This is an op-ed by Sir Niall Ferguson, Milbank Family senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University; and Moritz Schularick is president of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
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Germany’s rearmament is not going nearly fast enough. While Germany and Europe urgently need more weapons, at the current pace it will take years for them to roll off the production line and to constitute an arsenal sufficient to deter Russia. In no other area will Germany invest as much money in the coming years. And in no area is the absence of economic rationality more pronounced. Without swift changes, Germany is on a path to waste billions in taxpayers’ money for the delayed delivery of partly outdated defence capabilities.
Nearly four years after Russia’s assault on Ukraine, large German defence producers still work in single shifts, five days a week, instead of three shifts, seven days a week. The current production rate for the Taurus long-range guided missile system is only a few a month. The production of the Iris-T air defence system — which could provide crucial support to defend Ukraine’s energy infrastructure this winter and which is also essential for closing gaps in Europe’s air defence — is positively artisanal.
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At its heart, this is a task of industrial scaling, something German industry is well placed to deliver. As economic historians, we know that without the coordinating hand of the government and economic expertise, this kind of crash rearmament programme will not happen fast enough. ... the obvious path would be to create a national defence industrial board to assess resources, set quantitative production goals, negotiate capacity with industry and fast-track dual-use innovation. ... "German rearmament" are two ominous words for historians, just as "state co-ordination" is a phrase we tend to eschew as believers in freemarket economics. However, in the face of an increasingly dangerous and heavily armed Russia, co-ordinated rearmament is imperative. Above all, it needs to happen at warp speed. ...
Berlin has woken up to the Russian threat, but its thinking is stuck in the past ... British readers of a certain age may find it hard to be enthusiastic about German rearmament. As historians, we understand their unease. However, this is not the 1910s or the 1930s. The 2020s are a time when the UK has been in a mutual defence alliance with Germany for close to 80 years; ... The arguments for a more rapid and technologically advanced German rearmament are more than just narrowly military. They are also economic and strategic. We have four recommendations that add up to an "Operation Warp Speed" for German rearmament. ...
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