The recommendation by Friends of Europe, a leading think tank here, comes after the Polish government has lobbied Washington to permanently station American troops at a base in the NATO country, to be named after the American president. Warsaw’s aspirations were met with skepticism in Europe and by some U.S. defense experts, who fear that such a move could been seen as questioning the alliance’s commitment to collective defense.

The think tank’s report contends that Poland is led by a “reclusive politician haunted by feelings of national insecurity and historical grievance.” According to the study, the chairman of the ruling party Law and Justice, Jarosław Kaczyński, sees enemies and threats everywhere and safety, if at all, only in the “tightest possible” bilateral defence relationship with the United States rather than in the “collective embrace” of European partners and NATO allies.

The analysis follows what many in Europe view as a reversal in Poland from post-Cold War liberalism to a heavy-handed government exhibiting non-democratic traits. Last month, the Washington Post published an exhaustive report from Eastern and Central Europe that included Poland in a line-up of “new autocrats” digging in across the continent.

Friends of Europe study author Paul Taylor told Defense News: “It’s time to get real. The United States is not pulling any of its troops out of foreign entanglements in Afghanistan or Syria so that it can put them in a big, fat ‘Fort Trump’ in eastern Poland.”

He added, “At the very latest when President Donald Trump tweeted, ‘It’s time to bring our boys home,’ the light bulb should have gone on in Warsaw.

“America is disengaging from overseas commitments and focusing on growing rivalry with China. The U.S. Army doesn’t have a spare combat brigade, let alone an armored division, to tie down in central Europe waiting for the Russians to come.”

He went on, “For a Polish government to bet the store on securing a permanent U.S. Army base to guard against Russian aggression is sure to lead to disappointment. All the more so if the quest is coupled with confrontation with the European Union over the rule of law, souring relations with the main Western European powers, Germany and France, a weakening of the armed forces and security services through repeated purges, and ‘memory politics’ that upsets neighbors and allies.”

The Polish request for U.S. troops comes at a time when the country has never been more prosperous, stable and safer, both as a sovereign state as well as a member of NATO and of the European Union, the report notes. It is at peace with its neighbours and enjoys enviable rates of economic growth, investment and employment, it says.

“There are other ways to strengthen NATO’s eastern defences,” argued Taylor. “Use European Union funds to expand dual-use road, rail, energy and airport infrastructure to facilitate military mobility.”

He also suggests giving NATO’s supreme commander pre-delegated authority to set in motion crisis-response measures.

“Both the EU and NATO are investing in improved cyber defences and better early warning of hybrid threats and disinformation. Poland lags in these areas. In that sense, a joint U.S.-European ‘Fort Trump’-initiative could be more attractive to the United States,” said Taylor.

And it was probably easy to rationalize. Why shouldn’t the priority be America First? And why shouldn’t allies pay their fair share?

But the devout loyalty, at least for some, seems to be dimming. Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation seeking to bar President Donald Trump from withdrawing from NATO amid renewed concerns over his commitment to the 29-nation military pact. The fact that the bill was introduced (by a Democrat) or even passed is not a huge surprise. You might say it’s part of the tit for tat that has become regular order: Trump will lambaste NATO, and Democrats will release a statement about how committed the United States is to our allies and the alliance.

But what was interesting here is the bipartisan approval — of the 357 votes for the bill, 28 were Republicans. And some of those Republicans were quite candid. “It may be a rebuke of the president or at least a rebuke of any consideration of the idea of withdrawing from NATO — but that’s our frigging job,” said co-sponsor of the bill Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois. “It’s to have an opinion and make it known, not to be lap dogs to anybody, especially on foreign policy.”

It’s worth noting that this was a preemptive move. Trump had indeed threatened a break by the U.S. from NATO, but he walked it back, saying the U.S. would “be with NATO 100 percent.” So why the legislation?

Some that did vote against the bill (22 in all) had thoughts.

Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga., said he “was not going to play these kinds of games” considering the purpose of the resolution was not in his mind to strengthen our alliance, “but to rebuke the president.”

It’s true the bill in and of itself was a rebuke by definition, which is one reason the bipartisan support is so interesting. But whether that was the driving factor in its introduction is debatable. This is the clearest sign we’ve seen that members recognize if the position of the U.S. in the world is to be maintained, some strategically placed fig leaves may be in order.

