Asia Times
[If the buffer states between Berlin and Moscow disappear, the Germans
will quickly be between a rock and a hard place]
By Francesco Sisci
Many German gains at the end of the first Cold War could be lost. The
possibility of a second Cold War in Europe is no longer farfetched
and, to avoid it, Berlin should perhaps look it right in the eye and
think of China.
Germany was the country that gained the most since the end of the Cold
War 30 years ago. It regained the unity it lost in 1945, and it pushed
Russia back over a two “buffer-country” line, the greatest distance
from its unwieldy neighbor in its entire history.
The new buffer state lines were those of the former Soviet empire that
joined the European Union (EU) and NATO, and the fledgling states
emerging from the Soviet collapse such as Belarus and Ukraine.
Then, Germany saw a huge field of possibilities to expand its
increasingly precise and efficient manufacturing industry, while other
developed countries were chasing the new internet economy and exiting
manufacturing.
Eastern Europe, Russia and also China were all anxious to buy the
symbol products of new wealth: the BMWs, Mercedes and Porsches, all
far more glittering and tangible than the ethereal latest services
from the web – Google, Amazon and Facebook.
The rest of the EU was bound to Germany by the euro, by the
ever-closer relations of financial and productive subordination to
Germany’s virtuous debt to GDP ratio and by essential supply lines
stretching to Italy, Spain and France.
These European relationships were growing stronger and more solid than
those with America. The basis of American-European relations had been
defense against the Soviet threat, but with the collapse of the USSR
that existential threat was gone.
But the US-NATO defense alliance was abused, with high costs and low
performing deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq. Moreover, there was
the euro, separated from the dollar, and Washington’s increasing
distraction by Asia, which was not a challenge for Germany.
For Germany, the efficiency of its economy was the answer to any
theoretical political trial. For Germany, it was an ideal world – if
Russia had not begun to change it by narrowing the buffer lines.
Thinner buffers
Since 2008, Russia had eliminated or thinned the first line of buffer
countries. Listing the events in no particular order, Russia has split
and caged Georgia with a series of internal and external conflicts.
It has successfully supported the Assad regime in Syria, strengthening
itself in its port of Tarsus in the Mediterranean Sea. It aided the
Benghazi faction in Libya, it foiled a democratic election in Belarus
and virtually reannexed the republic. It detached Crimea from Ukraine
and annexed it.
Russia also tried to expand into Azerbaijan supporting Armenian
ambitions. It failed, but Armenia is now closer to Moscow. Moscow may
have inspired a coup in Kazakhstan, and in practice extended its power
throughout former Soviet Central Asia, thereby erasing any dreams of
an alternative gas supply to Russia.
There was a prospect of bringing Kazakh or Turkish gas to Europe and
Germany with a pipeline through the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan and
Turkey. Instead, Russia wanted and wants to channel all that gas only
through its pipelines to increase its political leverage with the EU
and indirectly with the US.
All this leaves Germany in a very different reality than 30 years ago.
Russia is now much closer to German borders. It can also be a good
thing because some of the countries returned under the strict
protection of Moscow were considered by some as bunglers and
scoundrels, and it was so much better to talk directly with the
Russians.
But the Russian extension to the west has also sent the second line of
buffer countries, those now in the EU and NATO, into turmoil and
dwindles prospects of negotiations on energy supplies. If the Russian
pipelines have no potential alternatives in Central Asian gas routed
through Turkey, then Berlin is under a Russian monopoly.
Germans can console themselves by thinking that the Russians need
German euros more than the Germans need Russian gas. But the reality
is that the Russians have proven that they are willing to suffer for a
political purpose, so they can take fewer euros. The Germans, on the
other hand, can hardly do without gas.
So, what can happen in the Ukraine crisis for Germany? The pro-Russian
coup in Kazakhstan may show that Moscow does not want a neutral
government in Kiev, nor a buffer state, but a satellite country.
For Berlin, the idea of admitting into NATO a fragile and decomposed
country, a “thief” of gas from the pipelines, like Ukraine is
certainly disturbing. But the de facto annexation of this immense land
and the anxiety and apprehension it spins throughout Europe, with
ramifications as far as Portugal, opens up possibly worse scenarios.
The ghost of a second Cold War in Europe, not only in Asia, is rising
again. Here, Germany will want to avoid being on the front line again,
at all costs, and must protect itself. Russia may want guarantees but
similarly so does the rest of Europe.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s move toward Ukraine, at the same
time as the coup in Kazakhstan, opens up new and existential scenarios
for Germany. The time when commercial economic integration could
replace geopolitics is over.
If Germany does not oppose Russia in Ukraine, it returns to the front
line and becomes a subject, not a leader, of the EU. The relationship
with the US, today dialectic, becomes hierarchical again because only
America can guarantee German security from the Russians or from
Polish, Romanian and Baltic anxiety.
Germany cannot get out of its geography, much less out of the EU and
NATO. It can try to play there, but Putin has changed his games.
Putin’s miscalculations
In other words, Putin may have miscalculated. By pushing too hard on
Ukraine, he found resistance and in the face of this resistance, he
did not immediately withdraw, but insisted, and so he is forcing
Germany into choices it did not want to make.
Berlin would have wanted to maintain a special axis with Moscow over
the other European countries, but this axis cannot exist in spite of
the European countries. If it has to be in spite of them, Germany may
be pushed to bend with the rest of Europe.
It is unthinkable and not practical that it would choose Moscow over
Europe, which it is an integral part of.
Therein lies the dilemma. Putin is in a corner and coming out of the
Ukraine game defeated could have heavy domestic consequences. Chaos in
Moscow would be a jinx for Berlin.
Germany may want an honorable compromise for Putin, but the Eastern
European countries may want to take this opportunity to push back the
Russians and step out of their shadow with more certainty, even at the
cost of possible instability in Moscow.
Moreover, beyond the intentions of others, Putin is hesitating by
keeping troops on the border without letting them withdraw or advance.
The more time that passes in this indecision, the weaker his hand
becomes, and the more complicated the game and German desires also
become.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz thus faces not a simple crisis in
Ukraine, but rather a complex redefinition of his country’s foreign
and economic policy after 30 years. And he has no time, because
Putin’s indecision does not help him.
That leaves the energy question. How does one survive or resist under
threat from Putin’s gas policies? Russian gas is indeed convenient,
but now thanks to new shale technologies, the world has perhaps more
oil and gas than mineral water.
Extractions have been reduced due to the economic crisis after Covid
and production has not restarted immediately. But the gas is there and
there’s a lot of it. The immediate problem is how to bring it to
Europe.
If liquified American gas comes in, regasification plants must be
equipped, but once that happens, Russian gas may become redundant.
Here the Russians have a window of only a few months to bargain with
the Germans and the Americans.
This, however, touches on webs of legitimate personal and business
interests that have been intertwined with Russian gas over the past
decades. These entanglements today may cloud the vision of many in
Europe and contribute to confusion, multiplying the risks of mistakes
and accidents in Ukraine and its surroundings.
Finally, how the Germans handle the Russians in Ukraine could become
the foreplay of a more sensitive terrain – how Berlin (and by
association the EU) will handle China. So far Germany has been very
good in keeping the two issues apart – a stern position on human
rights issues, and a very realistic approach to business.
Still, if things change with Russia, then they may change with China,
too. Priorities and goals are different between the two countries.
Still, if a new era of geopolitics is looming and realistic
geoeconomics is doomed, Germany may want to think hard about it.
This is very important for China, too. Perhaps Beijing should consider
what it should do to keep economic and political relations with
Germany and the EU on a fairly even keel when perhaps an even bigger
storm is coming.