Now that Putin has made muscle-flexing his main form of diplomacy – not merely in Ukraine and the Baltic states, but also in the Balkans and the North Sea – it has fallen to Germany to shape Europe’s response. The motive today is not to defend ethnic Germans abroad – their expulsion in the millions in the 1940s ended that particular concern – so much as the more laudable desire to preserve the values of a democratic EU against the new authoritarianism from the East.
如今，普京把耀武扬威作为其主要外交手段——不仅是在乌克兰和波罗的海国家，也包括巴尔干和北海——德国必须站出来领导欧洲的反应。今天的动机不是捍卫海外日耳曼人——数百万日耳曼人在20世纪40年代遭到驱逐，这一担忧如今已不复存在——而是更有理有利的目的——面对来自东方的新集权主义，捍卫民主欧盟的价值。