What began as American nationalism, perhaps, has spurred something else. European allies are increasingly focused on regional security — establishing their own cooperative agreements and acquisition programs to secure borders and airspace. There’s more ownership of NATO strategies and priorities coming out of Europe, and less bowing to the United States to deliver the unified message. And the European Union is increasing its role in defense efforts in cooperation with NATO, creating an even stronger voice and influence for the region. That self-awareness of strength and influence has only been reinforced by the political disaster that is Brexit.

As I noted when we released Outlook — our collection of essays from global defense leaders: These are more emboldened NATO allies, speaking less about what NATO can do for their countries, and more about what their countries can do for NATO.

So is this a case of pushing the chicks out of the nest? Tough love, so to speak?

Can this be regarded as a victory for President Trump, in that he accomplished all he intended: making allies less reliant on the United States both financially and tactically?

The result might have been exactly that. But one has to ask whether it came with a rather costly price. What seems to be happening among NATO allies is less an acknowledgment that the balance of responsibility needed to be rewired, and more that the United States perhaps isn’t quite as important as they all once thought it was. As we thought we were.

And Congress is noticing.

“The purpose of this resolution was not to strengthen our alliance, but to rebuke the President, and although I support NATO, I’m not going to play these kinds of games — especially with an issue that has far-reaching, international implications,” Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga., said in a statement.

The 357-22 vote to bar the use of federal funds to withdraw from NATO was decisive and bipartisan, but could also be read as an important bellwether for how far Trump, who has sent mixed signals about his commitment to the pact, can sway members away from GOP orthodoxy.

Beyond asserting Congress’ power of the purse, the measure — sponsored by Rep. Jimmy Panetta, D-Calif., backed by Democratic leadership and co-sponsored by eight Republicans — affirms support for NATO and its Article 5 mutual defense clause, for Montenegro’s accession, and for the goal that each member nation spend at least 2 percent of its gross domestic product on defense by 2024.

The No. 2 Republican in the House, Rep. Steve Scalise, and other House GOP leaders were among the yeas. Scalise, of Louisiana, said Wednesday that he believes in the mission of the 70-year-old, 29-member alliance and also supports Trump’s campaign to pressure allies into spending more on defense.

“The European countries are stepping up and that’s a good thing, so [the resolution] covers that as well, and I thought that was an important addition to that relationship that helps these countries have more stake in the game,” Scalise said.

Of the 22 Republicans nays, a handful similarly split the difference Wednesday in individual statements provided to Defense News. They both praised the alliance as a bulwark against Russia and applauded Trump for pressing allies on funds, but they did not spell out whether they would side with Trump if he sought to withdraw from NATO.

Of the 22 Republican nays, 14 of them voted “yea” on a similar measure June 27, 2017, that reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to Article 5 and called on allies to meet the 2 percent goal; two voted “nay” on both measures, and six are freshmen lawmakers who were not in Congress in 2017.

(The 423-4 vote in 2017 came after Trump pointedly did not affirm U.S. support for Article 5 in a visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels before backing it in a speech days later.)

Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., voted “nay” on both pro-NATO measures. By way of explanation for Tuesday’s vote, the libertarian-leaning Massie tweeted: “Actually I’d call it the ‘Pledge Allegiance to NATO Act,’ and that’s correct, 22 of us did not.”

Rep. Randy Weber, R-Texas, called Tuesday’s resolution “yet another political stunt by the Democrats designed to drag down the President”; Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., called it an “unusual move to remove any president’s ability to negotiate treaties”; and Reps. Justin Amash, R-Mich., and Tom McClintock, R-Calif., said the measure’s commitment to NATO was overbroad.

“While I support NATO and our continued presence in it, this bill is unnecessary and appears deliberately aimed at undercutting the president’s efforts to get NATO countries to pay their fair share for its support,” McClintock said. “NATO was formed to provide security against the now-defunct Soviet Union; not to relieve individual European nations from their responsibility to maintain their own defenses at America’s expense.”

It’s not the first time there’s been ebb and flow among Republicans on the matter. In 2012, the GOP-led House passed an amendment, 226-196, from Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo., to authorize the president to remove all U.S. brigades permanently stationed in Europe and replace them with a rotational force — but a similar amendment a year later failed, 110-313.

A significant chunk of the 14 who flip-flopped are aligned with the conservative House Freedom Caucus, led by influential GOP Rep. Mark Meadows. In a hallway interview Wednesday, the congressman from North Carolina said NATO is “critical” and “not obsolete,” but added that he and others on Tuesday were turned off by Democratic criticism of Trump leading up to the vote.

