{"id":43285,"date":"2021-09-27T15:28:54","date_gmt":"2021-09-27T13:28:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/libmod.de\/?p=43285"},"modified":"2021-12-07T15:23:33","modified_gmt":"2021-12-07T14:23:33","slug":"merkels-ambivalent-legacy-in-post-soviet-eastern-europe-umland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libmod.de\/en\/merkels-ambivalent-legacy-in-post-soviet-eastern-europe-umland\/","title":{"rendered":"Merkel\u2019s Ambivalent Legacy in Post-Soviet Eastern Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Foto: Imago \/\u200b ZUMA Wire<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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When Angela Merkel took office as German Chancellor in 2005, she was better prepared for the challenges on the EU\u2019s eastern border than any other West European head of government. However, before Merkel\u2019s takeover of the chancel\u00adlorship, Berlin had already sent wrong signals to the new neo-imperial leadership in Moscow by inviting Putin to address the German federal parliament in 2001 and starting the Nord Stream projects in 2005. Conse\u00adquential missteps before and after Merkel came to power put German Eastern Europe policies on the wrong path in the new century. In 2014, there was only a partial correction of the Russia course set by Gerhard Schr\u00f6der, Germany\u2019s chancellor 1998\u20132005. Today, politi\u00adcians, diplomats and experts in Moscow likely wonder what has got into the Germans since the annex\u00adation of Crimea. Hadn\u2019t Berlin accepted Russian special rights in the post-Soviet space as an unwritten law of post-Cold War Eastern European geopolitics? <\/h2>\n

One can imagine that the outgoing German chancellor is unhappy about her legacy in Eastern Europe. In Berlin as well as in Brussels, Angela Merkel leaves consid\u00aderable headaches about the future of the post-Soviet space.[1]<\/a> Above all, many East Europeans in Warsaw, Kyiv or Tallinn are likely to be dissat\u00adisfied with Merkel\u2019s heritage. In 2005, Germany\u2019s first female chancellor took office at a time when the political situation in Eastern Europe was relatively relaxed and Moscow was still on good terms with the West. Russia was a G8 member, involved in a special council with NATO, and engaged in negoti\u00ada\u00adtions for an expanded cooper\u00adation treaty with the EU.<\/p>\n

Since 2014, various German commen\u00adtators have insin\u00aduated that nation\u00adalist Ukrainians, with American support, have destroyed this former harmony. Discus\u00adsions of Eastern European geopol\u00aditics in recent years have been often debates about Ukrainian internal affairs as well as Western errors regarding the recal\u00adci\u00adtrant country. However, in fact Russia\u2019s annex\u00adation of Crimea and inter\u00advention in the Donets Basin were merely contin\u00adu\u00ada\u00adtions of older Moscow policy patterns in the post-Soviet space. The Kremlin\u2019s neo-imperial ambitions that were manifested in 2014 had already been observable in its policies regarding other countries, for example Moldova and Georgia.<\/p>\n

A paradoxical legacy<\/h2>\n

In late 2021, Europe\u2019s most important and experi\u00adenced politician will step down at a time when not only most Russian partner\u00adships with Western organi\u00adza\u00adtions and states have been termi\u00adnated, damaged, or frozen. Today, Moscow is \u2014 as it was before the late Soviet democ\u00adra\u00adti\u00adzation of 1987 \u2014 once again in a funda\u00admental normative conflict with the West. The Kremlin\u2019s new aggres\u00adsiveness towards liberal democ\u00adratic states has been expressing itself by subversion of Western political processes, such as Moscow\u2019s inter\u00adven\u00adtions in the presi\u00addential elections of the United States in 2016 and \u2013 less success\u00adfully \u2013 the elections in France in 2017.<\/p>\n

In particular, old and new confronta\u00adtions between Russia and its post-Soviet neighbors \u2013 most notably terri\u00adtorial disputes with Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova \u2013 continue to smoulder. Moscow is also highly present in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, while the EU, involved in the South Caucasus with a special Eastern Partnership programme, has played only an observer role since the second Karabakh War of 2020. The signs in Russian-Ukrainian relations are once again pointing to a storm. In the worst case, an open war could break out between Europe\u2019s two largest terri\u00adtorial states. To what extent can Merkel be blamed for the manifest failure of the Russia and Eastern Europe policies of Germany and the EU over the past decade and a half?<\/p>\n

The paradox of the outgoing chancel\u00adlor\u2019s apparent failure is that her biography and her commitment to Eastern policy since 2005 promised rather good things to come. Merkel was more prepared than any other leading German politician for the challenges facing Germany and the EU in Eastern Europe after the end of the Cold War. Having grown up in the GDR, the future chancellor had lived in the Soviet Union as a visiting student and spoke Russian. In 1989\u20131990, she partic\u00adi\u00adpated in the peaceful revolution in East Germany. Merkel under\u00adstood better than most other Western politi\u00adcians the upheavals in the post-Soviet space of the past twenty years, such as the Georgian Rose Revolution of 2003 or the two Ukrainian uprisings of 2004 and 2013\u20132014.<\/p>\n

As a convinced European and Atlanticist, as well as a balancing force within the EU, Merkel has earned a high reputation among Germany\u2019s Western partners. She was able to take an unchal\u00adlenged leadership role in shaping Western relations with Russia after 2014. Since then, Merkel has been deeply involved in lowering political tensions in Eastern Europe in general and, in particular those arising from the Russian-Ukrainian war. Despite these and other favorable omens, the German and EU policies toward Russia today are in tatters.<\/p>\n

