Responsibility for Europe reads differently from Bratislava than from Brussels. The new German defence strategy is worth reading carefully, particularly from the capitals whose security still depends on German territory. Responsibility for Europe will be defined in the next decade by what Berlin does if Washington no longer underwrites European
Miro Sedlák
For 71 years, Germany ran its defence without writing a military strategy.
West Germany did not produce one.
Neither did reunified Germany.
Even the 2022 Zeitenwende [Era Change] did not the Bundeswehr’s course.
Strategy, in the German tradition, was something you did with Nato, not something you wrote alone.
That ended on 22 April 2026. Defence minister Boris Pistorius and Generalinspekteur Carsten Breuer presented Verantwortung für Europa (Responsibility for Europe), the Bundeswehr’s first standalone military strategy since it was founded in 1955.
Some 38 public pages.
Most headlines noted the force-structure targets: 260,000 active troops and 200,000 reservists by 2035, the strongest conventional army in Europe by 2039.
The force numbers are not the news. The document itself is. The Federal Republic has governed its defence through white papers, defence policy guidelines, capability profiles and — since 2023 — a National Security Strategy.
Those were government-wide policy compromise, linking force development to a specific threat horizon and a broader theatre concept.
What it never produced was a standalone military strategy under that label, authored in the Bundeswehr’s own voice.
Why now? ‘Managing’ Russia
The 2026 US National Defense Strategy, released on 23 January, tells European allies they must take primary responsibility for conventional defence in Europe with “critical but more limited” US support. The Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) reads it as a substantive break; “managing” Russia is now a European responsibility, and US forces will “calibrate” as Europe increases its effort.
Germany had already been moving this way since 2022. The 2026 US announcement did not create this shift, but it sharpened and accelerated it.
The April document is what emerged: the first German answer in the form of a military strategy.
Two passages make the shift unambiguous. The document commits Germany to becoming “the strongest conventional army in Europe”, a phrase that would have been politically unusable in a German military document as recently as 2021.
And it embeds a “One-Theatre-Approach,” treating Nato territory, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific as interconnected security spaces, inside a force-planning document.
What is new is that this logic now drives Bundeswehr capability development, not just diplomatic framing.
How eastern European states should read it
The document contains one concrete forward commitment east of Germany.
Panzerbrigade 45 in Lithuania, roughly 2,800 personnel, full operational capability targeted for 2027 is the first permanent stationing of a German combat brigade outside the motherland since the Bundeswehr was founded.
Everything else directed beyond German borders is capability aspiration: long-range precision strike, air and missile defence, a common digital backbone, fielded over 10 to 15 years.
German security analyst Christian Mölling told Euronews the strategy is “an important first step” that “should not be mistaken for a moment after which everything changes overnight”.
The eastern flank capitals will not read the text the unified way.
Warsaw, comfortable with forward deterrence and US procurement, will ask whether German capability-building genuinely complements its American bilateral spine.
In Bratislava and Prague, where domestic politics makes hard-deterrence choices more fragile, the One-Theatre framing raises a different concern.
Does Indo-Pacific prioritisation mean central European interests get traded down when Berlin faces difficult choices?
Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn have the most immediate stake (Panzerbrigade 45 is their document) and will measure Germany by the 2027 date and what follows it.
A German conventional giant embedded in a US-anchored Nato is one kind of partner. A German armed forces preparing for deterrence with Washington in a secondary role is a different kind.
The document assumes the alliance holds while also assuming it may not hold the way it used to. It deserves to be read east of Berlin with the care that requires.
What actually changed?
There are two specific things the Bundeswehr did not have on 21 April and has now.
A document authored in Germany’s own voice, signing Berlin to a leadership role in Europe’s conventional defence.
And a declared threat horizon: Breuer has stated Russia could be capable of a large-scale attack on Nato territory from 2029, with the three-phase build-up timed to that date.
None of this is a complete strategy.
The new document is thin on execution, and the procurement record will take 18 months to clarify.
But the Federal Republic has never before committed itself in this form to conventional leadership of European defence under conditions where American backing is explicitly treated as variable.
That is worth reading carefully, particularly from the capitals whose security still depends on German territory.
Responsibility for Europe will be defined in the next decade by what Berlin does if Washington no longer underwrites European defence at previous levels. Germany has now stated, in writing, that this is the planning horizon.
