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Nord Stream 2: Why Germany will never give in on its Russia pipeline

2021-03-31T03:55:31.844Z


Nord Stream 2 dispute: is Berlin conspiring with Moscow? If it looks like that ... then only because that is exactly the case, comments expert Jeremy Stern.


Nord Stream 2 dispute: is Berlin conspiring with Moscow?

If it looks like that ... then only because that is exactly the case, comments expert Jeremy Stern.

  • Germany's insistence on remembering Nazism has proven to be a powerful weapon.

  • The self-inflicted Nord Stream 2 crisis hits Germany in the super election year 2021.

  • Washington is convinced that it can prevent the controversial pipeline.

    Other signals are coming from Berlin.

  • This article by former US embassy advisor Jeremy Stern is available in German for the first time - it was first published on February 25, 2021 by

    Foreign Policy

    magazine

    .

Washington - Hardly any other country has dealt with its own past as thoroughly as Germany and yet German history contaminates almost every foreign policy topic in Germany.

Often this is done quite skillfully by others, such as

B. by debtor countries that refer to the Nazi era in order to avoid German creditors, by human rights violators who remember the Third Reich so that Berlin would shy away from sanctions out of shame, as well as by weaker members of the European Union who are over lament the alleged return of a Europe dominated by Germany.

Often, however, this is also your own fault.

For example, German officials are known to wriggle their way out of higher defense spending by suggesting that they may not be trusted, German executives have claimed without credibility that they know nothing about internment camps near their factories in China, and defend German heads of state Doing business with Russian President Vladimir Putin as war guilt for Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union.

Germany's Dealing with the Past: Remembering National Socialism

There is something surreal and ironic about this way of dealing with the German past.

No one who looks at modern Germany from a fair perspective could seriously claim that its economic policy bears any resemblance to the Nazi era, and no sane German politician really believes that his country could not make higher security spending without invading Poland as well.

Insisting on the memory of National Socialism, however, has proven to be a powerful weapon: for Germany's critics who want to limit its political and economic power in Europe, as well as for German politicians themselves, who are increasingly desperate to try to deal with the political crises they have caused themselves escape.

Nord Stream 2 can best be understood under this latter category.

Germany continues to commit to ambitious climate targets, but the more pressing needs of German industry, the consumption habits of German voters and Merkel's mismanagement of energy policy have cemented Germany's dependence on Russia.

Jeremy Stern, Foreign Policy Author

Nord Stream 2 is a pipeline that, when completed, will pump gas directly from Russia to Germany, at the expense of Central and Eastern Europe and despite objections from the EU.

The Russian motivations are no big secret here: since Nord Stream 2 would run through the Baltic Sea and not the Ukrainian countryside, Ukraine would be eliminated from the transit system that delivers Russian gas to Europe.

Putin would then have greater freedom of action to wage war there, Kiev would no longer have any leverage in Moscow and Brussels and the Kremlin would have an emergency switch for Germany's energy supply.

It is not the first time that Russia, which regards the independent states on its western border as transitory, has tried to close the distance to Germany.

It is less obvious why the entire German establishment gives the impression that it shares Putin's view of the post-Soviet space.

The explanation is as banal as it is terrifying.

After the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, German Chancellor Angela Merkel accelerated the phase-out of nuclear energy in her country by taking power plants off the grid without a plan to replace the loss of energy supply.

As a result, Germany's dependence on fossil fuels has increased significantly.

And Gazprom offers the cheapest gas supplies.

Germany continues to commit to ambitious climate targets, but the more pressing needs of German industry, the consumption habits of German voters and Merkel's mismanagement of energy policy have cemented Germany's dependence on Russia.

Nord Stream 2: Germany is in the super election year 2021 - EU and US opposition to pipeline

The problem with all this is not the increasingly lucrative German-Russian relationship per se, but that European energy policy is unilaterally made by Berlin, because Nord Stream 2 would reduce the connections of the Western European gas market to Central and Eastern Europe, the security of supply for countries like Threatening Poland, undermining the physical security of Ukraine and giving Moscow the opportunity to turn off the lights in Central Europe - all to clean up an internal German mess caused by the German government.

These circumstances are all the more frightening when you consider that Berlin has other options that do not mean tearing down bridges in the EU.

It could extend the deadline for phasing out nuclear power or reverse the ban altogether.

