Multi-purpose eggs and Bundeswehr advertising: grabbed by the middle finger

Do you know this picture of the Bundeswehr objector presenting a cardboard sign with three cans of beer in his hand at a demonstration against conscription? “Merz lick balls,” it says. The slogan became an internet phenomenon because the police actually did the protester the favor of confiscating his sign and investigating him for insults. Since then, the slogan has become an integral part of the protests against the reintroduction of compulsory military service.

A slogan with the message of an extended middle finger expresses what many who might be affected by conscription think: “Not with me.” The statement, hastily scrawled on a piece of cardboard, perhaps even had a greater impact than all of the Bundeswehr's glossy campaigns dripping with tax money and kitsch.

It is unlikely that the marketing men in the German armed forces' in-house editorial team will scratch their foreheads in consternation. If it doesn't work to promote the recruitment on a voluntary basis with advertising - don't worry! There will definitely be a few million dollars to accompany the upcoming reactivation of compulsory military service with a new mini-series on YouTube.

Before I look further into my radar device, which I once found at the end of a hallway in the Ministry of Defense and which only shows meanness and danger everywhere, let me tell you again what you are reading here: I have been reporting on the Bundeswehr for the taz for about a year and a half. To do this, I am embedded between military strategists, soldiers and arms lobbyists.

The endless mountain of military debt towers over me. Before me: The shadow of Russian aggression against Ukraine. There are also reflections on the US and Israeli war against Iran and the slaughter in Gaza. Bad dreams of warfare controlled by artificial intelligence plague me. What's my poor radar supposed to show other than that we're surrounded?

I keep it in a back desk drawer and consult it when I think about how the Bundeswehr should have 260,000 active soldiers and 200,000 reservists by 2035 - currently there are around 186,700 active and around 55,000 ordered reservists. According to the Bundeswehr, the figures for voluntary military service fell slightly in July, but they still assert that overall new appointments went according to plan.

You don't have to have a radar device like me to see that these growth figures, which were presented as NATO targets and never seriously discussed, could be set too high. In other words: Even a canned beer drinker has to be careful that the Bundeswehr doesn't grab his middle finger.

Maybe it was also in a hallway at the Ministry of Defense where I picked up this sentence: Thinking military table means being prepared for the worst case scenario. But what if this worst case scenario is a development that you promote yourself? To put it another way: Aren't we in a spiral of armament that is triggered by mutual deterrence and that only results in growing uncertainty? The answer to these questions probably lies beyond the corridors of the Defense Ministry: in non-military thinking.