Longstanding ties and dependence on Russian gas leave Berlin isolated in NATO push to contain Moscow

By Bojan Pancevski/The Wall Street Jornal-WSJ

BERLIN
EnergiesNet. com 02 01 2022

Officials from Washington to London and Warsaw are asking whether Germany’s heavy dependence on Russian gas, its tradition of pacifism and its longstanding political and business links with Moscow—all forged over several decades—are now making it an unreliable ally in the crisis in Ukraine.

In recent weeks, Germany has refused to join the U.S. and others in shipping defensive weapons to Ukraine and blocked North Atlantic Treaty Organization partners from giving Kyiv German weapons; its navy chief resigned after making pro-Russian remarks; and Chancellor Olaf Scholz delayed a meeting with President Biden in Washington.

Despite repeated exhortations from the White House, Mr. Scholz hasn’t publicly committed to freezing a controversial German-Russian gas pipeline should Moscow march into Ukraine. And now diplomats say Berlin has been asking for an exemption in future Western sanctions against Moscow that would allow it to keep buying gas from Russia.

Highlighting the extent of the mistrust among Germany’s allies, the U.K. avoided flying over German territory when it dispatched defensive weapons to Ukraine last week because London feared getting overflight permission would take too long, according to British officials.

As Russia has massed troops at its border with Ukraine during recent weeks, Germany, a vast country near the front line of the confrontation that other Europeans often look to for guidance, has appeared desperate to take a back seat.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Berlin’s role in the crisis was to provide financial and diplomatic support while other NATO members should offer military aid—a statement that raised concerns among partners about the alliance’s cohesion.

“It’s easy to justify one action or one policy, but when you take them all together, you get a narrative that Germany is not being a reliable partner…There is a sense that Germany is not only wavering, it’s actively taking steps to prevent help,” a senior U.S. diplomat said.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson suggested Germany had to be talked into supporting severe sanctions aimed at deterring Russian incursion into Ukraine. Latvian Defense Minister Artis Pabriks even dismissed Germany’s stance as immoral, saying it was sowing division in Europe.

Most critics agree that Germany’s defense policy and its longstanding bond with Russia haven’t changed but said that Berlin’s ambivalence was threatening its role in the Western alliance at a time of rising tension with Moscow.

“Nothing changed in Germany’s relationship to Russia, it’s only Putin’s threat of war that changed the context. All is fine when you are in love with a gangster as long as he is not killing people in your sight,” said Slawomir Debski, head of Poland’s largest think tank, the Polish Institute of International Affairs.

Berlin’s immobility in the face of Moscow’s escalations—its apparent yearning for something of a neutral or mediating position in the crisis—is the result of decisions made decades ago by successive governments that have now converged to tie the country’s hands.

The seeds of Germany’s dependence on Russia were planted 20 years ago under then-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder when the country decided to phase out nuclear energy over three decades. Angela Merkel, his successor, accelerated the process in 2011, and the country’s last nuclear-power plants are due to go offline this year, a decade ahead of schedule.

Under Mr. Schröder, Germany and Russia agreed to build Nord Stream, a submarine gas pipeline linking the two countries. After his electoral defeat in 2005, Mr. Schröder went on to work as chairman of the supervisory boards of both Nord Stream and the Russian state-controlled oil firm Rosneft. Nord Stream’s chief executive is a former officer of the Stasi, East Germany’s secret police.

As chancellor, Ms. Merkel teamed up with Russian President Vladimir Putin to counter widespread opposition to Nord Stream 2, a second pipe running alongside the first one, from allies who felt it would only increase Europe’s already high reliance on Russian gas. The pipeline, which is now completed and awaiting certification, would double the amount of direct Russian gas exports to Germany.

Ms. Merkel was central in bringing all European Union members to support U.S.-inspired sanctions on Moscow after its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014—making sure they wouldn’t impact German energy purchases. But in her last years in office, she drew closer to Mr. Putin, emphasizing the importance of trying to improve Europe’s relations with Russia.

In doing so, she was drawing on a diplomatic tradition established by Chancellor Willy Brandt in the late 1960s, who formulated a trade-centered Russia policy that later became known as Wandel durch Handel, or change through trade, and was supposed to make Russia more democratic by osmosis. The same doctrine was later applied by Ms. Merkel to China.

“Wandel durch Handel was supposed to change Russia, but ultimately, it changed Germany,” Mr. Debski said. “Germany is now a moral leader of the free world, but with opt-outs on Russia and China.”

John Kornblum, a former senior U.S. diplomat who served in various roles in Germany between 1964 and 2001 and has since remained in the country, says that the Biden administration, like others before it, is mistaken in thinking Germany can be talked into changing a policy that has been entrenched across the political spectrum for decades.

“Germany is grown up and is a responsible partner from its own perspective,” Mr. Kornblum said. “The problem is that this is not the view in much of Europe and the U.S.”

Today, Russia accounts for over half of Germany’s gas, and a quarter of oil imports, making Germany highly vulnerable in the current crisis, which happens to be unfolding in what is still early winter. It means the country—and Europe as a whole—would struggle to cope with the colder months if Russian gas supplies were to stop, said James Huckstepp of S&P Global Platts, which analyses energy and commodities markets. Germany could find itself scrambling for emergency shipments and even rationing the industrial use of gas, he said.

The global market doesn’t have enough capacity to make up any eventual loss of Russian gas by substituting it with liquefied natural gas, or LNG, from the U.S. or the Middle East, Mr. Huckstepp said.

As a consequence, Berlin has limited scope for action against Russia. The German government has tried to square the circle by insisting in talks with Western counterparts that any sanctions should allow a loophole for it to continue buying energy from Russia, according to diplomats familiar with the negotiations.

So called carve-outs would apply to sanctions against banks or transactions to allow for processing payments for Russian gas. German diplomats, along with others, also rejected the idea of freezing Russia out of the Swift payments system, a leading global intermediary between international banks that executes the bulk of financial transactions.

This mirrors Ms. Merkel’s insistence on completing the Nord Stream 2 pipe and shielding Russian gas exports from sanctions imposed after Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2014, said Josef Joffe, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.

“Germany is a power of peace that wants to stay out of harm’s way and refuses to act strategically by confronting Moscow…but the harsh laws of international politics demand that power must balance power,” Prof. Joffe said.

“A policy of goodness will fuel Putin’s ambitions.”

Meanwhile, Estonia, a small NATO member in the Baltic that shares a border with Russia, has been waiting for over a month for a German approval to dispatch 10 howitzer guns to Ukraine. The Soviet-made cannons belonged to East Germany, and after German reunification in the 1990s were sent to Finland, which eventually sold them to Estonia.

Kristo Enn Vaga, an Estonian Defense Ministry official, said Germany was delaying a time-critical decision while Estonia was trying to help Ukraine because it knew it could be “next on the Russian bear’s menu.”

German officials have said that the moral debt of Nazi atrocities committed in the former Soviet Union prevents them from supplying weapons that could be used against Russia.

“To say, ‘We owe this massive geostrategic gas infrastructure to Russia despite opposition from our partners,’ is the most bizarre justification of mercantile policies,” said Toomas Hendrik Ilves, former president of Estonia.

Bojan Pancevski at bojan.pancevski@wsj.com
wsj.com 02 01 2022