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>Germany ending the 'debt brake') are happening now.

Now what exactly they're goanna do with the extra debt is the question.

More debt to fund innovation, infrastructure, defense, education and healthcare is welcome, but if it's just more debt to fund welfare and pensions, like Southern Europe, then nothing will improve.

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They will change the paragraphs only wrt infrastructure, defense (and possibly climate things to get the votes of the greens). Meaning that the debt brake will still exist for all other things, basically. (but yes: creative bookkeeping will become easier ;))

It's to fund re-armament.

The other question is why did Germany/EU disarm in the first place when the US didn't, despite not living next-dorr to Russia?

The US did disarm somewhat after the Cold War, but kept a lot in place for pork-barrel reasons and then the absolutely huge waste of money that was the War On Terror.

People believed the "end of history" narratives about Russia, and even that it would become like the rest of the ex-communist states, a normal part of liberal Europe. That should have changed after 2014, but by then the grip of the financial crisis was preventing any increases in state spending.

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