“It was more than a slap,” Meadows said. “Some of the things that were said were personal attacks that have no business being discussed when we’re talking about something as important as NATO membership.”

Nevertheless, the House Freedom Caucus did not take an official position on the resolution or whip votes. “We weren’t trying to make a point, and if we were, we’d have been more aggressive about our whip and our public comments, certainly,” Meadows said.

Wednesday’s floor remarks about the resolution that focused on Trump came from the head of the U.S. delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va. He highlighted Trump’s false claims that NATO allies owe the U.S. money and called back to Trump’s widely criticized performances after a private meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki last year and at the last two NATO summits.

“One can’t talk about the U.S. commitment to Article 5 in 2019 without mentioning President Trump’s failure to embrace it in full view of our NATO’s allies to his first trip to Brussels in 2017,” Connolly said.

“The president’s provocative comments” — Trump said Germany was Russia’s captive and harped on the 2 percent goal at the last NATO summit — “undermine the summit’s goal of protecting unity in the face of renewed Russian aggression, especially given they occurred just days before what turned out to be a very difficult, if not disastrous, Helsinki summit with Vladimir Putin,” Connolly said.

One Republican co-sponsor of Panetta’s resolution, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, of Illinois, found the 22 GOP nays disappointing in light of Russia’s “bad behavior.” Ultimately, the strong vote made the point that the House backs NATO, and if it was a message to Trump, then so be it.

“It may be a rebuke of the president or at least a rebuke of any consideration of the idea of withdrawing from NATO — but that’s our frigging job,” Kinzinger said. “It’s to have an opinion and make it known, not to be lap dogs to anybody, especially on foreign policy.”

Navy chief Vice Adm. Andreas Krause established the German Maritime Forces Staff in the northeastern German city of Rostock, where the BMCC headquarters is being built. The German officers, led by a Navy captain, form the core of a small planning cell that will offer its services to the militarized NATO Command Structure once fully operational in 2025 or so.

The move, though largely symbolic at this point, is something of an about-face for the German sea service, which had focused its attention on low-intensity operations in more distant waters following the Soviet Union’s fall.

Relations with Russia have become icy once again, however, with Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine and an aftermath of military posturing near the borders with NATO countries. Reports of Russia bolstering its enclave Kaliningrad, which borders the Baltic Sea between alliance members Lithuania and Poland, have further increased tensions.

“The north Atlantic and the wider northern flank have returned to our attention as potential areas of operations,” Krause said at the ceremony in Rostock. “The Baltic Sea has grown to a never-seen strategic significance in the past years.”

During the Cold War, the German Navy viewed the western part of the Baltic Sea as a barrier against Warsaw Pact ships seeking to break through to the North Sea to attack supply lines from the United States. Today, “the whole of the Baltic Sea is a vital lifeline, linking allies in Poland and the Baltic states as well as our close partners in Finland and Sweden with the rest of Europe,” Krause said.

For Germany, the Baltic Sea presents a unique challenge because nowhere else does homeland defense and the defense of allies so immediately overlap, said Sebastian Bruns, head of the Center for Maritime Strategy and Security at the University of Kiel. It is also an area where Germany, whose governments have preferred supporting roles — or none at all — in global crises, is truly on the hook. “The United States, the United Kingdom or France don’t appear to have a lot of interests there,” Bruns said.

The German Navy’s acquisition pipeline already bears the imprint of a return to traditional naval warfare preparedness, industry executives and analysts have said.

For example, the service has plans to build four new corvettes optimized for “confined and shallow waters,” conditions found in the Baltic Sea, according to Bruns. Also on the wish list are at least four copies of the MKS 180 multipurpose combat ship, as well as a modernization of the country’s mine-warfare fleet.

“We will be with NATO 100 percent, but as I told the countries, you have to step up,” President Donald Trump said Thursday at the Pentagon.

Speaking at the rollout of his administration’s Missile Defense Review, Trump’s remarks follow a report in The New York Times that he spoke about pulling out of the 70-year-old alliance. Trump reportedly told aides around the time of the last NATO summit in Brussels last July that he wanted to withdraw.

Trump has called NATO both “obsolete” and “no longer obsolete,” but Thursday’s remarks were all the more striking for their setting — in the Pentagon amphitheater — and the timing. Last month, one of NATO’s strongest supporters in the administration, Jim Mattis, resigned as defense secretary, citing in his resignation letter views on alliances that differ from Trump’s.

