Putin’s plan for Kiev will expose Germany’s weakness

The Russian president will not consider his reign successful until he brings the spiritual center of Russia safely home.

He has a special sort of wisdom: waiting patiently while the EU and NATO become divided, ineffective and slowly lose interest. All of this is part of a master plan: The raising of Trump—the lowering of Merkel; first the Crimea, then the Eastern Ukraine; bite by bite, the prize has always been Kiev. The rest of Western Ukraine he could care less about.

It is a certainty: Vladimir Putin will take Kiev and Germany will find itself on the edge of a shooting war. Is Germany going to fight? What Merkel stood for is in demise and those in her footsteps impotent: the Trump phenomenon is still in the ascendant—a path to power. German young men and women are not going to die for the Ukraine; especially in a leadership vacuum. Trump will not commit U.S. soldiers to a war that, especially in his own constituency, no one cares about; a war he cannot win in the showmanship he thrives on.

So, as each day goes by, Mr. Putin is more assured there will be no NATO response; beyond posturing and empty threats.

What is Germany going to do? Pay for the war? Find willing surrogates to fight Russia for them? The funds that would have been—should have been—available have been funneled into housing, health and education for 1.5 million mostly unintegrated migrants who now grow accustomed to it. Those subsidies today are used to vainly try to keep internal perception of peace at all costs. If those payments dry up, and the best of Germany’s troops and police radiate to secure the borders, immigrants will come together in sanctuary pockets to fend for, and even rule themselves; very hard to dislodge later.

The Western Ukraine, with its usual tactless diplomacy, continues to cut off somewhat peaceful avenues of Russian influence in Kiev, and instead, egged on by the West, makes crude political moves with the assumption that NATO or Europe or Germany will somehow come to save them from themselves.

Meanwhile, Germany is on the verge of ceasing to exist as a people or a nation. Its security blanket of the last 70 years is being withdrawn. Without leadership who can provide perspective, and guide, most Germans will keep their head buried in the sand; preferring to find respite in the mid-afternoon at the “Monkey” bar, and the escapism of seemingly endless vacations.

Vladimir Putin is already making the preliminary moves toward taking Kiev. Yet Germany stands paralyzed; leaderless and unable to acknowledge what they know, or to act.

It is consumed by a crisis of its own making: A tragic avoidance. The nation’s attention and resources have been unnecessarily diverted from preparing for the role in the world Germany must eventually take to survive. (The very message I was to bring from July of 1988 through its completion.)

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