The Trump administration has repeatedly pressured Berlin to ramp up its military spending, threatening to pull troops out of the country and station them in Poland if the country doesn't meet NATO's 2 percent of GDP spending guidelines.
German defence spending jumped upward by a whopping 10 percent between 2018 and 2019, with the country's military budget rising faster than that of any other major power, new figures by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) suggest.
The spending increase comes amid US President Donald Trump's repeated berating of Germany and other European NATO members over their failure to meet the 2 percent of GDP military spending goal set at the alliance's 2014 summit in Wales. Washington has repeatedly singled out German Chancellor Angela Merkel for her failure to increase defence commitments, even though Germany is one of 19 alliance members that failed to meet the spending requirements.
Despite spending enough on defence to consistently put the nation in the global top ten, and no major adversary in the European theatre, the Bundeswehr has consistently complained about funding problems, citing the grounding of the air force's Tiger attack helicopters, problems with the Navy's new warships, lack of proper footwear, uniforms and armoured vehicles for the ground forces, and insufficient aircraft to properly train air force pilots.
Back to the 80s
SIPRI says that taken as a whole, global defence spending topped…
