The German elite has consistently remained hellbent on capturing control of Europe for over a century, with the only thing changing over the decades being their means after military ones horribly failed twice already. The former West Germany came to believe after World War II that the best bet for fulfilling this plot was to play it cool by abandoning unilateralism in favor of US-led multilateralism. That in turn enabled it to strategically disarm the rest of the continent, especially in the run-up to reunification with the former East Germany, after having tricked everyone into thinking that its elite finally changed their ways even though the only change was the means employed to this end.

The strategic patience practiced by the German leadership in the decades since World War II and especially the end of the Old Cold War was impressive since it certainly did indeed seem as though their elite finally abandoned their hegemonic plans. Even President Putin, who established extremely close relations with former Chancellor Merkel and arguably seemed to trust her, was duped to an extent despite his former career in intelligence. After all, he took her government’s word that it would resolve the ”EuroMaidan” crisis that soon thereafter led to a Berlin-backed coup and then still continued to believe that she’d succeed in getting Kiev to implement the UNSC-endorsed Minsk Accords.

These observations speak to how convincing the German elite’s act had been that even this world-class professional largely fell for it, which resulted in Russia losing almost eight years’ worth of time before it was finally compelled to commence its ongoing special military operation in Ukraine. This whole time, Germany was playing everyone for fools by plotting behind the scenes to capture control of Europe exactly as it’s sought to do for a century, albeit through different means than what observers had come to expect from Berlin. Instead of military ones, superficial multilateralism was employed via EU institutions and associated hyper-liberal ideology in order to disguise these hegemonic ambitions.

Germany was waiting this whole time for a major crisis, which ultimately turned out to be the latest phase of the Ukrainian Conflict that US-led NATO is entirely responsible for provoking, in order to make its two interconnected power plays that are now actively unfolding. The first concerns Chancellor Scholz’s plans for his country to have the “biggest conventional army” in Europe and the second involves his latest proposal to abandon national vetoes in order for the EU to compete with other Great Powers. About the last-mentioned, he predictably added that Germany should “assume responsibility for Europe and the world in these difficult times”, which exposed the whole charade as a hegemonic power play.

Russia finally seems to have wised up to Germany’s complicity in provoking the latest phase of the Ukrainian Conflict, with Foreign Minister Lavrov blaming it and France for killing the Minsk Accords in a recent op-ed. From there, it’s only a proverbial hop, skip, and a jump away from realizing that this was all part of Germany’s plan to capture control of Europe by “passively facilitating” the major crisis that was required to unveil the two interconnected power plays that were mentioned in the preceding paragraph. This hegemonic plot is so important for the German elite that they’re even willing to accept massive self-inflicted economic damage in pursuit of it as proven by their anti-Russian sanctions.  

In hindsight, this latest phase of the Ukrainian Conflict was the only scenario that could prompt Germany to unveil this long-plotted power play in a “plausibly deniable” way. The 2015 Migrant Crisis concerned unconventional security threats and wouldn’t have realistically necessitated Germany openly aspiring to build the biggest conventional army in Europe, nor would it have been the proper pretext for proposing an end to the EU’s policy of national vetoes. Only a conventional security crisis could have created the conditions for superficially “justifying” that, hence why Berlin “passively facilitated” this outcome for the past eight years after earlier duping everyone into thinking its elite had finally changed.

What’s different from the last two World Wars and what many have begun describing as a hybrid form of the so-called “Third World War” is that the former saw Germany truly aspiring for independent hegemony over everyone else while the latter sees it willingly behaving as the US’ “Lead From Behind” proxy for managing Europe on Washington’s behalf. In fact, this all seems to have been part of the larger plan too since Germany learned the hard way twice already that America will never let it truly become an independent hegemon, ergo why its elite modified their plot after World War II by incorporating their “junior partner” status vis-à-vis that superpower into everything from the get-go.

Where Russia got it wrong for so long is that its passionately sovereign leadership subconsciously projected their independent aspirations onto Germany, naively believing that the EU’s de facto leader sought to strive for the same Great Power status that their own civilization-state has while also falling for the charade of thinking that its elite abandoned their hegemonic plans. What really happened is that this same elite simply duped everyone through their embrace of superficial multilateralism via EU institutions and associated hyper-liberal ideology into thinking that they changed when the only thing that’s different is the means through which they’ve consistently pursued the same end.

France doesn’t feel militarily threatened by Germany anymore so it won’t seek to sabotage its neighbor’s militarization plans, and while its famous perception of itself as the bastion of European culture might be bruised by Berlin proposing that the bloc abandon national vetoes, Paris could always redirect its grand strategic focus away from Europe in response and towards Françafrique (West-Central Africa) where it’s struggling to retain its declining hegemony there in the face of newfound multipolar trends embodied by the Malian junta. This observation suggests that only Poland could stand in the way of Germany’s century-long hegemonic plot, though it’s unrealistic to expect it to succeed.

Its faux “conservative-nationalist” ruling party already submitted to hyper-liberalism by actively advancing the Ukrainization of their country, plus it’s powerless to indefinitely rebuff Germany’s pressure for Poland to adopt the euro, which gray cardinal Kaczynski just warned would kill its economy once that happens. This aspiring Great Power in its own right might become a nuisance to Germany, but it’s incapable of stopping the latter’s hybrid economic-institutional-military capture of the continent. Poland might temporarily prevent Germany from exerting its envisioned hegemony over the Baltics and especially Ukraine, but Warsaw was ultimately Berlin’s “useful idiot” as it’s finally beginning to realize.

For these reasons and barring any black swan events such as the consequences of President Putin’s prophesized populist-driven “elite change” across the continent that he made in mid-June while speaking at the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), it should therefore be taken for granted that Germany will inevitably capture control of the continent sooner or later. This poses a complex array of geostrategic challenges for the emerging Multipolar World Order and Russia in particular, though the silver lining is that they can at least be better predicted than previously now that Moscow finally acknowledges Berlin’s hegemonic ambitions.