Defence Secretary Liam Fox is used to looking across the Atlantic for military
inspiration and across the English Channel to France for the future of defence cooperation. But he might do well to look somewhere else – namely to Germany where the young defence minister,
Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, has launched one of the Cabinet’s most ambitious cost-cutting programmes.
He is planning to cut the number of active-duty soldiers from 250,000 to 150,000 as part of a an effort to find €1bn (£840m) worth of cuts as part of the government’s €80 billion austerity programme. He is even contemplating an end to compulsory military service — something normally seen as a fundamental principle for the CDU and CSU. Earlier in the week, the man tipped as a future chancellor, said that deep spending cuts were needed in his budget because of the federal government’s dire fiscal situation.
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