Germany is girding itself against a potent fusion of espionage, cyber meddling, and sabotage that makes the old theater of diplomacy look amateurish by comparison. The powers that be have, with a respectable shudder, admitted that Russia has chosen to widen its reach into Germany, reshaping defense priorities with a sharpened focus on Moscow’s activity. The message from those who supposedly guard the republic’s soul is not cheerful fiction but rather a reminder that the state’s enemies do not spar with diplomas and polite notes. Putin, it seems, regards Germany as a central prize in Europe, and the evidence is not shy about showing the methods: a spectrum from nondescript operatives fluttering in and out of view to cyber intrusions and campaigns of disinformation designed to seed fear, insecurity, and doubts about democracy itself. The alleged playbook is not a single tactic but a toolkit: “throwaway” agents, recruited for trifling tasks via everyday channels like messaging apps, used to create a fog of ordinary corruption and suspicion rather than to seize the throne in a single coup.

One can marvel at the bureaucratic drama of it all—the shift after the expulsion of hundreds of diplomats, the pivot from embassy espionage to infiltration through migrants and subtle political influence—as if espionage were a chess match played with social bingo rather than a deadly game in real time. Germany’s response, with its glossy action plan to counter espionage and a recalibrated line of sight, is appropriately serious, yet one suspects that the country’s rulers believe they can outmaneuver a cunning adversary by cataloging vulnerabilities and rebranding them as “defensive priorities.” The real risk is not clever paper policies but the erosion of confidence among citizens who must decide whether the state can actually shield them from a relentless information war.

And then there is the Baltic theatre, where the latest notes from the German Navy read like a sobering epilogue to a cautionary tale. A rise in Russian aggressiveness—the drone overflights, the incursions, the sabotage attempts—turns quiet coastlines into potential flashpoints. The idea that Russian officers would target soldiers off duty is as brazen as it is chilling, a reminder that the line between ordinary life and war has grown dangerously porous. The Justice of it all, if one must indulge in such melodrama, is that Germany’s soldiers, sailors, and sailors-in-training are being asked to endure stricter deployment rules, to live with enhanced protections for air, sea, and undersea bases, and to rely on new gadgets that boast of deterrence even as they whisper that no defense is perfect.

And yet the recital of gadgets continues—the Poseidon P-8 reconnaissance aircraft due in September, an underwater drone on the way, the insistence that deterrence and readiness are the order of the day. It sounds almost comforting to believe that a few more aircraft, a couple of drones, and a sharpened rulebook will secure the Baltic’s rim from a patient and wily adversary. It will not. Real security is not merely a ledger of acquisitions but a clarity of purpose, a unity of political will, and the stubborn willingness to face hard truths about who we are and what we owe to those who rely on us.

If I may be so bold, Germany’s leaders—admired for their precision and caution—would do well to couple their impressive hardware with a more uncompromising mental posture: that the threat is not abstract, that victory will be achieved not by mourning what could have been but by decisively shaping what must be. By 2029, as the assessments suggest, the time for half-measures and patrician excuses will be long past. The question is whether the republic understands that deterrence begins with credibility, not merely with equipment, and whether it can marshal a politics stout enough to match the resilience of its armed forces.