Photo: AR
Vladimir Putin’s reaction to new arms supplies to Ukraine and Germany’s permission to use them against targets in Russia is not just emotional. It is a symptom of weakness. As the Italian-American analyst Federico Rampini writes in Corriere della Sera, these actions of the West have revealed the Kremlin regime’s Achilles’ heel – its unwillingness to consider the long-term consequences of its aggression.
Putin, who wanted to make the West fearful, has instead united it. Aggression against Ukraine has already led to Sweden and Finland joining NATO. And now there is a new strategic fracture: Germany, effectively disarmed for 80 years, is returning to the role of a military power. And it was Putin who forced it to do so.
NATO was once created with a clear formula by Lord Ismay: “keep the Americans in Europe, the Russians out, and the Germans on their knees”. In 2024, this balance is being upset. America is less secure, Russia is more aggressive, and Germany is no longer restraining itself.
Friedrich Merz, Germany’s new political leader, has begun rearmament not because of militarism, but because of fear: missile attacks, mass crimes, and Putin’s nuclear blackmail all demonstrate that the world in which Germany could be “an economic giant but a military dwarf” is over.
Unlike Russia, the German economy is capable of rapidly increasing its capacity. And if Berlin builds up its defence industry, Moscow will receive the threat it has been seeking.
The same process has begun in Asia. Japan and South Korea are also no longer confident in “eternal American protection”. China, like Russia, may pay for its expansionist game by gaining not control, but a chain reaction of armaments around it.
There is only one conclusion: Putin wanted to break the West – and he woke it up. Germany’s awakening could be Russia’s most painful geopolitical defeat of the 21st century. Because the colossus from Berlin is no longer sitting in the shadows.
