Archived unpaywalled link (in German)
Leading members of the German Bundestag from the CDU, FDP and Greens are considering the possibility of protecting parts of the airspace over Ukraine from NATO territory with Western air defense.
The example of Israel, where air defense units from the US, Great Britain, France and other countries repelled an Iranian air attack in April, shows that participating states do not necessarily have to become “the war party”, they argue.
The idea have been put forward by military experts like Nico Lange from the Munich Security Conference. In Lange’s view, this could create a “safe zone of up to 70 kilometres wide” on Ukraine’s borders to Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania.
Roderich Kiesewetter German from the conservative party CDU told the German paper “Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung” that such a deployment at the eastern border of NATO could shoot down ‘unmanned Russian missiles’ over Ukraine", relieving the Ukrainian air defense and enable it to “protect the front”, he says.
Marcus Faber of the ruling party FDP, who is supposed to be the future head of the defense committee, also noted that “the airspace over the Ukrainian border regions” could in principle be protected “by air defense systems on NATO territory”.
“I think that this is possible,” said Faber.
Agnieszka Brugger from the ruling Green party also supported the idea of “deploying air defense systems at the borders of the neighbouring states so that the western parts of Ukraine can also be protected”. Anton Hofreiter from the Green party and chairman of the European Committee shares Brugger’s view, according to the paper.
The word “robust” is working overtime in this article, that’s for sure.
Besides that, I’d argue this article is a nothingburger: Both the minister of defense and the chancellor are SPD (who view more military involvement as bringing more risk). Meanwhile, the FDP-led ministry of finance wants almost every ministry to save money, and are already asking the ministry of exterior and the ministry of developmental aid to cut spending next year. Lindner won’t outright force military spending cuts but he certainly won’t allow increases either. Budget hawkishness trumps military hawkishness in FDP.
The Greens have almost no say in all of this, they hold the ministry of the exterior, which is not really a position of power.
Overall, Germany is going to be as uninvolved and fiscally “prudent” as NATO partners will allow, no matter the thoughts of representatives without real influence (i.e. everyone interviewed for this article).