It could reduce industry demand for energy through higher prices.

It could pay higher prices to diversify away from Russian supplies.

But Germany does not and will not do it, because all these measures are political suicide in Germany, which is currently in one

Super election year with six regional elections and the federal election in September.

Thanks to the goodwill towards Moscow and the additional delivery capacity of Nord Stream 2, German politicians will not have to make any unpopular decisions in the super election year and the lights will not go out.

The protection of the German political fortunes is bought with an erosion of European cohesion, which is noticeable in an increasingly sharp diplomacy.

As EU and US resistance to Nord Stream 2 increases, the more normal justifications for the pipeline - Germany's right to make its own economic decisions, concerns about energy supplies, climate goals, fear of angering Moscow - chains of arguments, which make one question his sanity: the insistence that other countries have no right to interfere in a Russian-German project that has been implemented at their own expense;

the assumption that important EU policies should be made in Berlin without interference from Poland or the Baltic states, and objections that the Americans would simply want to force their own gas on Germany - a bizarre PR strategy recently suggested by the German Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier concluded that the Germans owed Russia Nord Stream 2 because of World War II.

Contradiction against Nord Stream 2: Greens reject pipeline for environmental reasons - geopolitical impact

Opposition in German politics comes mainly from the Greens, who reject the pipeline for environmental reasons, and from the circle around Norbert Röttgen, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Bundestag, who shares the US's concerns about the geopolitical effects of the pipeline.

But they are not up to the deep source of Russophile and anti-American feelings in German society, from which the coalition government can draw at any time if necessary.

And this is not only the case in East Germany: The feeling that Russia is Germany's cultural and intellectual sister country, that American culture is commercial and lifeless, and that Germans never agreed to full integration with an American-dominated “West” goes a long way back and met with broad approval among German voters.

To paraphrase journalist Richard Herzinger, the Germans themselves sometimes approach the problems raised by the German question by keeping the Russian option open.

As Herzinger notes, this “option” only exists to be exercised if various disputes with the Western allies become too big.

This could indicate that Berlin feels a level of desperation for Nord Stream 2 that is not being adequately appreciated in Washington.

The pipeline is one of the few bipartisan topics in U.S. foreign policy, but it's not clear if Democrats and Republicans agree on the important part here.

Republican senators and former Trump administration officials are convinced that thanks to US sanctions laws, Nord Stream 2 will never deliver gas, that the project will be canceled, and that it would be easier for the Germans to pull the plug and unilaterally close the pipeline break up.

U.S. President Joe Biden's administration believes it can stop the pipeline without imposing sanctions on German companies, and rumors of a compromise between Biden and Merkel are buoyed.

What the White House and Senate have in common is the confidence that somehow the United States will eventually prevail and Germany will give in.

At the moment, as a former National Security Council official recently put it, it is all about who will take the credit for it.

USA is convinced that it can prevent Nord Stream 2 - expect Germany to insist on pipeline

That the German government sees Nord Stream 2 as a question of survival, that it will stick to completion at all costs, and that the US would probably give in earlier than the Germans in any conceivable “deal” does not seem to have occurred to many in Washington be.

No matter to what extent - US sanctions will not convince Merkel to risk Putin turning the tap on them in an election year.

No US concessions on tariffs or NATO commitments will induce them to undermine the profits and solvency of German industry.

No amount of US-EU solidarity will induce them to allow the impression of a veto against German economic sovereignty to arise.

She will not risk voters turning their backs on her party, even if that means leaving a broken system to her successor.

She left Biden, and herself, no options.

We should therefore expect Germany to persist in its stance - perhaps with symbolic promises to Washington regarding China and military spending and some cosmetic compensation for Ukraine.

If and when the pipeline is completed, concerns will arise from Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states, perhaps alluding to a return to the Russian-German agreements of around 1938. Whether this is fair or right is open to debate.

Who is to blame for it, not.

by Jeremy Stern

Jeremy Stern

is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Future Europe Initiative of the Atlantic Council and was previously Senior Advisor at the US Embassy in Berlin.

This article was first published in English on February 25, 2021 in the magazine “ForeignPolicy.com” - as part of a cooperation, a translation is now also

 available to

Merkur.de

readers 

.

Foreign Policy: Hitler's first attempted coup failed - but German democracy collapsed anyway.

How can the United States avoid the same fate?

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Source: merkur

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