[Speaker 1: "Man is not man's wolf"
This was the title of an international conference held in Berlin on July 12-13, 2025.
The organizers were the Schiller Institute, the Académie de Géopolitique de Paris and the
Ostdeutsche Kuratorium von Verbänden e.V., or OKV for short.
The Vice President of the OKV, Joachim Bonatz, spoke on the subject of the "commercial side"
of current wars, i.e. who are the profiteers.
Listen to the slightly abridged presentation here, which uses figures to show how the German population
is being driven into the debt trap by NATO targets.
About Joachim Bonatz:
born 1947 in the Ore Mountains, high school diploma, decorative painter
Degrees in IT, business administration, law
25 years in armed organs of the GDR, pioneer reconnaissance
Active in OKV since the start of retirement
Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to thank Ms. Zepp-LaRouche for allowing me to express my thoughts on the commercial side of wars
to this panel at the Schiller Institute conference, and I have chosen the quote from Friedrich Schiller as an introduction:
"The best merchant is war. He turns iron into gold."
On the recent NATO summit on June 25, 2025:
The latter decided, bypassing the national parliaments, to spend 5 percent of NATO countries' GDP on armaments.
My high school math teacher often said that you shouldn't compare apples and oranges.
This is being done deliberately to deceive the public.
5 percent of gross domestic product accounts for almost 50 percent of a country's national budget.
With this 5 percent decision, massive pressure is being exerted to cut all other budget items,
especially social spending for the population.
In order to squeeze money out of citizens, a justification is needed.
In addition, the external enemies - in this specific case Russia - are named, which
allegedly wants to attack the NATO states in 2028/29.
I quote Carl Peter Fröhling :
"Greed for power and fear have always been the gravediggers of freedom and peace."
Germany's gross domestic product amounted to 4.31 trillion euros in 2024.
5 percent of this is 215 billion euros, which Germany has committed to spending on armaments within a single year.
Every year!
How big was Germany's national budget in 2024 to pay for this?
The national budget amounted to 476.8 billion euros in 2024.
The 2025 state budget is currently being adopted.
This is not balanced and is characterized by high debt financing.
Let's stay with defense spending.
Marcus Tullius Cicero said: "The power of war is unlimited money."
That shows: NATO is preparing for war!
The agreed 215 billion euros are not reflected in the actual plans for the national budget.
Germany wants to reintroduce compulsory military service and is looking to Denmark, which has decided by
law to introduce compulsory military service for both men and women as of July 1, 2025.
The construction and furnishing of barracks, equipment and salaries influence the costs for the military.
At the same time, they want to involve reservists, which in turn requires equipment and the like.
They want to convert the Bundeswehr to modern drone warfare and do not know the parameters.
More than 1000 Leopard2 tanks, 2500 infantry fighting vehicles, fleet, missile production etc. are on the undefined wish list.
In 2020, the FCAS project was agreed and launched between Germany and France.
State-of-the-art attack aircraft accompanied by unmanned aerial vehicles and swarms of drones were planned.
The estimate was 500 billion euros.
It will be relaunched after the US stop.
These and many other plans are back.
There are also other "barrels without bottom", such as the unconditional support of Ukraine with German
taxpayers' money without any parliamentary votes on the individual gifts - as we are astonished to discover.
These are divided into three parts:
1. direct financial subsidies - The Greens are currently calling for a significant increase.
2. supplies of goods, both for the lives of people in Ukraine and military goods of all kinds.
3 In addition, the arsenals of the German Armed Forces and the national reserves of goods have to be emptied.
In order to finance all this, the government that was voted out of office surrendered before the new government
took office and saddled the people with an additional debt burden for war amounting to 1 trillion euros.
However, as at December 31, 2024, Germany had a debt burden of EUR 2.509 trillion as a state, excluding
the debts of the federal states and municipalities.
With the further borrowing of one trillion euros, the German debt burden jumped to 3.509 trillion and there is no end in sight.
Who is in a position to lend the German state such immense sums of money?
Of the 10 largest asset managers in the world, 8 are in the USA. At the top is Black Rock.
Coincidentally, Mr. Friedrich Merz was Chairman of the Supervisory Board of "BlackRock Asset Management
Deutschland Aktiengesellschaft" from 2016 to 2020.
In the normal case, the interest rate is based on the borrower's rating - the more uncertain, the higher - as
well as on the market, inflation rates and profit opportunities in other forms of investment.
If we calculate with only 5 percent interest in the long term, the annual interest to be paid
on the EUR 3.5 trillion loan is EUR 175 billion!
215 billion for armaments plus 175 billion interest equals 390 billion euros.
