Upgrade | Nuclear danger: What Paris is warning Germany about

The US defense company Covenant opened its production facility for the production of long-range guided missiles in Leipzig at the beginning of October. Production of the “Anthem” weapon system is scheduled to begin in 2027. Photo: dpa/Jan Woitas The announcement by Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) has been in place since his first government declaration in May 2025: The Bundeswehr should be expanded into the strongest army in Europe and receive all the necessary financial resources for this. The Federal Ministry of Defense alone is expected to spend twelve billion euros in the coming years on the development and procurement of land-based medium-range weapons.

A large part of this sum is planned for hypersonic weapons with a range of at least 2,000 kilometers, which are to be developed together with Great Britain by the mid-2030s, as the specialist portal European Defense Industry reported in September. The remaining funds will be used to purchase weapons that are readily available.

Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrij Sybiha signed an agreement to procure “Bars” cruise missiles from Ukraine with a range of up to 1,000 kilometers for the Bundeswehr in July.

In Leipzig, the US defense company Covenant is also planning series production of the “Anthem” cruise missile from 2027, which, with a range of 1,500 kilometers, could also hit targets in the Russian hinterland in the event of a direct confrontation. In this context, the Bundeswehr speaks of “deep precision strikes” and “deterrence through range and precision”.

The EU's only nuclear power is currently worried about how the nuclear power Russia would react to such conventional military strikes: According to a recent report in the Financial Times, French government officials fear that in an emergency, Moscow could hold Paris responsible for conventional attacks by European partners such as Germany. In the worst case, the threshold to nuclear war could be crossed unnoticed.

France has developed its own nuclear "grammar and vocabulary" - an established understanding of how deterrence and escalation risks are communicated - that Germany and other European allies without their own nuclear weapons do not have, according to the government in Paris.

Transparency is not created with this vocabulary: In a keynote speech at the Île Longue submarine base on March 2nd of this year, French President Emmanuel Macron spoke of the “possibility of a one-off, non-repeatable nuclear warning.” The peace and human rights organization IPPNW, in which health professionals are committed to fighting nuclear weapons, sees this as trivializing and relativizing a possible first strike.

»It's not just the announced end of transparency about France's nuclear arsenal that is highly worrying. The talks between Germany and France were also conducted in complete exclusion of the public and parliament,” criticizes Angelika Wilmen. IPPNW peace officer and spokesperson for the campaign “Capable of peace instead of capable of first strike: For a Europe without medium-range weapons”.

From their point of view, French concerns about Germany's willingness to take risks with conventional weapons are nevertheless justified: "France is rightly concerned about the German federal government's break with its defensive stance in the decades after the Second World War," emphasized Wilmen to "nd". "Germany's massive rearmament obviously brings back unpleasant memories among its European neighbors and could cause new insecurities in Europe."

Offensive weapons like “Bars” and “Anthem” would drastically reduce advance warning times in the event of a conflict and increase the “danger of unwanted military errors,” said Wilmen. "At the same time, there is a lack of arms control instruments that could limit risks and prevent an uncontrolled arms race."


In the 1980s, arms control talks were an important political instrument, but today they play practically no role in public discourse and politics. "On the contrary: numerous bilateral arms control agreements have been terminated or not extended in recent years," said Wilmen, whose organization is calling for a resumption of negotiations on arms control and disarmament with the campaign "Peace-capable instead of first-strike-capable."

It remains to be seen whether the renowned Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists will soon present its symbolic “doomsday clock” again to warn of global risks such as all-out nuclear war. The nuclear scientists' "Doomsday Clock" is currently 85 seconds to twelve.

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