Berlin’s Indo-Pacific strategy blends arms deals and alliances

BERLIN — German Defense Minister Boris Pistorus will spend next week touring the Indo-Pacific with a passel of corporate chiefs in tow to make deals across the region.

It’s part of an effort to mark a greater impact in an area where Berlin’s presence has been minor, but whose importance is growing as Germany looks to build up access to natural resources, technology and allies in a fracturing world.

“If you look at the Indo-Pacific, Germany is essentially starting from scratch,” said Bastian Ernst, a defense lawmaker from Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats. “We don’t have an established role yet, we’re only just beginning to figure out what that should be.”

Pistorius leaves Friday on an eight-day tour to Japan, Singapore and Australia where he’ll be aiming to build relations with other like-minded middle powers — mirroring countries from France to Canada as they scramble to figure out new relationships in a world destabilized by Russia, China and a United States led by Donald Trump.

“Germany recognizes this principle of interconnected theaters,” said Elli-Katharina Pohlkamp, visiting fellow of the Asia Programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Berlin, she said, “increasingly sees Europe’s focus on Russia and Asia’s focus on China and North Korea as security issues that are linked.”

The military and defense emphasis of next week’s trip marks a departure from Berlin’s 2020 Indo-Pacific guidelines, which laid a much heavier focus on trade and diplomacy.

Pistorius’ outreach will be especially important as Germany rapidly ramps up military spending at home. Berlin is on track to boost its defense budget to around €150 billion a year by the end of the decade and is preparing tens of billions in new procurement contracts.

But not everything Germany needs can be sourced in Europe.

Australia is one of the few alternatives to China in critical minerals essential to the defense industry. It’s a leading supplier of lithium and one of the only significant producers of separated rare earth materials outside China.

Australia also looms over a key German defense contract.

Berlin is considering whether to stick with a naval laser weapon being developed by homegrown firms Rheinmetall and MBDA, or team up with Australia’s EOS instead.

That has become a more sensitive political question in Berlin. WELT, owned by POLITICO’s parent company Axel Springer, reported that lawmakers had stopped the planned contract for the German option, reflecting wider concern over whether Berlin should back a domestic system or move faster with a foreign one. That means what Pistorius sees in Australia could end up shaping a decision back in Germany.

Talking to Tokyo

Japan offers something different — not raw materials but military integration, logistics and technology. 

Pohlkamp said the military side of the relationship with Japan is now “very much about interoperability and compatibility, built through joint exercises, mutual visits, closer staff work, expanded information exchange and mutual learning.”

She described Japan as “a kind of yardstick for Germany,” a country that lives with “an enormous threat perception” not only militarily but also economically, because it is surrounded by pressure from China, North Korea and Russia. 

The Japan-Germany Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement took effect in July 2024, giving the two militaries a framework for reciprocal supplies and services and making future port calls for naval vessels, exercises and recurring cooperation easier to sustain. 

Pohlkamp said what matters most to Tokyo are not headline-grabbing deployments but “plannable, recurring contributions, which are more valuable than big, one-off shows of force.”

But that ambition only goes so far if Germany’s presence remains sporadic.

Bundeswehr recruits march on the market square to take their ceremonial oath in Altenburg on March 19, 2026. | Bodo Schackow/picture alliance via Getty Images

Berlin has sent military assets to the region for training exercises in recent years — a frigate in 2021, combat aircraft in 2022, army participation in 2023, and a larger naval mission in 2024.

But as pressure grows on Germany to beef up its military to hold off Russia, along with its growing presence in Lithuania and its effort to keep supplying Ukraine with weapons, the attention given to Asia is shrinking. The government told parliament last year it sent no frigate in 2025, plans none in 2026 and has not yet decided on 2027.

Germany’s current military engagement in the Indo-Pacific consists of a single P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, sent to India in February as part of the Indo-Pacific Deployment 2026 exercises. 

Germany, according to Ernst, is still “relatively blank” in the region. What it can contribute militarily remains narrow: “A bit of maritime patrol, a frigate, mine clearance.”

Pohlkamp said Germany’s role in Asia is still being built “in small doses” and is largely symbolic. But what matters is whether Berlin can turn occasional visits and deployments into something steadier and more predictable.

The defense ministry insists that is the point of Pistorius’s trip. Ministry spokesperson Mitko Müller said Wednesday that Europe and the Indo-Pacific are “inseparably linked,” citing the rules-based order, sea lanes, international law and the role of the two regions in global supply and value chains. 

The new P-8A Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft stands in front of a technical hangar at Nordholz airbase on Nov. 20, 2025. | Christian Butt/picture alliance via Getty Images

The trip is meant to focus on the regional security situation, expanding strategic dialogue, current and possible military cooperation, joint exercises including future Indo-Pacific deployments, and industrial cooperation.

That explains why industry is traveling with Pistorius. 

Müller said executives from Airbus, TKMS, MBDA, Quantum Systems, Diehl and Rohde & Schwarz are coming along, suggesting Berlin sees the trip as a chance to widen defense ties on the ground.

But any larger German role in Asia would have to careful calibrated to avoid angering China — a key trading partner that is very wary of European powers expanding their regional presence.

“That leaves Germany trying to do two things at once,” Pohlkamp said. “First, show up often enough to matter, but not so forcefully that it gets dragged into a confrontation it is neither politically nor militarily prepared to sustain.”