The Special (Un)Fund II

Germany's Bundeswehr special fund is not the failure of the solution. It is the result of the problem. Those who refuse to think for decades pay the price in billions — and call it a turning point.

I. The Decision

It was 27 February 2022 — three days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Chancellor, who under oath before the Cum-Ex parliamentary inquiry committee could not recall a single one of the decisive meetings — despite witnesses, documents and minutes attesting the contrary — stepped before the Bundestag and announced 100 billion euros for the Bundeswehr. Not as the result of careful needs analysis, not after weeks of coordination with NATO partners, not as part of a considered European defence concept. As a signal. As a gesture. As proof that Germany acts. Those who forget so completely in such moments apparently remember all the better in others.

That is the moment when the permanent moratorium — the endless talking and postponing — abruptly flips into its opposite: hectic action without concept. Both are forms of the same underlying disease. The moratorium says: we do not decide. The shock decision says: we decide right now, without thinking. Between these two poles German defence policy has swung for decades — and both produce the same result: wasted resources, missed opportunities, a Bundeswehr that still cannot do what it is supposed to do.

II. What the Special Fund Really Is

The term "Sondervermögen" — special fund, or special assets — is misleading enough to have been voted word of the year in January 2026 after 2,631 submissions. It is not assets. It is debt — credit-financed expenditure on economic consumption that generates no return, constitutionally enshrined, distributed across generations. A tank produces nothing. An F-35 creates no value. Those who take on debt to build a factory have a factory tomorrow that produces. Those who take on debt for ammunition have spent ammunition tomorrow.

And even as debt, it is only half of what it purports to be. Of the 100-billion package, 33 percent does not flow into new equipment but into compensating for savings in the regular defence budget — money that would have had to be spent anyway, only from a different pot. A further 8 percent disappears as interest. That means: less than 60 percent of the special fund actually lands in additional defence capability.

The procurement system through which this money must flow was broken before the decision — and remains broken afterwards. Radio equipment that does not fit the vehicles for which it was procured. Helicopters that spend two of three days in maintenance. Projects where not the latest technical standard is ordered, but entirely new systems are developed — which then enter service as beta versions and are prone to failure. These are not isolated cases. This is the structural logic of a procurement system oriented for decades towards proprietary development, over-regulation and risk avoidance.

Pumping billions into a broken system does not repair the system. It makes the losses larger.

III. Bilateral Thinking and Its Price

The actual error lies before the decision. It lies in the question that was not asked.

The question that was asked was bilateral: act or not act? Rearm or not rearm? 100 billion or less? This question can be answered in three days. And it was answered.

The question that was not asked was multilateral: what does Europe need to be capable of defence? Which capabilities are missing where? What can we procure jointly, what would be cheaper, what qualitatively better? What defence industry do we want to build — national or European? What do we buy from whom, and what dependencies arise? How do we reform the procurement system before pouring billions through its holes?

These questions would have taken months. Perhaps years. They are uncomfortable because their answers challenge national sovereignty claims, violate industrial policy interests and produce no clear signals that can be communicated in three sentences.

So they were not asked.

IV. The European Dimension of the Failure

Germany is not alone. European defence expenditures have risen massively in recent years — each country for itself, according to its own concept, with its own procurement structures, its own industrial interests, its own political signals.

The result is absurd: 27 EU member states operate 178 different weapons systems. The US with comparable economic output operates 30. The fragmentation costs — in development costs, operating costs, interoperability, missed economies of scale. Estimates suggest Europe wastes 25 to 100 billion euros annually through this fragmentation — money that could flow into real defence capability.

But joint procurement means: national industries lose contracts. National parliaments lose control. National governments lose the signal they want to produce. So it stays at 178 systems. So everyone buys for themselves. So the billions flow through the broken national systems rather than through a — still broken, but at least larger — European one.

V. Conscription as Symptom of the Same Thinking

The current debate about reviving conscription follows the same pattern. The bilaterally framed question reads: conscription or not? Universal or selective? For men or for everyone?

The question not asked reads: what kind of army does Germany — and Europe — need in 2035? Highly mobile professional army with reservists, heavy armoured force for NATO's eastern flank, cyber army, drone units, logistical infrastructure? How much of this can be meaningfully filled by conscripts, how much requires specialists who cannot be trained in nine months? How do we coordinate with Poland, the Balts, France?

These questions are not asked. Instead the conscription debate is conducted as a values referendum — willingness to sacrifice versus freedom, duty versus individualism — and the result will, like everything else, be decided under time pressure without concept or postponed without concept. The mechanism is the same.

VI. What Multilateral Thinking Would Mean Here

Multilateral thinking in defence policy does not mean hesitation. It means the willingness to hold several dimensions simultaneously: the military, the industrial, the financial, the European, the democratic.

It means asking: what happens to the defence industry we are building when the conflict ends and demand collapses? What happens to the debt when the special fund expires and the regular budget must bear the burden? What happens to NATO cohesion when every country runs its own programme? What happens to democratic legitimacy when special funds are used to circumvent the debt brake?

These questions have no simple answers. But not answering them has very concrete costs — in billions, in missed security, in a Bundeswehr that in 2026 receives more money than ever before and still cannot deliver what it is supposed to deliver.

The special fund is talking illness away in its most expensive form: the conviction that a large number replaces the thinking one has refused. It does not replace it. It makes the price of the refusal visible — cast in constitutional rank, distributed across generations, sold as a historic turning point.

The turning point would have been: reforming the procurement system before pouring billions into it. Building European coordination before everyone buys separately. Asking what is needed before deciding how much to spend.

Instead: 108 billion euros for the permanent moratorium — now spent under time pressure and without concept, rather than postponed for years without concept. The mechanism is the same. Only the price has risen.