The new sleepwalkers: Are we moving into the world war?
Ex-CIA expert has “Fears for Germany”
Don’t miss the photos in the original German edition; for example:
Raphael Schmeller Simon Zeise
27.06.2025
After the German title (same as that rendered above in English), follows the English version provided by Berliner Zeitung; then for the last part, as indicated, by Google.
Die neuen Schlafwandler: Rüsten wir uns in den Weltkrieg? Ex-CIA-Experte hat „Angst um Deutschland“
Raphael Schmeller, Simon Zeise
Will a new world war threaten in the near future? Many observers think: Yes. A recent survey by the American think tank Atlantic Council among political experts from 47 countries shows that 40 percent consider a global conflict to be likely within the next ten years. The Atlantic Council describes this finding as “alarming”.
In fact, war is present in the minds of politicians today as much as it is no longer – not as a horror, but as an option. Anyone who speaks of peace today means hardly any more diplomacy, but arms budgets, conscription and troop strength. For many, international law no longer seems to play a role.
This shifting political standards does not remain without consequences. “In such a demonstrative neglect of fundamental values of European civilization, but also painful lessons learned to conceal from European history, testifies to become a historical forgetfulness, the prioritisation of non-European interests, ultimately also of lack of suitability for state political offices,” warns Roland Popp from the Military Academy at ETH Zurich in a conversation with the Berliner Zeitung.
They are new sleepwalkers at work – this time not monarchical rulers with pimple hoods, but elected representatives who are positioned with technocrat words such as “fruitfulness” and “readiness 2030”. Germany is back at the centre – and behaves as if it had learned nothing from its history.
Guide fantasies in Berlin
Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz has pushed through the biggest upgrade in the history of the Federal Republic by repairing the debt brake on arms spending. The Bundeswehr is to become the “strongest army in Europe” according to his will. Following the NATO summit this week, when the Member States agreed on the five percent of defence goal, Merz presented himself as Europe’s new leader: “With this decision, we have also assumed a certain leading role, followed by others.”
Germany again as a leading power. It is fitting that Defence Minister Boris Pistorius wants to make the Bundeswehr “warning” and thinks about the reintroduction of conscription.
The German defence budget is to rise to 162 billion euros per year by 2029. By way of comparison, this year’s budget including special assets amounts to around 115 billion. And the planning continues: by 2035, the five percent mark is to be reached – 225 billion euros per year, almost half of today’s federal budget.
Germany is not alone at all. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen calls for the “rearmament of Europe” – in line with her “readiness 2030” plan, which the EU is to make war against Russia by the end of the decade. It wants to mobilise 800 billion euros for this throughout Europe.
Armament euphoria instead of diplomacy
The new European logic follows an old motto: Si vis pacem, para bellum – If you want peace, prepare for war. But those who march in this direction should not be mistaken about the goal. In his work “The Sleepwalkers”, the historian Christopher Clark impressively described how Europe’s elites stumbled blindly into disaster in 1914 – convinced by his own necessity, ready for confrontation, incapable of de-escalation.
Today, European leaders are not behaving much differently. The strategy historian and analyst Popp warns urgently against the loss of European fundamental values and the complete abandonment of international law: “For me, this almost thoughtless task of an international order based on international law is a sacrilege. It tells at its core everything that Europe stands for, and gives up this achievement practically without resistance. We Europeans should be the last to welcome a jungle order in world politics – because we can only lose.”
From here on is Google translation. The above translation was from Die Berliner Zeitung.
Dangerous gains
But the military-industrial complex is making pressure. The defence industry generates billions through state rearmament programs. This is also the reason why Donald Trump stepped down from the INF Treaty during his first term in office, says former CIA analyst Ray McGovern in talks with the Berliner Zeitung. The disarmament contract for medium-range nuclear missiles with Russia continued from 1987 to 2014 and was unilaterally terminated by Trump. “It was a balance of terror, but it was a balance at least,” says McGovern, who was in charge of the US president’s daily briefing in the US president’s daily briefing. “It was a successful policy of détente,” he says. “For the first time in the history of mankind, an entire class of nuclear missiles was destroyed. The Pershing missiles in Germany and the SS-20 missiles in the Soviet Union.”
The federal government has now approved the . At the Nato summit in Washington last year, Scholz and Biden agreed on a bilateral agreement that is not part of a NATO agreement. The missiles are intended to deter Russia. But if nuclear missiles aim at Moscow, Russia will perceive this as an aggressive act. The nuclear threat is growing. “I’m really afraid for Germany,” McGovern says.
Escalation in the Middle East
In the Middle East, the US has begun a war that it did not want to wage. Washington supports Israel as its main ally in the region. For this, Trump takes over and accepted his predecessor Joe Biden approving the genocide in Gaza, which has killed more than 56,000 people since October 2023.
