Escape-Proof
What if there were peace in Ukraine? Exactly one German industrial sector is growing — and it is growing because there is a war.
89
unnoticed, overnight,
peace had broken out,
but they soon had it
caught again.
since then it has been held
in escape-proof
maximum security
and can no longer
disturb our business.
Hans Ley, from Lyrische Pflaster, 2024. Translated from the German.
The question sounds cynical, and it is not. It does not ask whether peace would be desirable — it would be, and this text takes that as given. It asks: what would come to light if it arrived?
I. What the War Did Not Do
First a misunderstanding has to be cleared away, because it suggests itself and is wrong. Germany does not profit from the war. The figures leave no doubt.
The index of industrial production, annual averages, 2021 equals one hundred: manufacturing stood at 105.2 in 2019 and at 92.0 in the first half of 2026. Machinery fell from 107.0 to 84.5. Motor vehicles from 127.2 to 106.2.
Against 2019, then, manufacturing is twelve and a half per cent lower, machinery twenty-one, motor vehicles seventeen.
Add energy. Natural gas for industrial users, excluding taxes: 2.38 cents per kilowatt hour in the first half of 2021, 6.68 cents at the 2023 peak, most recently 5.52 cents — more than double the starting level, and the decline from the peak has long since stalled. Electricity for industrial users: from 7.34 to 16.13 cents.
That is the bill Germany has paid. It is high, and it is not the subject of this text.
II. The One Line That Points Upward
In the same statistics there is a line that behaves differently. Weapons and ammunition: 90.5 in 2019, 100.0 in 2021, 128.2 in 2023, 188.7 in 2025, and 186.9 in the first half of 2026.
Against 2019, an increase of one hundred and six per cent. In June 2026 the monthly figure stood at 303.5 — more than three times the 2021 level.
The shape of the curve is instructive. Until August 2022 the index was below one hundred; in September 2022 it jumped to 163 and stayed there. The curve does not begin with the invasion but half a year later — with the first large procurement decisions.
So the position is this: in German manufacturing there is at present exactly one sector growing strongly, and it is growing because there is a war.
III. What Peace Would Take Away
Two things, and the second weighs more.
It would take the growth item. How quickly is open — stocks have to be replenished, commitments honoured, and European procurement programmes run for years. But the direction is unambiguous, and it would hit an industry that has just built up capacity.
It would take the justification. And that is the real point.
The relaxation of the debt brake was justified on security grounds. High energy prices are borne as the price of independence from Russian gas. The absence of a serious debate about the condition of machine building has many causes, and one of them is that other things seemed more urgent.
Peace would remove the pretext from all of it. The debt would remain, the energy prices would remain, machine building would remain at eighty-four points — only without the explanation of why this is to be accepted just now.
IV. The Reckoning That Would Then Lie Open
There is a proposition often put forward in Berlin: defence spending is the replacement for the lost export markets. What China takes away, armaments will bring back.
It does not hold, and this has been noticed outside Germany too. Even if defence spending rises to three and a half per cent of economic output, only a fraction of it flows into equipment, and the sector is too small to carry demand for a manufacturing base that makes up a fifth of the economy.
Our own calculation from the customs data showed where the problem in machine building actually lies: German machine tool exports to China fell by €1,039 million between 2018 and 2025, while imports from China rose by €51 million — a ratio of twenty to one. It is not an import shock but a loss of market. And exports to the world as a whole fell by sixteen per cent, of which the China share accounts for only about half.
No armaments contract repairs that. It conceals it.
V. The Temptation
There is a further reason why a sudden peace would be uncomfortable, and it is rarely said aloud.
It would bring back the possibility of cheap Russian gas. With an industrial price that has more than doubled against 2021, the pressure would be considerable — and so would the temptation to restore precisely the dependence whose ending was bought at such cost.
Anyone who believes that decision has been settled should look at the energy costs and consider which arguments carry weight in an industry that has been shrinking for six years.
VI. The Actual Finding
The opening question can now be answered, and the answer is more uncomfortable than the suspicion one starts with.
It is not that Germany needs the war. It is that the war has prevented an adjustment that was due anyway — and that this adjustment grows more expensive every year.
We have described elsewhere what happens to an order that suppresses small disturbances: the tension accumulates and discharges all at once. That is exactly what can be observed here. The war made the small corrections unnecessary, because it supplied larger worries. What has not adjusted in these years will have to adjust later, and then no longer in portions.
Peace would therefore not be the problem. It would be the moment at which what is already there becomes visible.
VII. What Speaks Against Us
We accept three objections.
The transition is not abrupt. Arsenals have to be refilled even after a ceasefire; procurement programmes run for a decade. The armaments item would not collapse, it would grow more slowly. That softens the process; it does not remove it.
Peace would also bring relief. Lower energy prices, reconstruction demand from Ukraine, lower expenditure on refugees, a calmer investment climate. Whether the balance would be negative is open; we do not claim it. What is claimed is only that the concealment ends.
And the figures are no evidence of motive. From the observation that a country derives certain advantages from a situation it does not follow that it wants that situation. Anyone who infers from this calculation that German policy deliberately prolongs the war is using it for something it cannot bear — and is doing exactly what the other side in this war has been attempting for years.
VIII. Back to the Poem
In 1989 peace had broken out overnight. What followed was not its imprisonment by some dark intent, but something more ordinary: it was not needed in order to put one’s own affairs in order, and so no work was done to keep it.
The peace dividend was consumed, not invested. The armed forces were reduced without the savings flowing into anything else that would carry. Dependence on cheap energy from one direction was deepened. The question of what this country would live on in twenty years was not asked, so long as the answer appeared to follow of its own accord.
Now peace sits in escape-proof custody and business goes on. Only it goes on in exactly one line of the table.
That is the price of deferring an adjustment: you keep the figures and lose the substance. And at some point somebody comes and opens the cell door.