Not a cent of the debt has been repaid!
In addition, the pensions to be financed from the state budget must be taken into account.
In 2024, these amounted to 54.67 billion euros.
Added to this are the salaries of civil servants and state employees.
Without doing any research, it is trivial to assume that these are significantly higher than pensions - especially
if Germany wants to introduce compulsory military service.
For the sake of simplicity, I assume that the cost of this will only be around 55 billion in pensions.
This results in a total expenditure of 500 billion.
Reminder:
However, the national budget only amounted to 476.8 billion euros in 2024.
None of the other budget items such as pensions, education, other social funds etc. are taken into account!
New borrowing is inevitable in the interests of the money lenders.
This is because interest rate increases are legitimate if repayment is uncertain, which is to be expected from the above.
Klingbeil's draft budget for 2025 could not conceal the new debt despite all the tricks.
This brings us to the realization that the other items in the state budget have to be massively cut and that the
state is nevertheless overwhelmed in meeting its obligations.
Armaments and interest services eat up all other budgets.
The above figures can be researched on the Internet.
Other figures are quoted in Bundestag sessions.
In any case, however, the plans provide for further new borrowing.
The French marshal Gian Giacomo Trivulzio :
"Waging war requires three things: money (i.e. loans), money (i.e. loans) and more money (i.e. loans)."
With these figures, which I have expected you to accept, I am making it clear that the
state budget is overstretched, as claimed above.
The other financial policy issues will only be touched on below.
The statistics of the other NATO countries show that of the major NATO countries - the USA, France, the UK, Germany,
Italy, Spain and Canada - only the USA had arms expenditure of just over 3% of gross domestic product.
The others ranged between 1.0 and 2.4 percent from 2006 to 2024. All of these countries are already heavily indebted.
If you look at all NATO countries, even the statement that all NATO countries will reach 2.0% by 2025 is highly questionable.
Portugal will probably only reach the 1.5 percent of GDP with tricks.
If all other NATO countries, except the USA, were to increase their military spending to 5 percent, the total would still
be 11 percent lower than the USA's current military spending.
Taking these developments into account, it is to be feared that the agreed target of 5 percent will not be sufficient
in the foreseeable future and will be increased further.
The following relationship is interesting in relation to the stories of the threat from a financial perspective alone:
In 2024, NATO countries' spending on armaments was ten times that of all BRICS countries plus North Korea.
From this aspect alone, you can see who is threatening whom.
All NATO countries are cutting their budgets in favor of armaments and are already heavily in debt.
Benjamin Franklin said: "Wars are not paid for in time of war, the bill comes later."
Other facts to note in this context are:
the financial power of the dollar as a global reserve currency, which enables the USA to take on
debt far in excess of its own economic strength.
The net debt figure for the USA is 37.36 trillion dollars.
The USA's interest burden is higher than its military spending.
Resolving this conflict is one of the goals of the Trump administration.
This is currently being done by deliberately lowering the value of the dollar.
The US military-industrial complex (MIC) is a power factor that insatiably seeks new orders and new profit opportunities.
The USA has been the world's most important supplier of military equipment for more than 100 years.
With the 5 percent of NATO countries' taxpayers' money for armaments, the MIC is given the US the chance to buy them.
This is state policy of the NATO countries.
Resource theft in the global South to cover debts and secure the government's hold on power.
In recent decades, the power of the dollar and patent law have been used to redistribute wealth
from the global South to the "golden billion".
[BRICS as a response to this injustice is a new enemy image.
This connection receives little attention in the media.
Israel's proxy war against Iran can be seen as one example.
I would like to quote former US President Dwight David Eisenhower on this overall context:
"Every gun that is produced, every warship that is launched, every missile that is fired, ultimately means theft
from those who are starving and are not supplied with food."
Now the question is, what could the solutions be?
Here, too, I will only quote. Frederic Joliot-Curie : on this:
"No nation, no person alone can prevent war.
Only if the peoples of all states act together can they achieve this goal."
I quote IG-Metall from 20.09.2014 with its "Resolution of the Delegates' Conference in Stuttgart":
"In the long term, it would be desirable to abolish arms production and arms exports altogether.
Because arms production is inhumane and a tremendous waste of resources of all kinds."
And Albert Einstein :
"Peace cannot be maintained through violence. It can only be achieved through understanding."
I hope I have conveyed to you the understanding that 5 percent of GDP represents a redistribution of national
wealth and overburdens society, using Germany as an example.
This applies to every state with such an obligation.
On 11.07.25, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon settled accounts with Europe: "Europe is losing".
Thank you for your attention.