Germany Has Ratcheted Up Defense Spending. In Europe, That Worries Some People.

Europe|Germany Is Pumping Up Its Military Spending. That Worries Its Neighbors.

President Emmanuel Macron of France has persistently called for Europe to act decisively to defend itself and its own interests in a world where Russia is on the march, China is economically aggressive and the United States is turning away.

Mr. Macron first talked of the need for European strategic “autonomy” in 2017. In the last year, with trans-Atlantic relations spinning downward, Europeans seem to have heard the message: They need to do more and spend more in their own defense.

But there is a built-in political problem. Germany is already spending much more money than its European partners, according to military spending trackers, like that of the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based research organization. After years of aversion to war because of its history and a hope that the collapse of the Soviet Union would bring about a more peaceful world, the German military had shrunk badly.

Now, it is trying to catch up. And because Berlin has committed to putting more money into the military in the next few years, it will probably end up spending more than France and Britain, both nuclear powers, combined — and all of it on conventional warfare, not on an expensive nuclear deterrent.

Inevitably, much of Berlin’s spending will be on German companies, like Rheinmetall, which are growing quickly in response to lavish new funding.

Strategic autonomy, senior French, Italian and Polish officials fear, will increasingly have a German accent.