in the future.

Well, I think part of the problem is that the kind of people that were in the german army after the war were Nazis in the literal sense, and the kind of people that prospered in the environment these Nazis created were Nazis in the contemporary sense. This is amply illustrated by the endless slew of scandals that come out of the Bundeswehr around this issue[0].

I imagine these days it's a little better, but it's still a bit of a magnet for the hard right in germany, for all the obvious reasons.

[0] https://ctc.usma.edu/the-insider-threat-far-right-extremism-...

PS: I think in general it's germany's ongoing far-right problem that makes nationalist-adjacent careers and institutions far less attractive to normal people, so it's sort of a vicious circle.

It's not necessarily a matter of Germany not wanting to have a larger military. They are still bound by an international treaty that limits their military might.

First of all, German military capacity can be at least doubled, maybe tripled within that treaty, and second, if other nato countries don't object, they can probably claim that treaty null and void after Russia violates Ukrainian independence.

> If you tell us that it's ok to start acting like empires

Ignoring the context of sending troops into war is a "shitty" move, as is characterising this kind of behaviour as being of "European people" - there have been lots of non-European empires, and colonial powers where administrated by European monarchs, not European democracies (i.e. the people).

Fighting an invading empire is not building one. These semantic games are a slippery-slope argument - structures such as NATO are pretty explicit means (in theory at least) to defending against aggression without endorsing aggression.

Oh shut up, that's just excuse some countries tell themselves to save on the army. UK and France fought several wars as EU members and only disarmed after cold war ended.