Hours after Trump’s speech, he denied House Speaker Nancy Pelosi an aircraft for a planned trip abroad. The two politicians have been clashing over the four-week government shutdown. Pelosi, D-Calif., was to lead a congressional delegation for Afghanistan and Brussels, where — according to a spokesman — she was set to meet with NATO commanders and reaffirm America’s commitment to the alliance.

Even as Trump voiced support for NATO at the Pentagon, he repeatedly commented on America’s allies, calling them “wealthy, wealthy” countries, who could easily be paying the U.S. directly for its “protection” of them, and should be, he said.

“So you’ll see big changes taking place, and we’ve had great talks with countries, friendly talks,” he said.

Speaking to the uniformed and civilian audience, Trump added: “We cannot be the fools for others. We don’t want to be called that. And I will tell you, for many years behind your backs, that’s what they were saying.”

Trump flouted his unpopularity in Europe and took credit for pressuring NATO countries to increase their defense budgets. He also said the Missile Defense Review directs the Pentagon to prioritize the sale of American missile defense and technology to allies and partners.

“We want them to be able to defend, and they are willing to pay for the finest missiles in the world,” he said.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have reiterated support for NATO after The New York Times report.

A bipartisan bill to explicitly prohibit any U.S. president from withdrawing from NATO without Senate approval was introduced Thursday by Sens. Tim Kaine, D-Va.; Cory Gardner, R-Colo.; Jack Reed, D-R.I.; Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; Chris Coons, D-Del.; Marco Rubio, R-Fla.; Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Susan Collins, R-Maine.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a floor speech Wednesday that a U.S. withdrawal from NATO would be a gift to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“That’s Putin’s dream,” Schumer said. “All the advice of our military and diplomatic leaders were against it. Somehow the president wants to do it. And who benefits the most? Putin. Who loses the most? The West.”

Ohio GOP Rep. Mike Turner, a former chairman of the U.S. delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, saw Trump’s remarks as “a very good answer” to The New York Times article.

“I was very glad the president said he was 100 percent committed to NATO; that was important following the unnamed-sources New York Times article,” Turner said Thursday after returning from the Pentagon event. “It was essential he did not back off his commitment to increase the funding spent by our NATO allies — something every president has targeted.”

Turner lauded Trump for fully funding the European Reassurance Initiative and massive military exercises while calling for an increase in the U.S. defense budget — all while France and Germany have discussed a European military force apart from NATO.

“I think the mixed signals are coming from our allies,” Turner said. “They ought to undertake an American reassurance initiative.”

The two new responsibilities follow recent pledges by Berlin to play a more active role in global affairs, offering German Chancellor Angela Merkel an instant test to make good on those proclamations during the final years of her tenure.

As of Jan. 1, Germany is on the hook to provide 5,000 soldiers for NATO’s Very High Readiness Joint Task Force, or VJTF. The formation must be ready to fight wherever it is needed within 48 to 72 hours. Partner nations for this year’s rotation include the Netherlands, Norway, France, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Latvia and Lithuania, bringing the total package to about 8,000.

A key rationale for the quick-reaction force is to display to Russia the ability to rapidly ferry combat power across Europe at a time when speed is believed to be a Russian advantage. European governments are still wary from the 2014 Russian annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea, and more recently from a naval standoff between the two countries in the Sea of Asov. Both incidents fit into a pattern of Russia steering clear of outright war while trying to shake up the post-Soviet order around its borders, according to issue experts.

The German Defence Ministry’s logistics planning for the VJTF role takes into account the need to quickly move combat gear if needed. Its acquisition office last month announced a $110 million support contract to ensure rapid access to military rail transport from civilian providers during Germany’s one-year tenure.

The Bundeswehr, plagued by equipment shortfalls, management problems or both — depending on who is asked — has had to dig deep to assemble the needed equipment for the task force lead. In the end, funneling supplies from across the force to the tip of the spear appears to have worked, but it has depleted the readiness of many units, said Christian Mölling, an analyst with the Berlin-based German Council on Foreign Relations.

“It means the rest of the Bundeswehr is no longer the kind of deterrent it is meant to be,” he said in an interview.

With the task force now on high alert, Mölling said, the thing to watch will be Germany’s national decision-making process in the event that it will be called up. Parliament and the government, he argues, lack a well-rehearsed process for assessing whether a given conflict warrants deploying the task force, potentially kicking off a comprehensive national debate that would negate any hope of a rapid reaction.

