German peace researchers urge Europe to prepare for post-NATO future

Germany's most established peace research consortium has delivered its bleakest assessment in nearly four decades. The 2025 Peace Report, published annually since 1987 by scientists from four institutes, concludes that the transatlantic partnership "as we knew it" has come to an end and that Europe must begin preparing for a future without NATO. The report's language is unusually direct: US President Donald Trump and his movement have transformed the world's oldest democracy into an authoritarian regime "in a very short time and without much resistance," while the administration seeks to "destroy liberal institutions and accomplishments" internationally.

The American rupture

Christopher Daase of the Leibniz Institute for Peace and Conflict Research told the report's presentation in Berlin that the security situation has deteriorated beyond Russia's war against Ukraine. "The US has become another source of uncertainty," he said. The researchers argue that authoritarian rulers are being courted while far-right populist movements in liberal democracies receive support, creating a risk that "authoritarianism could become contagious." They point to worrying trends within Europe itself: the undermining of international jurisdiction, attacks on academic freedom, and moves to limit the independence of social actors including churches.

The report's assessment of NATO is unsparing. "The credibility of NATO's mutual defense commitment has been shaken, and closer ties between the US and Russia threaten to come at the expense not only of Ukraine, but also of European interests," it states. This is not a marginal view. The four institutes, the Leibniz Institute for Peace and Conflict Research, the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg (IFSH), the Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies (BICC), and the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, constitute the core of Germany's academic peace and conflict infrastructure. Their annual report is widely read in ministries, the Bundestag, and across the European policy community.

Transcending the alliance

Daase's formulation, "we are working to transcend NATO", captures the report's central operational recommendation. The phrase is deliberate: continue working with NATO as long as it functions while simultaneously building European capabilities that could eventually operate without it. The problem, as Daase puts it, is that "everything depends on NATO at the moment, so no one really wants to talk about the end of NATO even though its core values have long since vanished." The report recommends a "transparent, step-by-step plan for the expansion and integration of European defense structures."

Ursula Schröder of IFSH warns that current European efforts are moving in the wrong direction. "What we are currently seeing in the EU is not a strengthening of European defense capabilities within the political framework of the European Union, but rather a strengthening of the national defense capabilities of EU member states," she said. The distinction matters. National rearmament programmes, Germany's €100 billion Sondervermögen, Poland's rapid military expansion, the Baltic states' procurement drives, improve individual capacity but do not create the interoperable, command-integrated force that would give Europe strategic autonomy. The European Defence Fund and Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) exist but remain underfunded and politically marginal compared to national programmes.

Security beyond hardware

Conrad Schetter of BICC argues that the debate has narrowed dangerously to military expenditure. "A security framework also includes arms control, confidence-building measures, and diplomacy," he emphasised. An effective development policy is equally important. The report warns that strengthened arms policy must not become a "free pass for arms exports around the world." This is a live issue in Germany, where the traffic-light coalition's restrictive export guidelines have been progressively loosened since 2022, and where the new government under Merz has signalled further relaxation.

The researchers' scepticism about purely military solutions is grounded in the report's global survey. Over 122 million people have been displaced by violent conflict, a figure that has doubled in a decade. Wars are active in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Sahel. The report documents what it calls a "dehumanization of warfare": systematic disregard for civilian protection, hospitals and schools targeted directly, humanitarian aid blocked or exploited politically. This pattern is "especially evident in Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine and in the Israel-Gaza war."

Gaza and the limits of self-defence

The report's language on Gaza is the sharpest in its history. More than 53,000 lives have been claimed and the territory largely destroyed. Israel has "flagrantly" violated international humanitarian law and exceeded the limits of "legitimate self-defence." The researchers call for an "urgent" halt to all deliveries of weapons that could be used in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. This places them in direct opposition to current German policy, which continues to approve export licences for components and munitions destined for Israel, arguing that each case is assessed individually against international law.

The International Criminal Court's arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu, issued in November 2024 for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, has created a specific dilemma for Berlin. As CDU leader before becoming chancellor, Merz announced his intention to invite Netanyahu to Germany regardless. He suggested he could provide "means and ways" for Netanyahu to "visit Germany and leave again without being arrested." The Peace Report is unequivocal: "International law takes precedence over reasons of state." This would rule out "the possibility of a state visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Germany until further notice."

Germany's legal obligations tested

The Merz-Netanyahu question has become a test case for Germany's much-vaunted commitment to a rules-based international order. Germany is a state party to the Rome Statute and legally obliged to cooperate with the ICC. The Federal Government's current position, that it would "examine" its obligations if Netanyahu travelled to Germany, has been criticised by legal scholars as evasive. The researchers' intervention adds academic weight to what has been a largely political debate. They argue that a lasting solution to the Palestinian conflict would "in no way restrict Israel's right to a Jewish state with secure borders," and call for German recognition of a Palestinian state in the medium term.

This recommendation aligns with the position of several EU member states, Spain, Ireland, Norway, Slovenia, that recognised Palestine in 2024. Germany, alongside the United States and most major European powers, has maintained that recognition must come as part of a negotiated two-state solution. The researchers' argument is that the current trajectory makes negotiations less likely, not more, and that recognition could shift incentives.

The European defence gap

The report's defence recommendations land at a moment of genuine European activity. The European Commission's European Defence Industry Programme (EDIP) and the proposed €1.5 billion European Defence Fund for 2025-2027 represent the most ambitious EU-level defence spending ever. The Strategic Compass, adopted in 2022, sets a 2030 goal for a rapid deployment capacity of up to 5,000 troops. NATO's own 2024 summit in Washington reaffirmed the alliance's centrality and welcomed increased European spending. Yet the researchers' core critique, that national programmes dominate and integration lags, is widely shared in Brussels. A 2024 European Court of Auditors report found that PESCO projects suffer from "insufficient political commitment" and "fragmented governance."

The tension is structural. NATO provides a functioning command structure, nuclear deterrence (via US, UK and French arsenals), and Article 5 credibility that no European alternative currently matches. Building a parallel structure would cost hundreds of billions and take decades. The researchers acknowledge this implicitly: "transcending" NATO is a generational project. But their argument is that the political prerequisite, a credible US security guarantee, can no longer be assumed. If the US-Russia relationship shifts toward accommodation, as Trump has suggested, Europe's eastern flank would face a radically altered threat picture without the planning time that a gradual transition would require.

What the numbers conceal

The 122 million displaced persons figure, drawn from UNHCR data, tells only part of the story. The report notes that displacement is increasingly protracted: the average duration of exile now exceeds 20 years. This creates secondary crises in host countries, many of which are themselves fragile. The researchers link this to the erosion of conflict resolution mechanisms. UN peacekeeping missions face mandates that are either impossible or politically undermined. The Security Council's veto power has paralysed responses to Syria, Ukraine, and Gaza. Regional organisations, the African Union, ECOWAS, the Arab League, lack the capacity or unity to fill the gap.

The report's domestic implications for Germany are uncomfortable. The Zeitenwende announced by Olaf Scholz in February 2022, the €100 billion special fund, the 2% GDP defence spending target, the pivot to LNG and away from Russian energy, has been largely implemented. Yet the researchers argue that the strategic thinking has not kept pace with the spending. Germany has no published national security strategy that addresses a post-NATO scenario. The 2023 National Security Strategy assumes NATO's centrality. The Bundestag's defence committee has not held hearings on European strategic autonomy since 2021. The report fills a vacuum that official Berlin has left open.