Who Led Germany into Dependence on Russian Gas?

By Elliott Abrams

Tuesday, February 15, 2022

 

In July 1940, a short book appeared in Britain entitled Guilty Men. It was a tough indictment of 15 men who were accused in the book of appeasement — of being responsible for Britain’s failure to rearm on time and of so dangerously misjudging Hitler.

 

Germany today needs such a volume, to address the question of who put Germany into Russia’s and Putin’s hands.

 

Today, Russia supplies just over half of all natural gas consumed in Germany, where gas is critical for home-heating as well as industry. The Nord Stream pipeline that opened in 2011 increased Germany’s dependence on Russia, and the Nord Stream 2 pipeline now under construction will increase it even more.

 

Given who Vladimir Putin is, the foreign policy he is pursuing, and the fact that he has previously cut gas supplies (to Ukraine and Eastern Europe) for political reasons, how did Germany ever get into his clutches in this way? Given German and Russian history, who were the officials who did not understand that this would end in disaster? Who were the people in charge that approved all the plans and investments that made this possible?

 

Some good German researchers can write the German version of Guilty Men and Women, but two names must lead the list.

 

The first is the execrable former chancellor of Germany, Gerhard Schröder. To say that he has sold out to Putin is an understatement: Since leaving the government in 2005, Schröder has been nominated to serve on the board of the Russian gas giant Gazprom, and has served as chairman of the supervisory board of state energy company Rosneft, chairman of the shareholders’ committee for Nord Stream AG, and president of the board of directors at Nord Stream 2 AG. It is scandalous; whether it is treasonous we can leave to German researchers and lawyers.

 

The second is someone whom history will find far less admirable than the press did during her years in power: Angela Merkel. She served as chancellor from 2005 to 2021. If Schröder was playing for Putin in those years, Merkel had the power to stop him. That Germany is in Russia’s hands when it comes to gas is not only her fault, for the story goes much farther back in the Cold War. But the pipeline decisions are hers, and equally important was her decision to close all German nuclear-power plants after Fukushima. That was a foolish and hasty decision; compare France, whose 56 reactors supply 75 percent of its electricity — and which is building six new nuclear plants.

 

Today, France imports 44 percent of the energy it uses while Germany imports 61 percent — and more to the point, Germany imports not from friendly neighbors or from the world market but is very dependent on Russia.

 

As we watch Germany squirm over the Ukraine crisis, we can see how badly the dependence on Russia is affecting Germany foreign policy, solidarity with its neighbors, and willingness to defend its NATO allies. All of that was entirely predictable. Those who let it happen and helped it happen deserve to be described, when the history of this era is written, as the Guilty Men — and Women.