Germany and France both replaced their defense ministers in the past four days in decisions that could shake up an armed forces reform in at least one of the European countries.
Germany's Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg resigned Tuesday because of alleged plagiarism in his 2006 doctoral thesis. He will be replaced by Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday.
France had a similar reshuffle of its Cabinet when President Nicolas Sarkozy on Sunday announced that Gerard Longuet would replace Alain Juppe as defense minister after Juppe moved to the foreign affairs brief.
While it's not expected that Longuet, a former industry minister in the 1990s, will do things radically different than his predecessor, the shakeup in Germany could bring significant changes to the country's planned reform of the armed forces, the Bundeswehr.
Guttenberg had launched one of the most controversial and comprehensive reforms in the history of the German military. Those moves included plans to cut the defense budget by $11.5 billion until 2015, cut the number of troops from 250,000 to 185,000 and suspend the general conscription in a bid to turn the Bundeswehr into a professional force.
However, it surfaced this week that the suspension of the draft, a backbone of Bundeswehr recruiting, has proved disastrous when it comes to finding new soldiers.
The number of volunteers willing to enlist in the Bundeswehr is substantially below what's needed. The Financial Times Germany newspaper cites a Defense Ministry study as saying that it's just 10 percent of the total required.
Former Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping Tuesday said he hoped that a new defense minister would give the reform a second look and "undo some of the mistakes."
Germany should hold on to the general conscription and finance its armed forces according to foreign and security policy needs, rather according to budget, he said.
Germany has some 5,000 troops stationed in northern Afghanistan with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force and the mission has become more demanding on personnel and equipment. Military experts including Scharping have warned that the planned cuts would leave the Bundeswehr with no means to take on new missions.
Because of the cutbacks, which are to hit procurement, the German arms industry will have to change, observers say.
Companies "must provide cost-efficient and highly innovative products," Vice Admiral Axel Schimpf, who is the German navy's highest-ranking officer, said recently in Berlin.
Germany is one of the world's major arms exporters. Companies including ThyssenKrupp, Rheinmetall and Krauss-Maffei Wegmann develop high-quality submarines, ships, armored vehicles and tanks.
And European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co., a multinational giant producing various models of airplanes and helicopters, has a strong German profile.
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