The United States plans to station intermediate-range missiles (such as the SM-6, the Tomahawk, and hypersonic weapons such as Dark Eagle) in Germany as of 2026. These systems are to be deployed by the 56th U.S. Artillery Command, which was reactivated in November 2021 in Wiesbaden. The SM-6 has a range of 370 to 500 km; the Tomahawk cruise missile is capable of penetrating enemy territory at low altitude, and taking out command centers, bunkers and radar installations; while Dark Eagle is a hypersonic weapon with a range of up to 2,700 km, that flies at up to 17 times the speed of sound and is maneuverable as it approaches target. These systems are nuclear-capable and can be launched from Germany against strategic targets deep inside Russian territory, to hit Russian command centers, among other targets.
The decision to install these systems in Germany is a “cuckoo’s egg,” foisted upon then-Chancellor Olaf Scholz on July 10, 2024, at the NATO summit in Washington by President Joe Biden, and then put in President Donald Trump’s nest. Now, it threatens, at the very least, to sabotage the diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine and it could, in the worst case, lead to war in Europe.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin warned at the time, in July 2024, that Russia would take “mirror-image” steps and deploy its own intermediate-range weapons. This could create a situation even more dangerous than what existed in the early 1980s during the medium-range missile crisis, when both Pershing II and SS-20 missiles were permanently put on “launch on warning,” and the warning time from launch to target was reduced to only 4-10 minutes. At that time, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in Germany, because they recognized the threat that, with such extremely short warning times, a Third World War, this time a nuclear war, could wipe out the entire human race “by accident.”
Today, the situation is even more dangerous because the communication channels that were in place even during the Cuban Missile Crisis have been reduced to a handful of people. The deployment of these systems will make Germany a prime target for a first strike in any escalation. In that case, Germany will be wiped off the map.
The stationing of such U.S. weapons systems would represent a danger all the greater, as the so-called “Coalition of the Willing” (United Kingdom, France, and Germany), as well as the EU Commission, are on a sweeping militarization drive, ostensibly because Russia is preparing an attack on NATO member states. This assertion is in total contradiction with the statement of U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who said that U.S. intelligence assesses that Russia seeks to avoid a larger war with NATO, which would trigger implementation of NATO’s collective defense clause, under Article 5. She further wrote on X that U.S. intelligence also assesses that Russia’s battlefield performance shows that it “does not currently have the capability to conquer and occupy all of Ukraine, let alone Europe.”
Therefore, the stationing the U.S. weapons systems would have the effect of destroying the chances for a successful outcome of the negotiations between the Trump administration and the Russian government on normalization of relations.
Given the current rapid escalation of the disintegration of the international legal order—in which the principle of “might makes right” has replaced international law, where a genocide identified by the International Court of Justice is committed before the eyes of the world, and drone attacks are occurring, while censorship threatens freedom of expression, civil rights are suspended, and a state of overall lawlessness threatens—this deployment could be the last straw of strategic destabilization.
America is celebrating this year, in 2026, the 250th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence, which sealed its victory in the first anti-colonial war against the British Empire. The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution represent a historic watershed that established the general welfare for the American people and the right to a government committed to that general welfare. In one of the most famous speeches ever given in America, then-Secretary of State John Quincy Adams declared on July 4, 1821:
“Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence, has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example.”
America not only established, with its Revolution of 1776, the model of a sovereign republic, but also created, with Alexander Hamilton’s “American System of economics,” an economic model that serves the general welfare and has been applied in all countries that have successfully carried out an industrial revolution. Not least, the German economist Friedrich List took up in his writings the fundamental difference between the “American system” and the “British system,” which is solely based on profits for speculators and the financial oligarchy. The history of America since its founding has been marked by the British Empire’s attempts to reverse the success of the American Revolution. After the War of 1812 and the Civil War, in which Great Britain was allied with the Confederate states, proved that this was impossible by military means, British imperial circles repeatedly attempted to persuade the American establishment to adopt the model of the British Empire and establish a unipolar world order based on the special Anglo-American relationship.
The proud occasion of the 250th anniversary of the Republic of the United States should be taken as the occasion to revive the ideals in the tradition of the American Revolution, and in the tradition of John Quincy Adams, to support a partnership of sovereign republics around the world.
We, the undersigned, as German citizens and citizens of other nations, appeal to the sovereign power of the United States of America, the American people, as well as to President Trump and the U.S. Congress, to reverse the Biden administration’s highly dangerous decision, and to not install any new weapons systems on German soil!
Let us revive the German-American friendship in the tradition of Baron von Steuben, Friedrich List, and John F. Kennedy, which applies to all nations on this planet:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
