Germany, Russia, and US foreign policy

The New Ostpolitik, by Melana K. Zyla
America's German problem.
The Weekly Standard, Feb 16, 2009, Volume 014, Issue 21

No sooner had Russia turned off the gas flowing through Ukrainian pipelines in the first days of the new year, sending tens of thousands of Europeans into a deep freeze, than German economy minister Michael Glos pointed out that "if we already had the Nord Stream pipeline," which would bypass Ukraine, flowing from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea, "then we in Germany, at least, would be a little more reassured."

The official desire to replace the current Russia-Ukraine pipeline with a Russia-Germany pipeline says a great deal about how Germany sees the gas dispute, and other global issues as well: Get the small fry--Balts, Poles, Ukrainians, and other former Russian suzerainties--out of the way and let Moscow and Berlin restore some Ordnung to things. In the January crisis, Russia cut off gas heading west to Ukrainian pipelines after Ukraine and Russia disagreed over what penalty Ukraine owes Russia for disputed late payment fees, and what the price of the gas should be now that global prices have fallen.

Glos's comment underscores to what degree Berlin has entered a new era of shared interests with Moscow and divergence from Washington. Incoming administration officials would be wise to recognize that on issues ranging from the gas dispute to Eastern Europe to Afghanistan and Iran, the Germany of today is not the partner the United States once had.

President Bush learned that lesson the hard way. His administration at first hailed Germany's Christian Democratic Union chancellor, Angela Merkel, as a foreign-policy soulmate, akin to France's Nicolas Sarkozy. But on issue after issue, she fell short of expectations.

Consider Bush's efforts to expand NATO. In the run-up to a NATO foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels in early December, Merkel publicly torpedoed Ukraine and Georgia's chances to proceed towards membership. Her government did the same last spring, ahead of the Bucharest NATO meeting. Both times, news of Germany's opposition coincided with Merkel's visits with Russian leaders, who vociferously oppose Ukraine and Georgia's inclusion in NATO.

Russia's influence "is unfortunate because all of us have said no third party gets a veto" in NATO matters, says Daniel Fata, deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO policy during Bush's second term. As for Afghanistan, Germany in October announced the withdrawal of its only combat troops there--some 100 special operations soldiers. It plans to expand only its NATO peacekeeping force, to 4,500, and thereby add to the risk of creating what Defense Secretary Robert Gates has called a "two-tier alliance," in which only the United States and a few other NATO countries do the fighting. Germany's own soldiers don't think much of their restricted, noncombat missions, with Ger-many's top special operations general, Hans-Christoph Ammon, calling his country's training of an Afghan police force a "miserable failure" and adding that at Germany's current rate of effort and financing, "it would take 82 years to have a properly trained Afghan police force." Indeed, the United States has had to take over Germany's police-training mission.

Merkel supporters try to explain her weakness as a result of her sharing power with the left-leaning Social Democratic party. Yet Labour-led Britain has 8,050 troops in Afghanistan, many of them in combat roles.

Which raises the question: With German conservatives like these, who needs Socialist pacifists? In 2006, after a newly elected Merkel gave a tough speech on making the trans-Atlantic relationship her priority, "we had hoped that we would see a big change" from the anti-American politics of the outgoing Social Democratic chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, says Fata. Instead, "there was a lot of disappointment on our side."

And there's the prospect of more disappointment to come. Merkel is now in an election year in which she will face off against Frank-Walter Steinmeier, her foreign minister and vice-chancellor from the Social Democratic party. Until the September vote, she's likely to channel Steinmeier's views, particularly the pro-Moscow ones. That's because she wants "to avoid having Russia [be] a topic of the election campaign," says Joerg Himmelreich, transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

German voters don't like Vladimir Putin, says Himmelreich, a former policy-planning staffer at the German foreign ministry and banker in Moscow. But as Fata puts it, "Germany and Russia are always going to have a special relationship," not least because of Germany's dependency on Russian energy and large amounts of trade with Russia.

Of course, Germany's Christian Democrats often showed great solidarity with Washington, even in the face of solicitousness from Moscow, during the Cold War. But even if Merkel's party regains a majority in 2009, that tradition may be gone for good. For one thing, the party's base is German industry, which is now heavily invested in Russia and dependent on Russian gas. Germany gets one-third of its gas from Russia, and will be dependent on that source for years--even if it does develop alternatives. Moreover, German companies and the political class are heavily tied to the Nord Stream pipeline project, which is controlled by Russia's state-owned energy giant Gazprom.

Indeed, gas is the leading means through which Moscow manipulates Berlin. Gazprom's gas cutoffs this January, like those in 2006, prompted Germans and other West Europeans to see Ukraine as an unstable partner that gets in the way of their economic needs: Cut Ukraine out of the relationship, and things will be golden is the message from Moscow.

In Russia's gas politics with Germany, the most powerful connection of all is between Gazprom and former chancellor Schröder. He chairs the $16 billion Nord Stream project, which is 51 percent owned by Gazprom. Schröder's service to Gazprom may be the most disturbing illustration of Moscow's influence on German elites ("It has never happened in German history that a chancellor acts as an agent of a foreign company that doesn't always follow the interests of Germany," says Himmelreich), but it's hardly the only one. Himmelreich says Berlin's foreign policy think tanks are pressured by Moscow. Even the prestigious German Council on Foreign Relations, he says, has been pressed not to invite Putin critics or Russian opposition voices to its events.

The head of the Council's Russia program, Alexander Rahr, confirmed that there have been occasions when "official Russia criticized us," but added, "we never adjusted our themes and seminars to their wishes."

Beyond Russia, there's a gap between Germany's tough rhetoric and action on Iran as well. While Merkel and Steinmeier have been critical of Iran's nuclear ambitions and blocked Germany's biggest banks from doing business there, Germany's economic relations with Iran continue to grow. With annual trade between the two now over $7 billion, Germany is Iran's biggest EU trading partner.

Berlin's interests now diverge from Washington's on several key issues. The new administration's best chance to lead on issues of concern to Europe will therefore be to play Europeans off each other the way Moscow does, Himmelreich says. For example, "German policy towards Russia will be considerably weakened if the United States succeeds in getting Sarkozy onboard for a new Russia policy." The United States should support energy transport routes for Europe that bypass Russia, such as those that tap Central Asian energy, and be wary of Gazprom's efforts to gain control of gas interests in North Africa, which remain an alternative source for Western Europe. Himmelreich says the United States should also push Europeans to improve their military capabilities.

On NATO, the United States will need to continue to push to bring Georgia and Ukraine into the fold. Otherwise, Russia will control the issue, using Germany to represent its interests. How strongly Berlin will ultimately embrace Moscow isn't clear. But as the gas and NATO disputes show, the two are now more tightly linked than they have been in decades.

Melana K. Zyla is a reporter in Washington.