But the Trump administration’s military strategy is actually aimed at China. An escalation in the Middle East threatens to tear Trump’s electorate. Military logistics would not stand ready for a shift to the Indo-Pacific. In addition, rising oil prices and thus high consumer prices are threatened in the USA. The relationship with Vladimir Putin would also worsen by an attack on Iran – Russia’s most important ally in the region – which would in turn affect Ukraine peace negotiations.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has put pressure on the US government, says McGovern. There was no justification under international law for the Israeli and American wars of aggression. “Since 2007, the American secret service has declared that Iran has stopped working on a nuclear weapon at the end of 2003 and did not resume this work,” says McGovern. “16 secret services have declared it unanimously. They have repeated it every year, even in March of this year.” Most recently, the director of the national intelligence agencies, Tulsi Gabbard, had explained shortly before the US attacks on Iran that Iran was not on the verge of building a nuclear bomb. She even added that she did not assume that Khamenei was seeking to build an atomic bomb.
Nevertheless, American B2 bombers flew attacks with bunker breaking bombs on Iranian nuclear facilities. “Trump has said that his neo-conservative advisers were persuading the Israelis to control the airspace over Tehran and a victory over Iran is possible,” McGovern explains. “But then it became clear to his followers that the Israelis would be defeated. Haifa was bombed, airfields, the Israeli Ministry of Defence and the headquarters of the Mossad. The Patriot missiles were not able to intercept the Iranian hypersonic missiles. And Iran has a lot of it,” says the former CIA analyst. “Trump wanted to agree a ceasefire before Israel became incapable of acting.” The Iranians appear to have agreed under pressure from Russia and China. In Beijing and Moscow, they were very concerned that the street was being sealed off from Hormuz.
NATO and American Interest
It is serious miscalculations like this, which can quickly lead to a hot war. Europe is not well advised to rely blindly on the assessments from Washington. But NATO is now shining definitively like an alliance without a counterweight to the USA. Mark Rutte, the Secretary General of the Military Alliance, is considered a pro-American hardliner. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is calling for more funds for the “Nato flank,” and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer wants to bring Britain back to the European centre as a military power.
For Roland Popp, it is clear that the current rearmament does no lead to more security, but to the strategic disaster: “The high military spending of the Americans has very little to do with the defense of Europe, much more with the global ambitions of the USA and its wasteful wars in the Middle East. The whole story is a single milkmaid calculation.”
Europe, says Popp, is today “prisoner of the wrong decisions before the Ukraine war”. Whoever speaks of “leadership” today, my truly blind obedience to Washington – and thus gives up every European independence. Especially dramatic: Europe has lost the ability to achieve classical diplomacy, says Popp. And she was the only way to go to prevent a new world war.
Europe in free fall
“Trump has prevailed, that’s the crucial thing,” says former CIA analyst McGovern. Even the Europeans are no longer in favour of Ukraine’s path leading irreversibly into NATO. “The case is clear to the USA. If Europeans believe they have to help Ukraine, they should do it themselves and increase their national defense budgets to five percent,” says McGovern. “If they want to serve the profiteers of their arms industry, that is their business.”
The Europeans, on the other hand, are divided. Spain rejects the Nato refit targets, Eastern European states such as Hungary are in favour of rapprochement with Russia. But transatlantic Europeans want to keep NATO together. “They have literally submitted to Trump, so that the US can affirm the guarantee of assistance under article five,” says McGovern. NATO Secretary General Rutte wrote a text message to Trump who was very grateful for the US mission in the Middle East and called the US president even “Daddy” during a press conference at the recent NATO summit.
But whether the subservience will help Europeans? “Despite the flattery, Trump has not got involved,” says McGovern. “NATO is breaking apart. Most Europeans will not be able to spend five percent of their GDP on the military. Resistance to social cuts will be too great.”
This is the future of the European defence alliance uncertain. France, Germany, Great Britain and Poland have founded a “coalition of the willing” with which they want to stand by Ukraine and Volodymyr Selensky. Merz, Macron, Starmer and Tusk have even brought ground troops to peacekeeping. McGovern believes that it is unlikely. Only a few years ago, Emmanuel Macron insulted Nato as brain-dead because it was unable to provide security in Europe without the Americans. It would therefore be more apt to call the military pact of the four states the “coalition of the brain dead.”
“One of the great ironies is the fact that Russia is much more powerful today than 2022,” says McGovern. The army has been renewed and tested for battle and they have modern medium range missiles such as the Oreschnik, which the West can hardly counter with anything.”
An “strategy” remains an extreme upgrade course, coupled with the willingness to submit to American security interests. Also atthe price of exposing Germany as the main target of atomic escalation.
War-impacted to the catastrophe
The madness lies in the repetition: a new coupling generation marches on. If Europe decides today to copy the arms logic of the past, it will once again become the place of devastation. The words of Leo Tolstoy from his work “War and Peace” are once again: “War is a state in which the lowest and most vicious people gain power and glory.”
The question is: who stops them?
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