Carroll Quigley had this theory that strenght of empires eventually moves from centre to periphery where it has more vital resources to draw upon, so the periphery becomes the new centre.
I remember couple of years ago someone sent me document with US State Department projections for future of Europe or something like that, where it was already noted that US will withdraw from European affairs and leave it on its own devices, more or less. So that's not exactly a new development.
And it also said that Germany is a declining power with not much relevance for the future and that new centre of Europe - with which America will maintain close ties - will be Poland. Ok, I thought that it's a meme, since Poland has had all sorts of disastrous hiccups all through its history, but at this point, of course, it starts to make a lot of sense (also interesting to note that it was the first foreign country Trump visited).
So let's see how that pans out. It sorts of sounds funny at this point, but Polish economy is projected to overtake UK's by 2030 and Germany's soon after.
Also you should consider the character of peoples themselves; Germany is a country of hippy pensioners and utter dorks - people still have some historic movies playing in their head about the crazy kraut conquerors or whatever, but that's gone not to return. So that idea that Germany will make some pact with Russia and lord over Europe - that wouldn't happen even if they could pull if off. They pretty much Saint Francis of Assisi among nations - laying down and waiting for death.
But even if you do look at some of the old Western European countries to take a lead then France is in much stronger position than Germany in every sense.
Anyway, point being that security architecture that centres in Poland (most likely in possession of nuclear arms) including Baltics and Nordic countries (with Finland also possibly having nukes) with some backing from US would be much better setup than the comatose NATO lead by all the old museum countries.
Related: