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Has Putin already achieved with regard to Ukraine, and at relatively low political cost, one of his primary objectives: demonstrating that Germany’s attachment to NATO is only skin deep,

much as the UK’s was to the European Union? Is the current crisis over Ukraine another step towards the redesign of Europe’s security architecture? Large scale upheavals in the security of

Europe since the 18th century have usually been caused by war or revolution. Are we in the midst of another such upheaval, but have failed to recognise it as such because neither

conventional warfare nor political revolution are its drivers?

Putin is not so naive as to believe he might actually restore the Soviet zone of influence in Central Europe. The anti-Russian mood in the former Soviet empire would only be strengthened

were he to pursue such a dream beyond the regions that Russia regards as fundamentally attached to her historical identity. Russia’s interventions in Belarus and Kazakhstan have not played

well for Putin and their impact has been deeply negative. A far bigger and more realistic objective, and one that looks forward to Russia’s future, without nostalgia for its tarnished

Stalinist past, would be to pull Germany more towards the East.

Putin knows Germany well. His European experience was formed in East Germany (the GDR) in the 1980s. He understands the importance to Russia of its relationship with Germany, the only

international partner apart from China that might rescue Russia from its slow but relentless economic, social and political decline. Russia still has the power and means to intimidate its

immediate neighbours, but the bravado with which that is deployed hides important truths about Russia’s post-imperial decline.

It has a puny and relatively declining level of GDP, smaller than that of Italy. Its economy is at the mercy of fluctuating energy prices (though at their current level they would cushion

the shock of sanctions for some months and Russia has also accumulated funds to protect its economy ). It has appalling demographics — its population has declined by nearly a million in the

last year and the fertility level is far below the replacement rate. Direct foreign investment is also weak and declining. Looking ahead into a low carbon future, Russia’s social and

economic prospects are poor and deteriorating. Putin has to be worried about his legacy.

Russia’s attachment to Ukraine is both emotional and cultural, a fundamental part of Russia’s historic identity. Russia’s insistence that Ukraine’s westward drift be halted should be judged

at least in part through Russian eyes. Ukraine’s geopolitical fate is to be a hinge between Russia and Western Europe. There is significant support along both sides of the old Iron Curtain

for the view that an independent Ukraine should act with caution and not fold too far in either direction.

Even in the Czech Republic, the most westward-looking part of the former Soviet empire, such a view is not uncommon. So to exploit the emotions which attach to Russian identity, which have

always been the most powerful of motivators when Russia is facing what it interprets as hostility, is a clever way to leverage the question of Russian/German relations. Their importance to

Russia’s future far outstrips its intimate rivalry with an independent Ukraine.

Ostpolitik is a part of Germany’s political DNA. The inheritors of Prussia’s Junker mentality have long determined the shape and direction of political developments in Central and Eastern

Europe. The GDR and the Ostmark may have disappeared, but the fact of the GDR’s past existence and its importance to Russia whilst it did exist, have not evaporated into thin air. Unified

Germany has built on its position as, until recently, Russia’s largest trading partner and has increased its dependence on supplies of Russian gas as it has shut down its nuclear and

coal-fired power stations.

Angela Merkel, an East German herself, did not deviate in her quiet support for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and resisted pressure from the Biden administration to prevent it coming into

service. The boards of Russia’s main energy companies enjoy a strong corporate German representation. There is a nice irony about the fact that Matthias Warnig, the CEO of Nord Stream 2 AG,

is a former officer of the Stasi, the East German equivalent of the KGB. The Stasi was in many ways more excessive than the KGB in its repression of opposition in the former GDR. The crisis

over Ukraine has been a long time coming and has been facilitated by German indifference.

That German indifference extends into its attitude to NATO membership. Its defence expenditure lags far short of NATO’s target of 2% of GDP. Much of its heavy equipment, including military

aircraft, is unserviceable. Its recent offer of help to Ukraine amounts to a derisory supply of helmets. Mrs Merkel’s notably unsuccessful defence minister of six years standing, Ursula von

der Leyen, was promoted to be President of the European Commission, and poll after poll shows that the German population has little appetite for any sort of military confrontation with

Russia.

Whilst Germany resents Brexit and criticises the UK for weakening the European project, it own lack of concern for European security, or rather its very different view of it, is perhaps far

more threatening to the future of the European project, as it is currently perceived. Putin’s Ukrainian masterstroke will have sent the coldest of tremors through the leaderships of the

Baltic Republics and Poland, as they have watched Germany’s reluctance to take sides.

Russia does not need to invade Ukraine and is unlikely to do so. The danger while its troops are still deployed is a Russian miscalculation at the local level which might rapidly escalate

into a wider conflict. The political cost of that to Russia and to NATO would be incalculably high. Putin has no strategic reason to press his case further. He has already succeeded in

placing some very tough questions about the future of Europe squarely in front of the international community; and if we look at those questions through the optic of NATO in its present

state, or that of Brussels, or for that matter of the US/Russia relationship, it is hard to answer them.

If we look beyond Europe, we should surely avoid driving Russia into the arms of China. How to do business with the Chinese superpower, without bending to Beijing’s demands, is the

existential international affairs question for the 21st century. A Beijing/Moscow axis would hugely heighten international insecurity and threaten the liberal democratic order. The West

needs to make a constructive response to Putin’s post-imperial anxieties, even if we believe them to be more confected than actual. The special logic of this crisis suggest that there could

be common ground between what Russia wants and needs from Germany, and what Germany might now be able to do for the security of Europe and the western nations in general.

The present crisis over Ukraine underlines, as if we need to be reminded, that the international security system which was put in place in the five years after World War 2 — Pax Americana —

has run its course. However, we cannot wipe the slate clean and start again. We should take the good pieces of the old order and start rebuilding; but we presently lack the vision and the

statesmen to undertake such a monumental task.

An East/West security summit backed by a permanent team of Sherpas, initially without China, would be a good starting point, just as soon as we get beyond the worst of the pandemic that has

drained our energy and our resources. As we emerge from this most disruptive social and political event since 1945, it is the moment for some originality and boldness in our thinking about

global security. The challenge is just as pressing as climate change and there will be no coordinated response to climate change if we cannot rise to it.

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