Dr Marion Messmer

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100 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 10 Jul

Dr Marion Messmer’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Independent Thinking · NATO in Ankara: Is Europe ready for a Russian attack? · 10 Jul 2026 podcast

I think Turkey is actually very attached

to NATO and puts a lot of emphasis on those relationships.

And so I think we can also think about how we can use that as leverage to kind of influence the direction of travel in Turkey and making sure that the relationship with Russia takes shape in a way where it benefits NATO and benefits European security rather than being a risk.

Yeah, absolutely.

And in some ways how the German attitude has changed in the last four years is possibly the biggest transformation in Europe.

Of course the money is important and Germany is one of the few states in Europe that is able to pour that much money into its defense industry and into its rearmament.

Exactly, because it previously was actually really afraid of taking on more debt, but then in recognition of this unique moment in European security, n the German parliament actually, you know, passed a a special law to be able to take on more debt exclusively for rearmament and defence spending and for infrastructure spending and increasing resilience.

And I think it's really interesting that they actually made that twinned choice of on the one hand

And investing in their deterrence by denial capabilities with regards to resilience, as well as their deterrence by punishment capabilities with regards to defense.

And so I think the attitude change is incredible.

However, at the same time, what is often the big concern about how Germany is spending its money is that they are spending on traditional systems, some of which undoubtedly are important.

But um one of the lessons that we can really draw from Ukraine is that modern war is not necessarily going to be fought

how war has been fought traditionally.

I mean, you know, we we rarely hear anymore, for example, um, of what happened to all of the leper tanks that were donated to Ukraine in twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three.

Whereas what we hear about all the time is deprecision strike capabilities, it's drones, it's electronic warfare.

And Germany is part of a few initiatives around that, but the the investments are to an extent looking very traditional.

And that's my concern a bit because Germany is spending a lot of money, but actually you can burn through quite a lot of money if you invest in exquisite traditional capabilities.

Well, the Defense Investment Plan is beginning to make some of the trade offs that the UK really has to make.

So in part how the missing money was found was for example by cancelling some Department of Transport infrastructure projects.

So other government departments have had to give up projects in order to enable defence to do more on

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