The entire post war international order was to make sure Germany does not engage in military power politics in general and France does not do it in Europe in particular. The EU functioned as designed and that's good. WW2 is still too raw for anyone to accept German military power in Europe. It's just not politically acceptable.
And the author completely underplayed the role of NATO. The deal has always been that American muscle will be funded by German money. The EU and NATO are not at odds with each other, they complement each other.
Also, bro should not drop a quote every other paragraph, it makes it annoying to read.
Lenin once observed that “there are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen”. The invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation on February the 24th 2022 was one of those moments. Within days France and Germany lost their ascendancy, Poland and Britain came to the fore, the Baltic and Scandinavian countries gravitated towards the new coalition, leaving Germany isolated within northern Europe, with southern Europe reduced to the status of sullen onlookers.
The Russian invasion was the trigger that finally shattered a thirty five year consensus in Europe. It happened, as Hemingway describes in The Sun Also Rises, like bankruptcy: gradually and then suddenly. This crisis has been building for years, but we are now moving fast.
Or we could see a reimagining of the EU as it transitions from a national led organization to a supernational one. We are already seeing some national heads make moves to support their party over nation in EU politics. It is possible that this continues as politics in the EU becomes more important than member nations, especially as the EU starts gaining increasing budgetary and policy power.
How so? I think it's quite an accurate summary. The German economy has been stagnating for a while, mainly due to its poorly handled transition towards an economy based on renewable energy. Their reliance on cheap Russian gas was shattered by the onset of the war in Ukraine, and their economic and political influence within the EU has been in steep decline ever since.