By Andrew Stuttaford
Sunday, January 23, 2022
If things get rough over Ukraine in the next few weeks,
I’m not entirely convinced that Germany is going to be the
most reliable of allies.
Germany is blocking North Atlantic
Treaty Organization ally Estonia from giving military support to Ukraine by
refusing to issue permits for German-origin weapons to be exported to Kyiv as
it braces for a potential Russian invasion.
Unlike the U.S., Britain, Poland
and other allies, the German government has declined to export lethal weapons
directly to Ukraine.
In the case of Estonia, a small
country on Russia’s northern border, Berlin is also refusing to allow a third
country to send artillery to Ukraine because the weaponry originated in
Germany, according to Estonian and German officials…
“Originated in Germany”? Yes and no.
The howitzers originally belonged
to East Germany, then Germany and were bought by Finland in the
1990s. Finland and Germany would have to give their approval for Estonia
to send them to Ukraine.
And to repeat a quote from the other day (via Euraktiv):
Germany reiterated its refusal to
send defensive weapons to Ukraine that according to Kyiv would help the country
fend off a potential Russian invasion. This comes as part of a new German peace
policy that aims at restricting arms exports and fostering peace via diplomacy.
Wolfgang Münchau in
the Spectator:
The general tone in the German
media is one of bewilderment that foreigners even take an interest in this
pipeline [Nordstream 2]. One of the few journalists who has raised concerns is
the Swiss Mathieu von Rohr at Der Spiegel, who argues that the ruling Social
Democratic Party (SPD) has a ‘Russia problem’. That is a polite way of putting
it. It’s more the case that parts of the party — former Chancellor Gerhard
Schröder, for sure — are firmly on Team Putin. Christine Lambrecht, Germany’s
Defence Minister, is one of the countless other SPD politicians who insist that
Nord Stream 2 has nothing to do with politics.
Andreas Kluth, writing in Bloomberg:
One expression of
Germany’s longstanding ambivalence is its notorious refusal to
acknowledge that hard power is a legitimate and necessary instrument in
the toolkit of diplomacy. This mentality originated in atonement for the Nazi
past. But it’s long since become a convenient excuse to skimp on military spending and hang back when the
alliance needs to send troops into harm’s way.
Mixed into this faux-pacifism is a
bizarre strain of Russophilia, usually accompanied by thinly disguised
anti-Americanism. This phenomenon is strongest at the political extremes
— within the populist Alternative for Germany on the far right and the
post-communist Left Party. Both are disproportionately popular in the former
East Germany.
But Russophilia is also widespread
among the center-left Social Democrats, which now run the government under
Chancellor Olaf Scholz. In their mythology, the Cold War was won not because
the West stared down an “evil empire,” but because German Social Democrats
initiated rapprochement with the communist bloc, meaning Moscow. Their mantra:
Talk to the Russians long enough, and everything will be fine.
Kluth notes that German’s new foreign minister, Annalena
Baerbock (who is a Green), “bears no blame for any of this.” That’s being a
little charitable. The Greens have long, as a matter of more general principle,
been uncomfortable about arms sales, and so far as Ukraine is concerned,
Baerbock is clearly a supporter of the current embargo.
Nevertheless, as Kluth explains:
Her party has in recent years edged
away from its traditional anti-Americanism and become more Atlanticist. During
last year’s election campaign, she called out both Russia and China for their
aggression and demanded that Germany side firmly with the West. She also wants
Nord Stream 2 stopped.
But now her Greens are members of
Scholz’s government and must keep the peace. How Germany would respond to a
renewed Russian invasion of Ukraine is, therefore, unclear. The West has
promised to answer with sanctions. Of these, one of the toughest would be
nixing Nord Stream 2. But to take that step, the Greens and the third coalition
partner, the Free Democrats, would have to prevail over the Social Democrats.
They won’t. Canceling Nordstream 2 would inevitably lead
to a further leap in German (natural) gas prices, as Russian gas may currently
(the figures vary from month to month) account for roughly half of Germany’s supply. While (and this is
often overlooked amid all the hullabaloo over gas) Germany has other sources of
energy (“only” around 15 percent of Germany’s electricity was
generated by gas last year), but gas is, Reuters reports, critical for home heating (it is used in
about half of German households) and in certain manufacturing sectors.
As I’ve noted before, there has been a massive surge in gas prices in
Europe, some of it, doubtless, helped along by a spot of Russian tweaking. In
another report, Reuters notes that “energy prices in Germany in December were
up 69% compared with December 2020.” That’s not going to help anyone, but it
will hit the lowest paid hardest, and they disproportionately support Scholz’s
SPD.
The writer of that report also quoted Thorsten Benner of
the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi):
For Scholz, there is also a concern
about fairness: the U.S. is a major importer of Russian crude but hasn’t
committed to stopping imports while Germany is expected to call off Nord Stream
2.
It’s no secret that the administration’s grudging
attitude to domestic U.S. fossil fuel production is going to have unsettling
geopolitical consequences (notably the increased leverage it gives to Putin and
OPEC), but I hadn’t thought of the impact that it might have on Germany’s
internal political debate, and the geopolitical impact of that.
Benner also observes that around 60 percent of Germans
back Nord Stream 2.
So will Nord Stream 2 be cancelled?
No.
Secretary of State Blinken, speaking in Berlin on Thursday:
It’s fair to say that the United
States has no better partner, no better friend in the world than Germany.
Diplomats sometimes have to lay on the flattery, even
when they know that it’s nonsense. But there are occasions when that flattery
conveys a clear sense of weakness. This was one of those times.
No comments:
Post a Comment