Germany needs public debate over US missiles – defense chief

Washington and Berlin unveiled plans last month to deploy American intermediate-range rockets in the EU nation, starting from 2026

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has called for a public debate over the upcoming deployment of US cruise missiles in the country for the first time since the end of the Cold War. Russia has warned that it will take countermeasures in response to the move.

The US and German governments announced during a NATO summit in July that they intend to begin deployments of long-range missiles from the American Multi-Domain Task Force to Germany, starting from 2026. According to a joint statement, SM-6 anti-air missiles, boasting a range of up to 460km (290 miles), Tomahawk cruise missiles, which can reportedly strike targets more than 2,500km away, as well as newly-developed hypersonic rockets will be deployed to the EU nation.

The move would previously have been banned under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, which Washington pulled out of under the administration of Donald Trump in 2019. The US claimed at the time that Russia had breached the landmark accord.

Moscow denied the allegations and continued to abide by the treaty until recently.

Speaking to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper on Sunday, Pistorius said a public conversation over the arrival of US long-range missiles was “important so that after weighing up all the arguments, we as a society find a stance which we can all live well with.”

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US ‘concerned’ by potential Russian response to missile deployment in Germany

“We need this public debate to make the seriousness of the situation clear: On the one hand we are experiencing a new threat in Europe because of Russia’s aggressive demeanor, on the other hand, we have a capability gap that we can only close in the short term with the help of the US allies until we have developed these weapons ourselves,” the German defense minister explained.

Pistorius acknowledged that the missile deployment had met with “sharp opposition” from some of his fellow Social Democrats.

In an address at the Navy Day parade in St. Petersburg last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that “if the US implements such plans, we will consider ourselves free from the previously adopted moratorium on the deployment of medium- and short-range strike weapons… [and] take mirror measures.”

Putin pointed out that the US deployment would put multiple key Russian state and military facilities within reach of the missiles, with the flight time being about ten minutes.