### Reader’s Letter to The Guardian, 23rd. March 2025 ###
Dear Editor,
I read Kate Connolly’s piece on the German parliament passing €500bn of extra debt to “counter Putin’s war of aggression” (The Guardian, 18th March 2025, link below) and must admit that this “about turn” by Friedrich Merz (and the fact that it was passed in the “old” parliament) did shock me.
Additionally I think that we have one enormous “elephant in the room” which applies to all those countries ramping up their defence-spending. That is to say most of Europe! This is the topic of “recruits”. Let’s take a moment to think about this …
If you are throwing hundreds of billions of Euros at the problem, it is not only the hardware that you need (supplied by British, French, Italian, German, etc. companies) but also people who are prepared to put themselves “in harm’s way” to use those weapons. With them needing to spend many months acquiring skills beforehand.
As it is, I don’t see much happening on that front: While the Russians and the Ukrainians are scouring their streets (and their neighbours) for suitable “candidates” to be press-ganged into the army, Germany has not moved to re-introduce conscription or compulsory military service. And that three years into the war on Ukraine!
In my view, this fact alone tells the world very clearly that, no matter how much money we throw at the problem, we are nothing more than “paper tigers”. My conclusion here is that, rather than going on to bankrupt ourselves, we should seek peace with Russia … or “get serious” and put our own flesh-and-blood on the line.
My preference would be peace.
Yours,
Alan Mitcham
Link to original article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/18/german-mps-approve-500bn-spending-boost-to-counter-putin-war-of-aggression
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