Rearmament and Rebalancing: The New Franco-German Equation
For eighty years, the European geopolitical order rested on a simple division of labor: Germany would be an economic giant and a military pygmy, and France would be the Continent’s military backbone, the nuclear power, the permanent member of the Security Council.
That arrangement is now slowly and gradually dissolving, and its dissolution is the most consequential structural shift in intra-European relations since the Cold War.
Germany is rearming at a scale and speed not seen since the 1950s.
From the perspective of France, this is obviously welcome in the short term: a militarily serious Germany is good for deterring Russia, and the external pressure from Washington, Moscow, and Beijing is pushing France and Germany closer together, finally giving substance to Macron’s long-sought European strategic autonomy.
But beneath it run three real risks to France, and France is already moving to address them.
The Scale of the German Turn
The numbers are extreme.
Germany’s 2026 defense budget is approximately €108.2 billion, of which roughly €82.7 billion comes from the regular budget and the remainder from the special fund established after Russia’s 2022 invasion.
This is a jump of around 32% from the roughly €86 billion of 2025, an increase without precedent in modern German history.
In the comparative frame that matters most: Germany’s 2026 budget is nearly double France’s €57.2 billion.
The country that was supposed to be the demilitarized economic power now outspends the country that was supposed to be the military backbone by almost two to one.
And this is just the beginning.
Chancellor Merz secured an exemption for defense spending from Germany’s constitutional debt brake and created special funds enabling up to €400 billion in additional borrowing over five years.
The medium-term plan raises spending to roughly €151.7 billion by 2029 and €167.8 billion by 2030, climbing toward the NATO benchmark of 3.5% of GDP on core defense (5% including wider resilience) by 2035.
Internal documents describe €377 billion in projected investments across land, air, sea, space, and cyber.
The procurement list is staggering: up to 3,000 Boxer armored vehicles in a single €40 billion program, Leopard 2A8 tanks, 400 Tomahawk cruise missiles, Eurofighters, ground-based air defense, drone swarms, and reconnaissance satellites.
The Bundeswehr is expanding personnel by tens of thousands toward the goal of fielding Europe’s most powerful conventional army.
The industrial dimension is equally striking.
Rheinmetall, Germany’s largest arms manufacturer, grew revenue 36% to €9.75 billion in 2024, expects around €14 billion in 2026, and holds an order backlog of roughly €55 billion.
Germany has become the fourth-largest defense spender in the world, behind only the United States, China, and Russia.
The explicit ambition, stated in German policy, is for Germany to become the strongest conventional military power in Europe.
This is the reversal of the entire post-war settlement.
For decades the foundational assumption of European security was a Germany that did not, would not, and in some sense could not field serious military power.
That assumption is now gone.
