German-Russian Relations: Practice and Prospects by Pádraig Murphy

German-Russian Relations: Practice and Prospects By Pádraig Murphy German-Russian Relations: Practice and Prospects NOVEMBER 2018 BY PÁDRAIG MURPHY German-Russian relations go back over a thousand years. It is important to take this into account because this history is ever-present both to the two main actors and to all their neighbours – particularly those situated between the two. As a German journalist noted in 1989: “The Russians have always played a special role in the fantasies of the Germans and the Germans in the fantasies of the Russians, that is the history of almost a thousand years which has carried over from two gruesome world wars”. Historically, Germany represented Western Christianity for Moscow; for the Germans, Russia was Eastern Christianity in the shape of what Russian ideologists called “the Third Rome”. The historian Gerd Koenen has spoken of a German “Russia Complex”, “a long-running shift between angst and admiration, a phobic defence and empathetic contribution which characterised both sides”. Looking East, Looking West Bearing this in mind, but without going through the history of the intervening years, it should be noted that Germany was divided after World War II by the victorious powers and that, in its western part, the strategy of Konrad Adenauer, to reject offers of normalisation with the USSR in the prospect of unification, with full support from the Western allies, won out against the more nationalist approach of the then leader of the SPD, Kurt Schumacher. The Adenauer strategy, called Westbindung, or maintaining close relations with the West, came to characterise the CDU’s line on relations with the USSR until Helmut Kohl’s time. The SPD was more open to dealing with the USSR and, in due course, this was reflected in what was called the Ostpolitik of Willy Brandt, the architect of which was Egon Bahr, who subsequently adopted a rather nationalist line in maintaining Germany’s right to conduct an independent foreign policy. Although the Ostpolitik was to become an approach common to all the established parties, the nuances of the CDU/SPD attitudes to the USSR/Russia have remained noticeably different, with the SPD generally more understanding of Russian sensitivities. Ostpolitik saw the key to reunification as lying in the USSR. The path to this reunification consisted in demonstrating that not only did Germany no longer pose a security threat to Moscow, but that there were pronounced economic advantages to be gained from normalising relations with a new Germany. The path wound slowly from a – significant – beginning in 1981 with agreement by a consortium of German banks, led by Deutsche Bank, to provide financing of 01 GERMAN POLICY | NOVEMBER 2018 GERMAN POLICY | NOVEMBER 2018 3.4 bn Deutschmarks for the construction of compressor stations for a pipeline to bring natural gas from the new field of Yamal to the Soviet borders, to be further transported thence to Germany. The project became a joint European one and was pursued to finalisation in 1982-4 against the background of US sanctions, including an embargo on supplies needed to build it. These sanctions were the subject of protests by the European Communities at the time, which called them illegal. The significance of the episode lies in the fact that this marks the beginning of close German cooperation with Russia in the gas sector. A further element was normalisation of relations with the Soviet Union’s satellite, the GDR, under the heading Wandel durch Annäherung – Bahr’s phrase - or “Change through rapprochement”. There were of course very important economic interests involved on the German side, as the amount of financing provided by German banks for the pipeline project indicates. Financing from the German side has always played a role: as part of the agreements on reunification, Helmut Kohl agreed to pay a significant sum to assist with the repatriation of Soviet forces from the GDR. In Germany, the eventual reunification of the country is widely attributed to Gorbachev’s opening up of the Soviet Union and his ambition to build a “common European house”. The resulting gratitude is a significant factor in the German attitude to Russia. Another, equally significant, is guilt about the role played by the Wehrmacht in the Soviet Union during World War II. These factors explain why, despite repeated disappointment at the failure of the Russian state after the Soviet collapse to make progress on democratisation or reliable protection of human rights, Berlin for a long time persisted in optimism: engagement on the economic level would support political and social change, create a middle class and bring about democratisation. The term “modernisation partnership” was formally announced when Frank Walter Steinmeier was Foreign Minister in the first Grand Coalition. It was reaffirmed by his successor, Guido Westerwelle, in a speech commemorating the landmark speech of Egon Bahr launching the