That is especially the case because of Moscow’s penchant to keep its activities just below the conflict threshold that would trigger Article 5, NATO’s clause for collective defense when one member is attacked.

Amid deepening global crises and a deteriorating relationship between Europe and the U.S., a German government debating the definition of a worthy VJTF deployment would probably lead to Russian President Vladimir Putin “grabbing a bag of popcorn,” Mölling quipped.

“We just don’t have the necessary routine for a case like that,” he said.

As a nonpermanent member of the U.N. Security Council, it’s easy to foresee the animosity between Germany and the Trump administration in Washington coming to a head in New York, said Ulrike Franke, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank.

Many Germans are deeply wary of the U.S. president and his knocking of NATO and other multilateral institutions that have brought Berlin back from the devastation of World War II. That is even more the case since Jim Mattis, a vocal believer in America’s global alliances, called it quits as defense secretary last month.

Foreign Minister Heiko Maas on Jan. 1 tweeted a list of objectives for Germany during its Security Council tenure. They include countering climate change and related global security effects, and a commitment to arms control and disarmament — issues that the Trump administration has dismissed.

When it comes to the voting pattern of Berlin and Washington, often aligned on the Security Council stage, things could get a little awkward, Franke predicts.

In practical terms, however, “I’m pessimistic that a lot will change,” she said. But Germany’s term holds the promise that government leaders here will get into the habit of developing truly global foreign policy positions and selling them to audiences foreign and domestic, she said.

Yet, this demonstrates that our security approach remains overwhelmingly focused on traditional physical capabilities, even though we are increasingly facing a digital battlefield with the potential for devastating impacts in the real world.

As state-sponsored actors “cross the Rubicon” to use cyberattacks and information manipulation to undermine other governments, this year’s Munich Security Conference missed a golden opportunity to place cyber on the main stage of geopolitics.

This year’s conference relegated cyber issues to the sidelines, a surprising decision given the two major cyber-related incidents that received public attribution in recent months. The first announcement was the public attribution to the Russian military of the devastating so-called NotPetya cyberattack of July 2017 by the U.S., the U.K. and half a dozen other governments.

According to this very high-profile public attribution, the attack was designed to target Ukraine, yet caused indiscriminate damage upon the Danish shipping company Maersk and countless other organizations across the world, causing losses in the billions of dollars. The second major public announcement, which came on the eve of the conference, was the indictment of 13 Russian citizens by U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller for their efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. elections.

These announcements received some attention, but did not take center stage during the Munich Security Conference. Cyber was most notably mentioned by speakers such as British Prime Minister Theresa May and U.S. national security adviser H.R. McMaster. May reiterated the high-profile public attribution of the Russian state-sponsored actors’ responsibility for the NotPetya attack, and McMaster accused Moscow of engaging in a campaign of “disinformation, subversion and espionage,” which he said Washington would continue to expose. He also declared that the evidence of a Russian effort to interfere in the elections “is now incontrovertible.”

But even in these speeches, cyber was buried in more extensive messages where the main emphasis was on other issues.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg did not mention cyber at all in his speech, although NATO is pushing an ambitious cyber agenda, and the secretary general strongly supports it. Similarly, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres highlighted the importance of efforts aimed at determining the applicability of international law to cyberspace. Yet, his remarks did not project any concrete way forward in this field.

Fortunately, side events at the Munich Security Conference fixed the deficit of cyber discussion on the main stage. Members of the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace, an international group focused on proposing voluntary norms of responsible behavior in cyberspace, spread their presence and contributions across the side events. Experts, business representatives, civil society, media and policymakers also discussed how cyber can be used to undermine international stability and democratic institutions. These events featured important industry players such as Microsoft, Facebook and Siemens, yet Twitter was conspicuously absent.

While the side sessions proved the cyber debate is still alive and kicking, the general omission by the conference is the norm in today’s high-level international security and strategy debates. With the exception of the cyber-dedicated international events, cybersecurity rarely gets the high profile it deserves.

This shortcoming is reflected in the efforts of multilateral organizations. The U.N. has made only narrow progress on addressing cyber issues; and though the European Union has evolved from a digital single market to a more comprehensive approach on cyber, more work remains to be done. NATO has advanced most significantly in addressing cyber, but there is still work ahead to articulate a true collective defense in cyberspace.

