The whole point is to leverage this geostrategic project to coerce uncomfortable compromises from Russia in the Ukrainian Conflict while facilitating the US’ “Pivot (back) to Asia”. The first goal might fail, however, but the second likely won’t.
Several interconnected developments strongly suggest that Germany’s plan to capture control of the continent without firing a shot, which was warned about in July and December 2022 per the preceding hyperlinked analyses, is finally nearing fruition. The catalyst was Donald Tusk’s return as Polish Prime Minister, which removed his conservative-nationalist opponents who were standing in the way of this plot and sought to carve out of their own “sphere of influence” in Central & Eastern Europe.
Once it became clear that he’d return to power, German NATO logistics chief Alexander Sollfrank proposed the “military Schengen” in late November aimed at optimizing bureaucracy and logistics in order to turn the bloc into a single military space. The subsequent impetus for this was Berlin clinching a long-awaited deal with Lithuania a less than a month later in mid-December to station a tank brigade and 5,000 troops in that geostrategically positioned country bordering both Belarus and Kaliningrad.
New Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Szejn then agreed to this scheme in principle just last weekend after he told Rzeczpospolita that “When the war is taking place beyond our eastern border, any help and cooperation from our allies is most welcome. So if the Germans want to strengthen NATO’s eastern flank in Poland as they did in Lithuania, herzlich willkommen!” This came on the same day that Bild leaked the German Defense Ministry’s detailed scenario forecast planning for war against Russia.
That classified document predicted that Russia would encourage its co-ethnics in the Baltic States to riot by sometime this summer, which will then trigger a larger crisis with NATO. It was then argued that “Latvia’s Planned Deportation Of Some Russians Could Set Bild’s Scenario Forecast Into Motion” and expand the zone of tension all the way northward to the Arctic given Finland’s newfound membership in NATO and the solidarity that it might show towards its Estonian kin if they get involved in this too.
The “military Schengen” could then be implemented at an accelerated pace on the false pretext that this manufactured crisis imbues this plan with a heightened sense of urgency, thus resulting in the deployment of German troops all along Russia’s western border for the first time since World War II. In parallel with this, the “Moldova Highway” that’s being built by Romania in “emergency” mode will optimize military movements from the Mediterranean to Ukraine per the aforesaid mechanism.
If these pieces all come together in that way, and some unexpected obstacles always possibly emerge to impede them, then Germany would arguably have rebuilt a modern-day version of “Fortress Europe” with the US’ support. The West’s de facto leader has an interest in supporting this geostrategic project in order for Germany to contain Russia in Europe as its top “Lead From Behind” proxy as America speedily “Pivots (back) to Asia” to more muscularly contain China across the coming future.
About that, “The US Is Rounding Up Allies Ahead Of A Possible War With China”, bolstered as it’s expected to be by the NATO-like AUKUS+ alliance system that it’s building in Asia with Japan and the Philippines along the Northeastern and Southeastern fronts respectively. Although “The Xi-Biden Summit Might Help Better Manage The Sino-US Rivalry” after their leaders met in San Francisco during November’s APEC Summit, no lasting peace between them is expected.
Rather, each appears interested in pragmatically buying time in order to more advantageously position themselves ahead of what might be an inevitable confrontation over Taiwan, to which end they’re engaged in mutual concessions as a temporary trust-building measure. The US is politically distancing itself from India in part as explained here, here, and here, while China is financially distancing itself from Russia in part as explained here and which Bloomberg’s latest report here lends credence.
To be clear, no rupture of Indo-US or Sino-Russo ties is expected, and each corresponding move away from the other is meant solely to appease their rival as a temporary trust-building measure in order to buy time for them to more advantageously position themselves ahead of a possible Taiwan Crisis. These strategic calculations are relevant in the context of Germany rebuilding “Fortress Europe” since that geostrategic project will free up the US’ military resources for redeployment to Asia.
It also serves to place the West in a more advantageous position for coercing uncomfortable compromises from Russia for freezing the Ukrainian Conflict after it finally began to wind down late last year following the failure of summer’s counteroffensive and NATO falling behind in the “race of logistics”. President Putin signaled that Ukraine must be demilitarized, denazified, and constitutionally neutral once more in order for this to happen, but “Fortress Europe” might force him to reconsider his demands.
The West is interested in freezing the Line of Contact (LOC) per former NATO Supreme Commander James Stavridis’ Korean-like “land-for-peace” armistice proposal from last November in order to solidify the abovementioned geopolitical project and facilitate the redeployment of US military resources to Asia. It’s not comfortable with the Russian leader’s requested security guarantees, however, hence why the West wants to leverage “Fortress Europe” for scaring him into Stavridis’ compromise.
If the chain reaction that was detailed earlier in this analysis comes to pass and a major NATO-Russia crisis arises along the Arctic-Baltic front, then the West could offer to de-escalate from there in exchange for Russia doing the same in Ukraine and consequently abandoning its previously mentioned requests. The narrative has already been introduced as explained here for spinning the resumption of peace talks as supposed weakness on Russia’s part in order for the Western audience to accept Stavridis’ scenario.
In the event that President Putin doesn’t budge from his principled position of ensuring the entirety of his country’s three interconnected security guarantee requests, then the Belgorod-like terrorist incursions from Poland that Belarus said that it’s bracing for last month might occur. Their purpose would be to maximally pressure him into agreeing to their Korean-like “land-for-peace” armistice proposal by escalating even further despite the danger in order to then de-escalate on those terms.
He might still not accede to their geostrategic coercion, however, especially since the newly inked “UK-Ukrainian Agreement on Security Co-operation” is essentially aimed at optimizing the way in which the West wages its proxy wars ahead of a likely continuation conflict in Ukraine sometime after an armistice. Although Bild’s leak suggested that this could happen by mid-2025, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said that NATO still has five years to prepare, which also coincides with one timeline for the Taiwan Crisis.
Others are as early as next year, thus coinciding with the German Defense Ministry’s scenario forecast, while another predicts that it could happen in 2027 and a different one expects it by 2035. Assuming that the US would trigger each conflict by provoking Russia and China unless one of them catches it by surprise like the first did with its special operation, it makes the most sense to not have them both occur simultaneously and to start this later than sooner in order to rearm as much as possible before then.
Since Russia already surprised the West once, it’s imperative for Germany to rebuild “Fortress Europe” with US support right away in order to be more advantageously positioned in case it happens again, such as if Russia achieves a breakthrough across the LOC this spring like Bild’s leak also predicts. The whole point is to leverage this geostrategic project to coerce uncomfortable compromises from Russia while facilitating the US’ “Pivot (back) to Asia”. The first goal might fail, however, but the second likely won’t.