Ostpolitik, Westerwelle concluding significantly that economic relations could bring about change in Russia:Wandel durch Handel, or “change through trade”. Similar phrases have been used elsewhere: Westerwelle also spoke of “strategic partnership”, and Merkel became optimistic about Dmitri Medvedev’s “modernisation strategy” in 2010. Steinmeier has spoken of “modernisation through interdependence”, another variation of the Bahr phrase. The key drivers of the approach were the Government, the political parties and German business. Through it all, the logics of geographical proximity – Russia is Germany’s big neighbour – and hard-headed business opportunities were at work. The latter factor is not new, but the failure of Russia to develop has made it as operative today as when Peter the Great was opening up Russia to the West. This is the economic complementarity of a resource-rich and technology-poor Russia and a Germany which is the opposite, as well as that of a sophisticated Western entrepreneurial economy and one which continues to fail to develop. Crimea Russia’s annexation of Crimea and fomenting of separatism in the Donbas in 2014 was to change all this. For the first time since World War II the frontiers of a European State were changed through aggression. This was particularly felt as a betrayal in Berlin. For Germany, the CSCE agreement in Helsinki in 1975 that frontiers could only be changed peacefully and by agreement was and is a central part of a post-war peaceful order. There was a crucial collapse of trust between Berlin and Moscow. Since 2014, there has been a shift from the domination of economics over politics, to a predominance of the political. German-Russian trade was halved by 2015- 2016 compared to 2008, though it is now growing again to $55-60bn. At that, however, it is less than German trade with Poland or the Czech Republic. Russia became more of a security threat than an economic and energy partner. The 2014 review of German foreign 02 GERMAN POLICY | NOVEMBER 2018 policy emphasised the centrality of the rule of law, strengthening international institutions and international law. In this perspective, there was a flagrant infringement by Russia of the Budapest memorandum of 1994, concluded on the occasion of the renunciation of its nuclear-weapon holdings by Ukraine, which included security guarantees by the signatories, Russia, the UK and the US, against threats or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine. And the Charter of Paris of 1990, which once again solemnly formalised the provisions of Helsinki as the basis for the new Europe, was flouted. These offences come against the background of other occurrences which have led Berlin to question Russia’s conformity with the standards generally accepted in the West. There was a concerted disinformation campaign alleging mistreatment of a Russian-German girl in Berlin. And there was a cyber attack on the Bundestag. Angela Merkel has taken a leading role in maintaining European sanctions on Russia because of its actions in Ukraine, and more generally, the approach has been of containment where necessary and cooperation where possible, to use Stefan Meister’s formulation.1 European Security Architecture Germany has long sought to place the problem of dealing with Russia into a larger framework. The idea of an overall European security architecture has been in play in Berlin for years, implicitly, by developing the CSCE, now OSCE, further. Indeed, the very transformation of the “Conference” to the “Organisation” was an effort to advance this. The most recent such attempt was made in connection with the holding by Germany of the Chairmanship of the OSCE. Wolfgang Ischinger, Chairman of the Munich Security Conference, was appointed Chairman of the “Panel of Eminent Persons on European Security as a Common Project”, set up by the OSCE in 2015. The task was to put forward proposals for the role of the OSCE in conflict prevention and management and on the basic questions of the security architecture of the EuroAtlantic/Eurasian space, in the spirit, of course, of the Helsinki Final Act and the Charter of Paris. More than a dozen high-ranking persons from Greece, Turkey, the US, Ukraine, Latvia, France, Switzerland, Georgia, Russia, the UK, Poland, Finland, Kazakhstan, Serbia and Germany met and considered this agenda. The conclusion of their deliberations was that there were such great differences between the West and Russia in the appreciation of the current European situation that it was completely impossible to agree on a common text. In the end, separate Russian and Western texts were produced. But there was a third text, that of the countries “in between”, such as Georgia and Ukraine, which belong to neither NATO nor the EU, but which do not wish to be considered in the Russian sphere of interest. Ischinger’s comment is that the “narrative abyss” between Russia and the West has only become deeper since 2015.

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