For many years, Germany has relied on close ties with Putin’s Russia. An interdependence has emerged that many today regret and would like to forget. For the Social Democrats in particular, however, this is by no means so easy.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and then Chancellor Gerhard Schröder at the German-Russian intergovernmental consultations in 2000.
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Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has shaken German politics. Hardly any other European country has been as closely linked to Russia since the end of the Cold War as Germany. The idea and also the reality of a privileged partnership with Russia is part of the core of German foreign policy – at least since Gerhard Schröder and Vladimir Putin started a “friendship” almost two decades ago. There was the level of economic interests – especially in the energy sector – but also the vision of a strategic partnership that should yield geopolitical benefits for both sides.
Now the leading politicians of the traffic light coalition and the Union are outdoing each other with statements intended to signal maximum distance from Russia. SPD party leader Lars Klingbeil declared in the Bundestag on April 28 that Putin would “go down in history as a war criminal,” adding: “We will do everything we can to ensure that he is held accountable for this brutal war before the competent courts around the world will.” Others say they were unfortunately wrong about Putin’s imperial plans; For example, Federal President Steinmeier: “I was wrong, like others.”
Of the broad center parties, however, only the Greens can point to the fact that for many years they have been urging people to distance themselves from a regime that has evolved more and more in the direction of a dictatorship that has been harassing and attacking its neighbors ever more openly and which is now waging a war of aggression and conquest in Europe.
The Greens have a clean slate
For the Greens – unlike for the SPD, the FDP and the Union – the Russian regime was never the first point of contact, but the Russian opposition. And Greens have long maintained contacts with civil rights activists and other democratic forces in East Central and Eastern Europe. That has saved them from illusions about Putin that German governments have been only too happy to indulge in for many years.
In addition, the leaders of the Greens have long since reconciled with NATO. When Macron attacked NATO in November 2019 as “brain dead”, Baerbock and Habeck emphasized the importance of NATO, especially for the security of East Central Europe. All in all, it is relatively easy for the Greens to embrace a new paradigm called “security against Russia”. The small party conference last week approved both: the delivery of heavy weapons and the massive investments in the Bundeswehr. That is remarkable for a party that has long seen itself as the guardian of pacifism.
Others have a harder time adjusting to the new reality of confrontation with Russia. The FDP still has it easy, even if they don’t have a long tradition of criticizing the Kremlin like the Greens. The liberals have been largely invisible in foreign policy in recent years.
The last FDP Foreign Minister, Guido Westerwelle (from 2009 to 2013), cut a rather unfortunate figure. Westerwelle was hesitant towards Russia: On the one hand, he called for a “strategic partnership” with Moscow, of all things, after the authoritarian consolidation of Putin’s rule in 2012. On the other hand, he visited the Maidan in December 2013.
The Union cannot pull itself out of the affair
FDP leader Christian Lindner has also distinguished himself by taking a zigzag course towards Russia: in 2019 he called for “new signals for dialogue” with Moscow; Recently, however, he has shown clear solidarity with the Russian opposition politician Navalny. All in all, there is hardly any Russian political tradition that would weigh heavily on the FDP. And there is a new awareness in the party that “liberal order” must be enforced not only at home, but also in foreign policy.
The Union, on the other hand, cannot pull itself out of the affair so easily. It was a CDU chancellor who had a decisive influence on German Russia policy since 2005 – for better or for worse. Merkel has adopted Schröder’s Russia policy, which is geared towards proximity and economic ties. She did not see Russia’s attack on Georgia in 2008 as a warning sign – as the starting point for neo-imperialist revisionism, but rather as a slip-up, which was also provoked by Georgian President Saakashvili.
But at least Merkel has adopted a much more critical tone since 2011, including in public appearances with Putin, with whom she has never had a close relationship. It was Merkel who, together with Obama, orchestrated the West’s response after the annexation of Crimea and during Russia’s covert attack in eastern Ukraine in 2014 – including economic sanctions. The East-Central Europeans gave her credit for that. What quickly destroyed the new image of a Germany that can also show toughness towards Russia was Merkel’s approval of a second Baltic Sea pipeline, Nord Stream 2.
The real driver of a privileged partnership with Putin’s Russia, however, was the SPD. It was Schröder who, as chancellor, initiated the construction of the first Baltic Sea pipeline, Nord Stream 1, and who in 2005 became a lobbyist for the Kremlin-controlled company Gazprom. In this role, he then – in Germany still largely treated and perceived as a former chancellor, not as a Kremlin lobbyist – also campaigned for a second pipeline, Nord Stream 2.
The energy relationship between Russia and Germany was at the core of the privileged partnership. This led to numerous regular meetings between German business leaders and Russian politicians, as well as formats for exchange between “civil society”, which, however, were used on the Russian side by the autocratic regime.
Steinmeier’s politics were naïve
While Schröder allowed himself to be enlisted by the Kremlin as a lobbyist, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who had been his closest colleague for many years, made a career as foreign minister and vice chancellor twice and finally as federal president since 2017. As foreign minister, Steinmeier made Russia his priority.
“Approach through integration” was the name of the concept he developed in 2006 at the Federal Foreign Office; and from 2008 on Steinmeier pushed ahead with an EU “modernization partnership” with Russia – under the skeptical gaze of East-Central Europeans, who instead advocated the “Eastern Partnership” with Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The chummy relationship between Steinmeier and the Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov was legendary; and it was also significant that Putin repeatedly granted Steinmeier lengthy meetings – actually unusual for a foreign minister. For his part, Steinmeier was always looking for new offers of cooperation and occasionally turned a blind eye.
On August 15, 2016, for example, he suggested that “Germany and Russia in particular should work hand in hand” in the reconstruction of Syria. That was at a time when it had long been known that Russia was committing massive war crimes in Syria.
The inglorious role of Sigmar Gabriel
Similar to Steinmeier, Sigmar Gabriel was also a pillar of the privileged partnership with Russia, as a long-standing SPD party leader, as Economics Minister and Vice Chancellor and as Foreign Minister. Gabriel has always campaigned massively for Nord Stream 2, there have been numerous meetings with representatives of Gazprom, with Schröder and with Putin. In a conversation with Putin about Nord Stream 2, Gabriel assured that an attempt would be made to keep the approval issues under German control in order to prevent “external interference” – meaning the EU.
One thing is clear: the SPD is bringing the most ballast with it in an era in which European security can only exist against Russia for the time being, as Scholz also conceded in his speech about the turn of the century. For many years, Schröder, Steinmeier and Gabriel have promoted the energy relationship between Russia and Germany and defended it against critics with no frills.
The SPD must therefore ask itself to what extent it has unwittingly allowed itself to be made into the henchman of an autocratic regime that is now attacking the European peace order with a war of aggression and conquest. On the one hand, the close energy relationship was lucrative for Moscow, as it brought a secure income into the coffers from which the regime financed itself. On the other hand, the Kremlin was probably hoping to neutralize Germany geopolitically through the privileged partnership with Berlin.
This inheritance makes it extremely difficult for the SPD to set up a new Russia policy today as the central governing party. But only if the mistakes of the past are acknowledged can the right lessons be drawn from them – which in turn is necessary to do justice to the leadership responsibility of the party that provides the chancellor. In the midst of an international crisis in which Germany is more important than ever before.