NATO countries increased their military budgets to $1.1 trillion last year despite the economic crisis. The European countries and Canada in particular increased their budgets, as the Yankees have been demanding for years. This means that the 30 NATO member states are now responsible for 60% of all global military spending. This is further clear evidence that this alleged "alliance of values" is not about defense. They are arming themselves in order to counter the imperialist competition from China and Russia even more aggressively.
The FRG government is also determined to stick to the so-called 2% target. For 2020, it has announced military spending of 51.5 billion euros, although the defense budget is 45.65 billion. This means that the cost of armaments is hidden in other budget items. In the federal government's Corona stimulus package of 2020, they not only approved additional armament projects, but also a new cyber center for the Bundeswehr for 500 million euros. Thus, the imperialist war machine is being further expanded under the guise of fighting a pandemic. And such budgetary trickery is not an isolated case. So-called EU missions in Africa, in which Bundeswehr soldiers were also involved, were in the past also gladly paid from the EU development aid budget.
The anti-militarist "Informationsstelle Militarisierung" sees the arms industry and the Bundeswehr as clear winners of the crisis: "In political terms, the German government is trying to use the Corona pandemic to increase military spending even further." (own translation)
