Germany’s new chancellor wants to build “the strongest army in Europe”. In his inaugural address on Wednesday, Friedrich Merz outlined a roadmap for a radically different foreign and defence policy for Germany. But the calm manner in which his words were delivered belied the political headwinds he will have to brace.

Though Merz’s speech was delivered in a tone deemed “pleasantly boring” by the leader of the Greens, his message was bold. “Strength deters aggression. Weakness, however, invites aggression,” the Chancellor declared. “The strengthening of Germany’s armed forces is the top priority of our politics.” He added that “the federal government will from now on provide all the funds the Bundeswehr needs to become the strongest conventional army in Europe.”

Those words couldn’t be more different from his indecisive predecessor, Olaf Scholz, who had tried to make what he called Besonnenheit, or “prudence”, his trademark. Merz, on the other hand, wants a more assertive Germany in Europe and within Nato, especially with a view to deterring Vladimir Putin from further aggression. “Those who seriously believe that Russia would be satisfied with victory in Ukraine or with the annexation of parts of the country are mistaken,” Merz said in his speech.

His words immediately triggered strong objections. Alice Weidel, leader of the anti-immigration AfD, said the Chancellor risked a “Third World War” with his talk of “victory for Ukraine”. Not least with a view to turning Russian gas back on for German industry, she argued that “Russia’s security interests [must] finally be taken into account.” The AfD is now the largest opposition party, polling neck and neck with Merz’s conservative CDU/CSU.

Weidel’s conciliatory course is not just popular with the AfD’s 10 million voters, but also taps into the fears of vast swathes of the population. In recent surveys, up to two-thirds of people said they were worried that Putin might go further than Ukraine and that Germany could become directly involved in a war.

The Left-wing Die Linke party — which performed surprisingly well in February’s elections, gaining 9% of the vote — also positions itself against “rearmament and war”. Together, that’s a sizeable proportion of voters and their representatives in parliament whom Merz will either have to convince, ignore or defeat with his new political course.

Even if he decides to ignore the potential political fallout, given that he now has four years in office, there will be an immediate problem posed by the fact that foreign policy is tied to energy strategy — especially in Germany, a country with a rapacious demand for imported gas.

Calls are growing from German industry to get Russian gas back as quickly as possible. The coalition roadmap contains no plans to bring back nuclear energy, and banks entirely on imported gas to supplement domestic renewables. That gas will have to come from somewhere; and while American LNG is an option, not least to pacify US President Donald Trump by rebalancing the trade deficit, it would also be very costly. However combative Merz wants to be, energy policy remains Germany’s Achilles heel.

But Merz has one significant advantage. Unlike Scholz, who had to hold a dysfunctional three-way coalition together, the new chancellor will receive backing from his cabinet. He has broken with a longstanding German tradition of giving the post of foreign minister to the junior coalition partner. Instead, he chose his ally Johann Wadephul for the job, ensuring the chancellery has direct control over foreign policy.

Wadephul supports Trump’s demand that Nato states spend 5% of their GDP on defence, amounting to military expenditure of €225 billion every year. His coalition partners in the centre-left SPD will likely allow that because they have agreed to a massive borrowing package which exempts any defence spending above 1% of GDP from the country’s strict fiscal rules. In theory, this means Merz has been issued a blank cheque for military expenditure.

Defence Minister Boris Pistorius of the SPD is also likely to be on board. He’s just launched a new voluntary recruitment programme for the armed forces, threatening to return to the compulsory draft system if the required numbers aren’t reached. The Bundeswehr currently has 181,500 active-duty troops, well short of its 203,000 target. Like Merz, Pistorius believes that “security in Europe is, first and foremost, the responsibility of Europeans themselves.”

Time will tell whether Merz has the stomach to actually implement the Zeitenwende (“turning point”) that his predecessor Scholz announced but never pursued with conviction. It certainly won’t be easy, but things worth doing rarely are.

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Katja Hoyer is a German-British historian and writer. She is the author, most recently, of Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990.

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