“The BSW will only join a state government that explicitly rejects the US missile plans, which greatly increase the risk of war for Germany,” said Sahra Wagenknecht, leader of the BSW, in an interview with Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland.
The deployment of US intermediate-range missiles in Germany from 2026 has sparked a new debate in German politics. The sites of these missiles, which could be equipped with nuclear weapons, could become targets in the event of war.
“These weapons do not close a defence gap, but are offensive weapons that would make Germany a prime target for Russian nuclear missiles,” said Wagenknecht, declaring that his party would only join a coalition government if it took a “clear position in favour of diplomacy and against preparations for war”.
Elections will be held in the states of Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia this autumn. Polls show that the Alternative for Germany (AfD), together with the BSW, is likely to cause a major surprise.
“Georg Maier, Thuringia’s interior minister and the SPD’s top candidate, criticised Wagenknecht in the Tagesspiegel, saying, “These are blackmail attempts aimed specifically at testing the CDU and weakening it”.
The CDU’s top candidate, Mario Voigt, accused Wagenknecht of using the state elections as a “football for her own national political profile”.
“The CDU has been the biggest peace party in Europe not only since Helmut Kohl,” Voigt claimed.
On Monday the SPD leadership was forced to take a public stand. According to Der Spiegel, the Social Democrats are in favour of stationing the missiles in western Germany rather than in the east.
“As the SPD, we take responsibility for ensuring that no child born in Germany today will ever have to experience war again. The agreement between the SPD-led federal government and the US administration on the stationing of long-range US missiles in Germany from 2026 is an important building block in this direction,” the SPD statement said.
The Social Democrats argued that this deployment “does not mean a confrontational arms build-up, but rather a strengthening of Russia’s defence capabilities with weapons systems that have been available for years,” stressing that the missiles will be equipped with conventional warheads and will be stationed at existing US military facilities in West Germany.
According to the SPD, the systems will not be nuclear-armed.
