Germany Promised to Step Up Militarily. Its Budget Says Differently.

Two-and-a-half years after Chancellor Olaf Scholz vowed to overhaul Germany’s military, his government’s proposed budget for 2025 calls for only a modest increase in defense spending.

The draft budget was deeply disappointing to those looking for signs that Germany would live up to Mr. Scholz’s promise of a “Zeitenwende,” defined by the chancellor himself as an “epochal tectonic shift” in strategy, which he announced with great fanfare in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

With the war in Ukraine grinding on, Russia continuing to saber-rattle and Donald J. Trump gaining momentum for a return to the White House, Germany has been under increasing pressure from its allies to step into a more robust security role.

To live up to that pledge, Boris Pistorius, Germany’s defense minister, had asked for an increase of 6.7 billion, or $7.3 billion, over the 52 billion euros, or nearly $57 billion, in this year’s budget. He was given only 1.2 billion. The shortfall deepened concerns that Mr. Scholz’s unpopular government lacks the will or political backing to push Germans to overcome their historical reluctance to take the lead militarily since the calamity of World War II.

The budget, which has to pass Parliament before being adopted, also proposes that Germany cut its military aid to Ukraine by half in 2025. Germany’s finance minister, Christian Lindner, said Ukraine could instead rely on a $50 billion fund backed by frozen Russian assets that the Group of 7 nations agreed on last month.

But critics pounced on the government, saying the modest increase in military spending would not enable Germany to fulfill its promises to NATO, let alone bring about an epochal shift.