Merz Builds Stronger Security State Before AfD Rise

Friedrich Merz ended the week with a larger German security state under construction and a smaller margin for error in deciding who may one day control it. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt raised the national threat description from "abstract" to "high", saying intelligence reports now contained clearer plans against infrastructure, institutions and individuals. Berlin is drafting laws that would let the domestic and foreign intelligence services move beyond collection into active countermeasures. At the same time, the Alternative for Germany is polling above 40 percent in Saxony-Anhalt and expects to contest power in two eastern states in September. Germany is arming institutions against Russia, Iran and sabotage just as voters may hand the far right its closest view yet of those institutions from inside government.

The danger Dobrindt described was not invented for a press conference. A Russian-linked influence operation known as Matryoshka created fake media brands and fabricated scandals against mainstream politicians ahead of elections in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The material spared the AfD and the pro-Russian BSW. Moscow's embassy denied involvement, but the pattern matches earlier Matryoshka campaigns: counterfeit news pages give accusations a borrowed logo, then coordinated accounts push them into a national debate that no longer distinguishes the original lie from the argument about it.

Tehran supplied a cruder threat. The ultraconservative newspaper Hamshahri published portraits of thirteen leaders said to be wanted in revenge for the death of former supreme leader Ali Khamenei. Merz was among them. The page was later removed, but German officials count roughly 180 people in the country with links to Iranian security services and have warned that a public threat can mobilise lone actors even without a formal operation. A chancellor already arguing that Russian hybrid warfare justifies record defence spending was now personally placed inside the threat picture.

Dobrindt's answer is a reform of intelligence law due before the cabinet in August. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Federal Intelligence Service would gain authority for measures such as neutralising weapons, redirecting dangerous packages and conducting deception against hostile networks. A new Independent Control Council would oversee the expanded powers. The proposal breaks with Germany's post-war preference for keeping intelligence collection separate from police operations, a boundary designed precisely because secret information and executive force become dangerous when combined.

The reform may be justified by the attacks it is meant to prevent. It still requires a harder safeguard than the promise of independent review. Merz said at his summer press conference that he would do everything possible to prevent the AfD from entering government and again ruled out cooperation. That is a political commitment, not a constitutional lock. A power granted to the BfV or BND survives elections. If an AfD-led state government can appoint officials, gain access to classified assessments or pressure federal cooperation, every active tool written for use against Russian influence must be designed on the assumption that a party favoured by that influence could eventually try to direct it.

This is why the September elections are a security question rather than a separate political story. The AfD's North Rhine-Westphalia organisation spent three days fighting over its 2027 candidate list, with rival factions filing criminal complaints after an alleged physical confrontation and using ninety eight-minute candidate presentations to blockade proceedings. The disorder may yet threaten its eligibility in that state. It has not reduced the party's strength in the east. Alice Weidel has called 2026 a "year of destiny" for the AfD, and opponents fear that a state victory could expose confidential material or enable wholesale replacement of civil servants.

Merz is trying to answer that risk with visible competence at the federal level. He defended health-financing reform and bureaucracy cuts, acknowledged that American tariffs were holding back growth, and admitted that breaking his campaign promise on the debt brake had damaged his credibility. He also rejected another change to the borrowing limit during this parliamentary term. The admission matters because the coalition's security build-up depends on the fiscal reversal he made before taking office: Germany loosened its rules for defence and created a vast infrastructure fund, then told voters that the break with old orthodoxy was required by war.

The most striking result of that spending now sits at the Nörvenich air base. Merz and Emmanuel Macron agreed that German conventional forces will take part in France's Poker nuclear exercise before the end of the year. French Rafales from the strategic air forces deployed to Germany as the first operational step. A bilateral steering group will connect nuclear deterrence with conventional deep strike, missile defence, satellite communications and the digital systems left over from the failed Franco-German fighter and tank programmes. Germany will not finance the French arsenal, and Merz stressed that the arrangement complements NATO's American nuclear sharing rather than replacing it.

That careful wording reveals the strategy. Berlin is not choosing between Washington and Paris. It is accumulating options from both. It has asked the United States for Tomahawk missiles, Typhon launchers and F-35 aircraft while learning how French nuclear signalling works. Paul Maurice of the French Institute of International Relations has argued that German defence can combine cooperation with France on advanced deterrence and deals with the United States on industrial capacity. The week's agreement turns that mixed model into practice: a French nuclear exercise, German conventional support and an American arsenal still embedded in NATO.

Ukraine is the immediate beneficiary. Germany authorised about €2.5 billion in military exports to Kyiv during the first half of 2026, making Ukraine its largest recipient. Total German arms licences reached €13.87 billion; €11.6 billion, or 84 percent, went to EU and NATO partners, equivalent countries, Ukraine, South Korea and Singapore. Berlin also simplified approvals for Ukrainian air and maritime defence. The figures show a country moving from exceptional assistance towards a production-and-licensing system designed for a long war.

The industrial base beneath that system is less secure. German factories are losing more than 10,000 jobs a month, and industrial output has fallen roughly 10 percent since early 2022. Government and opposition politicians want tougher European action against Chinese subsidies, overcapacity and forced technology transfer. Yet the Kiel Institute's Julian Hinz has warned that broad tariffs do not fix the competitiveness problems of European companies in third markets; Katharina Erhardt argues that the durable answer is investment in innovation and new technology. Merz can protect a weapons programme with procurement. Protecting the machinery, vehicle and chemical companies that fund the tax base is harder.

A country can also overextend the language of threat. The fatal stabbing of 22-year-old student Marius Dick in Trier by a man described as mentally ill revived demands for psychiatric institutions to share more information with police under state PsychKHG laws. Psychiatrists warned that broad reporting duties could flood police with weak signals and deter patients from seeking help. A separate knife attack at a Bavarian school was being handled by extremism prosecutors because investigators found signs of an ideological motive. The cases require different evidence and different interventions. Treating both as proof of a single high-threat environment may feel decisive while making prevention less precise.

The same problem applies to foreign influence. Russia's preference for the AfD does not mean every AfD voter is a Russian proxy, and exposing a fake outlet does not repair the economic or regional anger that makes its story travel. Merz's firewall is necessary, but a firewall without a convincing government behind it can look like an instruction from Berlin to disregard an election. That is exactly the grievance Matryoshka is designed to amplify.

By September, three tests will converge. Dobrindt's intelligence bill must show that active powers cannot be captured by the political forces they are meant to monitor. German participation in the French nuclear exercise must produce a usable doctrine rather than another layer of symbolism over failed joint programmes. Merz must persuade eastern voters that industrial decline and weak public services can be reversed by the same coalition asking for extraordinary defence resources. Germany faces real enemies and real attack warnings. Its deepest security question is whether the institutions strengthened in response remain legitimate enough that voters do not give them to the party Moscow would prefer.