POLITICO: Germany plans to give spies vast new powers in rollback of postwar restraints

Pic.: BNN News

Berlin is preparing its foreign intelligence service for a world where the U.S. halts intelligence sharing, POLITICO stresses.

Germany is moving to fortify its foreign intelligence agency with sweeping new powers in preparation for a potential divorce from the United States.

The plan comes as German and other European leaders grow increasingly concerned that U.S. President Donald Trump could move to halt the American intelligence sharing Europe largely relies on — or exploit that dependence for leverage.

Just as European countries must radically bolster their militaries to gain more autonomy, officials in Berlin argue, so too must Germany's intelligence apparatus grow far more capable.

German leaders believe the need is especially urgent in their country, where the foreign intelligence service, or BND, is far more legally constrained than intelligence agencies elsewhere. Those restraints stem from intentional protections put in place after World War II to prevent a repeat of the abuses perpetrated by the Nazi spy apparatus.

But those restraints have had the side effect of making Germany particularly dependent on the U.S. for intelligence gathering, and this is now seen as a potential danger.

Nazi legacy

Germany's BND was founded in 1956 with legal limitations intended to prevent a repeat of the abuses perpetrated by the Nazi Gestapo and SS — though, at the time, many of its agents were former Nazis.

To strictly divide the BND from the police and prevent interference with domestic affairs, the agency was put under the oversight of the chancellery and bound to a strict parliamentary control mechanism. Its powers were limited to collecting and analyzing intelligence. Agents were not given the legal capacity to intervene to foil perceived threats.

Such restrictions persist until this day. German spies, for example, could through surveillance become aware of plans of an impending cyberattack, but are virtually powerless to stop it on their own. They can bug a conversation with strict legal oversight, but are unable to carry out acts of sabotage to undermine a discovered threat.

As a consequence of Germany’s intelligence weakness, the country has heavily relied on U.S. clandestine activities to stop planned attacks.

This heavy reliance on the U.S. has led some German leaders to warn that the alliance with Washington must be preserved to the extent possible even as Berlin gradually moves to become less dependent on it.

Without U.S. intelligence sharing, “we are defenseless,” Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said in a radio interview this week. “That is the pure reality, which I cannot spare anyone from.”

To increase the BND budget by about 26 percent

German officials were shaken when Washington temporarily halted its intelligence sharing with Ukraine in March last year to pressure Kyiv during peace negotiations with Russia, a move that effectively blinded the Ukrainian military in the middle of the war. The episode showed that the Trump administration is willing to use American dominance in intelligence gathering to exert leverage over allies.

Merz’s government has increased the BND budget by about 26 percent to €1.51 billion this year. The chancellor is also moving to relax the data protection regulations to which the BND is subject, allowing use of AI and facial recognition.

...It would be better if Germany — and Japan, too — remained under American occupation, as they had been since their defeat in World War II.

Otherwise, you see, they'd feel “independent” from Uncle Sam and can carry out stupid things.

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