Berlin says it is preparing for war against Putin. Military service, duty, mobilization—it’s all framed as a response to Russia. But look closer and the logic points elsewhere. What’s coming is not an invasion from the East. What’s coming is unrest at home.
Germany has built a house of cards. For decades its economy thrived on cheap Russian gas, exports to China, and an aging but disciplined workforce. That model is cracking. Industry is fleeing, prices climb, and confidence erodes. On top of this, millions of migrants have been absorbed into the system with no real plan for integration. Some neighborhoods are already zones where police enter only in force, and everyone knows this will worsen in five or ten years. To pretend otherwise is a lie.
Meanwhile, the people are restless. Wages stagnate, bills rise, faith in government collapses. The Alternative für Deutschland grows, feeding on discontent, and the establishment does not know what to do. Ban the party and risk riots in the streets? Allow it to grow and risk power slipping from their hands? Either way, the pressure mounts.
So what does the state do? It prepares. It dresses the problem in foreign colors. Mobilization is sold as protection against Putin, but the real enemy is within: a fractured society, an unhappy population, a crisis of legitimacy. Military service becomes a way to discipline the young, to channel their energy into duty before they turn it into revolt.
But here’s the delusion: whatever they do, they will lose. Because soldiers are not robots. They are people, with opinions, loyalties, and limits. Who in Germany will truly fight—either outwardly for NATO or inwardly against their own neighbors—for a society that no longer knows what it stands for? For a system that waves rainbows while collapsing beneath its contradictions? A cartoon comes to mind: a rainbow in the sky with the line, Watch out, the Germans are attacking. That is the absurdity. You cannot draft conviction. You cannot conscript belief.
The leaders may plan for force, but they forget the obvious: no one wants to fight, let alone die, for a charade.