Greens for Tanks

Many of Europe’s Green parties have pacifist roots — but now support hurried rearmament. The plan to boost defense spending to 5 percent of GDP is turning Europe away from green investment and plowing cash into the vastly polluting arms industry.

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Robert Habeck and Annalena Baerbock address supporters in Berlin on February 23, 2025. (Tobias Schwarz / AFP via Getty Images)


At this week’s NATO summit in The Hague, President Donald Trump’s wish for members to spend 5 percent of GDP on the military is widely expected to be agreed. The splurge comes as a group of sixty climate scientists has reported alarming news about our planet. At the current rate, they tell us the remaining carbon budget for keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius will be consumed in just two years’ time. Forget the Paris Agreement: humanity is now on course to an average temperature rise of 2.7 degrees by 2100.

This raises important questions about our political leaders’ commitment on the climate — especially those from nominally progressive and ecologist parties. In fact, politicians like Robert Habeck and Annalena Baerbock, representing the German Greens, have been among the loudest cheerleaders of their country’s rearmament. The doyen of the European Green political family, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, has similarly been pressing EU governments to ramp up spending on weapons.

But how green is war and the war prepping that NATO calls for?

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