Why is cyber still late in the game of mainstream strategic discussion, despite its evident impact on our personal lives and national security? My decades-long experience working with policymakers and international organizations points to a long-standing tendency to regard cyber as a technical problem constricted to the virtual world. From this perspective, the main policy deliberations have focused on investing resources to solve short-term security deficiencies. But as the recent election attacks have shown, the use of cyber tools can have a long-standing strategic impact. As the internet of things continues to connect our devices to the cyber realm, real world risks have amplified dramatically.

The cyber front line is all around us. We must improve our digital IQ by embracing active coordination and discussion of this massively important topic at future security conferences.

Ambassador Sorin Ducaru served until the end of 2017 as the NATO assistant secretary general and the chair of the alliance’s Cyber Defence Committee. He was previously a member of the North Atlantic Council as Romania’s ambassador to NATO. He is currently a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a special adviser of the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace.

“Everyone immediately then wants to talk about all the movie-inspired death scenarios, and I can confidently predict to you that they are one to two decades away. So let’s worry about them, but let’s worry about them in a while,“ Schmidt said.

For Schmidt, the benefits AI brings to health care and energy outweigh concerns of an apocalyptic robot takeover. When pressed a second time about the ability of creators to stay in control of technology designed to far surpass human intelligence, he again dismissed concerns.

“You’ve been watching too many movies. Let me be clear: Humans will remain in charge of [AI] for the rest of time,” he asserted.

“The other point that I want to remind everyone, these technologies [AI] have serious errors in them, and they should not be used with life-critical decisions. So I would not want to be in an airplane where the computer was making all the general intelligence decisions about flying it. The technology is just not reliable enough ― there too many errors in its use. It is advisory, it makes you smarter and so forth, but I wouldn’t put it in charge of command and control.”

Advances in AI overseas have caught the attention of U.S. officials.

For example, China is pushing full-steam ahead with its whole-of-nation AI program, and the country plans to become the worlds leader in the field by 2030.

“It’s a national program. As I understand, what that means in China is that there will be hundreds of thousands of engineers produced and trained in this. There is no analogous United States or European doctrine, and we need to have one,” Schmidt noted.

Deputy Secretary General of NATO Rose Gottemoeller, who also spoke at the conference, noted concern among alliance members about such 21st century threats.

“There is a worry now, in NATO and among all member states, that we’re seeing new technology rapidly advancing in areas like artificial intelligence, cyber. There are new frontiers of technology that we have to keep a sharp eye on. We have to understand how they can emerge into the defense sphere ― either as threats or as useful military technology,’ Gottemoeller said.

When asked if NATO should establish its own advanced research program ― an institution that mimics the United States’ Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ― Gotemoller supported the suggestion. “I think in general it’s a good idea, but I base that on my admiration of the history and the benefits that [DARPA] has had for the U.S.,” she said.

The assessment comes just days after Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen vowed before senior international leaders at the Munich Security Conference that Berlin would follow through on its European Union and NATO commitment for a militarily stronger Europe.

The report by Hans-Peter Bartels, of the Social Democratic Party, says Germany will be hard-pressed to meet a NATO-wide defense spending target of 2 percent of gross domestic product by 2025.

Click here for full coverage of the Munich Security Conference.

While the defense budget is slated to grow from €37 billion (U.S. $46 billion) in 2017 to €42.4 billion in 2021, the percentage of GDP would remain constant at 1.2 percent, given Germany’s projected economic growth.

“Additional efforts are necessary,” Bartels wrote.

At the same time, managerial problems, not a lack of money, are to blame for the ongoing crisis, according to the commissioner. Programs that fail to deliver, undeployable equipment and a shortage of spare parts have led to tanks not running, planes not flying and units having to borrow rifles from each other.

For example, none of the six submarines was able to sail at the end of 2017, and flights of the A-400M airlifter are routinely canceled because few of the 14 aircraft work. On land, outages in the Leopard 2 battle tanks have reached a “critical mark,” with only 95 of 244 vehicles ready for deployment.

Gen. Volker Wieker, Germany’s chief of defense, told reporters in Berlin that despite equipment shortages, Germany would field the necessary personnel and equipment in time to lead the brigade-sized, multinational NATO Very High Readiness Joint Task Force, which is due June 30.

Germany has more than 15,000 soldiers deployed in 20 operations worldwide. Those units, Wieker argued, are unaffected by any shortages.

“I have heard no complaints from within Germany or from our allies that they aren’t doing an outstanding job,” he said.