Germany Details Cutbacks in Military Bases, Personnel

Triggering howls of protest from politicians in states that will lose the most in federal spending, German Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping announced post-Cold War military reforms Monday that will close 59 bases and reduce the size of the army by nearly 10%.

The cuts are part of a military restructuring that reflects major changes in the threats to European security. Largely designed to defend against a land invasion from the formerly Communist east, the German army is being reconfigured for more high-tech battles with regional bullies on the order of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein or Yugoslavia’s former president, Slobodan Milosevic.

Scharping’s plan won general approval from Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s Cabinet last spring, but the details were not announced until Monday.

The restructuring will reduce the number of active-duty troops from 310,000 to 282,000 and cut a third of the Zivildienst alternative service for conscientious objectors, trimming it to 85,000. Conscription time was already reduced last year from 10 months to nine for military service and from 12 months to 11 for those doing community service.

The cuts, announced more than two years after Schroeder’s Social Democrats took over the government, will save at least about $480 million, Scharping said. Most of those savings are to be invested in modern equipment to make the Bundeswehr more compatible with forces of the United States and other allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Washington and NATO have long criticized Germany for spending proportionally less on defense than any other alliance member except Luxembourg.

Since reunification in 1990, Germany has had to invest huge sums to modernize the eastern German states, and defense spending has dropped to about 1.5% of gross domestic product, compared with 3.2% in the United States, 2.8% in France and 2.6% in Britain.

Nothing disclosed by Scharping suggests that Berlin is prepared to raise the percentage of GDP it spends on defense, but his plans aim to answer the harshest criticism from Germany’s allies--that Germany’s weaponry is antiquated and its forces still trained and deployed for an unlikely eastern invasion.

Although base closures had long been expected, the details angered local authorities because the loss of troops stationed in any town also hits the economy. Some conservative politicians accused Scharping of drafting his hit list with an eye on where the opposition is in power.

As the state with the largest military presence, Bavaria will suffer the deepest cuts. Thirteen of the 39 large bases to be closed are there.

“The Social Democrats are trying to punish Bavaria,” charged Thomas Goppel, general secretary of the Christian Social Union, the state’s conservative party. The Christian Democratic governor of Hesse state, Roland Koch, accused the governing party of making its decisions based on politics, since only limited reductions were announced in the two states where elections are set for May.

However, the Social Democratic leader of another hard-hit state, North Rhine-Westphalia Gov. Wolfgang Clement, dismissed those accusations and said state officials need to focus on finding uses for the abandoned bases.

Few of the cutbacks are expected imminently, since restructuring is planned in stages through 2006.

Still, the conservatives’ military affairs advisor, Paul Breuer, deemed the reductions excessive and warned that Germany will be unable to fulfill its military obligations with a force of fewer than 300,000.

European members of NATO decided after the 1999 bombardment of Yugoslavia that a 60,000-member European rapid-reaction force is needed to deal with security problems on the continent. Although the plan appears to respond to U.S. calls for Europe to shoulder more of its own military burdens, it has also prompted warnings from Pentagon and NATO officials that the new undertaking shouldn’t draw resources away from alliance needs.