How Russia’s threat forced Germany to radically rethink its military

“I would contend that it’s more destabilising for Germans than it is for the British or the French, because the British and the French have the flag to rally around, a sense of nationhood and history. But for post-war Germany, it was all about starting afresh. And it was about a rules-based order, no matter how incomplete that might be. And that, in so many ways, was the basic tenet of German foreign policy. And they now see the war to their east, and to their west [there is] the friend and ally, and the overseer that they relied upon [that] they feel is no more.