To be sure, the Merkel period also saw a number of achieve\u00adments in post-communist South\u00adeastern Europe, such as the accession of some Balkan countries to the EU and NATO. The three EU associ\u00adation agree\u00adments concluded in 2014 with Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine can also be considered successes. However, much of this progress can only be attributed in part to the German government in general and Merkel\u2019s activ\u00adities in particular. At best, the chancellor can be credited with the fact that her commitment to eastern policies and her enormous diplo\u00admatic engagement in trying to resolve the Russian-Ukrainian conflict since 2014 have prevented a worse outcome.<\/p>\n

The measure of German responsibility<\/h2>\n

Are the many good inten\u00adtions and activ\u00adities of the German chancellor from 2005 to 2021 suffi\u00adcient to absolve Germany from all respon\u00adsi\u00adbility for the serious domestic and foreign policy aberra\u00adtions in the post-Soviet space during the past decade and a half? Was the Federal Republic, in the face of major geopo\u00adlitical shifts outside Berlin\u2019s compe\u00adtence, condemned to a secondary and mediator role from the outset, that Merkel then acted out as best she could? Were the Germans doomed to be onlookers as fateful inter\u00adna\u00adtional macro-trends unfolded in Eastern Europe that Berlin could neither have hoped to prevent nor been able to steer?<\/p>\n

Shirking respon\u00adsi\u00adbility in this way would not sit well with the political influence, inter\u00adna\u00adtional prestige, and economic weight of Germany in Europe. In addition, the EU continues to play a key role in Russia\u2019s foreign trade and thus its state revenues, economic subsidies, political largesse, and bribery and corruption. These and other internal and transna\u00adtional Russian cash flows are fed primarily by profits from huge exports of Siberian energy to Europe.<\/p>\n

For these and other reasons, Germany is a major player in East European affairs. It would be inappro\u00adpriate for Berlin to merely point the finger at other actors in Washington, Kyiv or Brussels to explain why so much has gone wrong in the post-Soviet space over the past decade and a half. Nor could Germany ignore the East in view of the World War Two history of, for instance, Ukraine. So why did Merkel\u2019s combi\u00adnation of experience, wisdom and notable efforts with Germany\u2019s political, cultural and economic power not lead to better results in post-Soviet Eastern Europe?<\/p>\n

Three Berlin policy decisions stand out that set German-Russian relations and Ostpolitik<\/em> on a wrong path right from the start of Merkel\u2019s 16-year chancel\u00adlorship. These are a German invitation to Putin to address the German parliament in 2001, the start of the infamous Nord Stream projects in 2005, and the unfor\u00adtunate treatment of Georgia in 2008. The strange tragedy of Merkel\u2019s Ostpolitik<\/em> was that the highly intel\u00adligent and committed chancellor showed herself unable to depart from the wrong track in Germany\u2019s Russia policy that Berlin had already taken before she took office. It is sympto\u00admatic that none of the early German mistakes vis-\u00e0-vis Moscow were directly related to Ukrainian affairs, yet that the conflict surrounding Ukraine since 2014 has marked the fiasco of Germany\u2019s Ostpolitik<\/em> in the new century.<\/p>\n

A fateful Bundestag appearance<\/h2>\n

Berlin took a momentous decision long before Merkel came to power and early on in Vladimir Putin\u2019s first full presi\u00addency. In September 2001, the German federal government invited the new president to address the assembled Bundestag. No other Russian head of government or state has ever received such an honor. This was true for Mikhail Gorbachev as indirectly elected USSR President of 1990\u20131991 as well as for Boris Yeltsin as the first Russian head of state elected by the people ruling from 1991 to 1999 and for Dmitry Medvedev who was Putin\u2019s liberal stooge in the presi\u00addential office in 2008\u20132012. In light of their world views, these three presi\u00addents would all have been more appro\u00adpriate speakers to the German parliament than Putin. At least Gorbachev did speak in the Bundestag as a private citizen in 1999 \u2013 long after his departure from politics.<\/p>\n

Taken on its own, Putin\u2019s relatively pro-Western 2001 Bundestag speech, delivered in German, seemed largely uncon\u00adtro\u00adversial. But the circum\u00adstances surrounding his effective perfor\u00admance in Germany\u2019s national parliament were dubious. The Bundestag reacted with ovations to the courtship of a Russian politician who, as a KGB officer in Dresden, had only a few years earlier been part of Moscow\u2019s occupation machinery in East Germany. Even more worrying was that Putin had been invited to speak and was celebrated in Berlin at a time when Russian forces stood illegally in another country.<\/p>\n

Unwanted Russian troops were stationed in the Transnis\u00adtrian region of Moldova during Putin\u2019s 2001 visit to Berlin.[2]<\/a> They had been there ever since the disso\u00adlution of the USSR in 1991, and until today remain illegally in Moldova. In 1994, Moscow had agreed to withdraw its military forces from Transnistria in a bilateral treaty with Chi\u015fin\u0103u after having unlaw\u00adfully inter\u00advened in an internal Moldovan conflict in 1992. At a November 1999 OSCE summit, when Putin was prime-minister but soon to become acting president of Russia, Moscow committed itself once more, in the multi\u00adlateral \u201cIstanbul Document,\u201d to withdraw its remaining troops from Transnistria.<\/p>\n

This had not happened, however, by the time Putin gave his speech to the Bundestag in 2001. Nor was there any indication that Moscow would soon fulfil its bilateral and multi\u00adlateral oblig\u00ada\u00adtions vis-\u00e0-vis the non-aligned Moldovan state. Merkel attempted to reach a solution for the Transnis\u00adtrian problem with Russian President Medvedev in 2010\u20132011 as part of the so-called Meseberg Process. However, Merkel\u2019s strenuous efforts were unsuc\u00adcessful. That was because Putin \u2013 and not the relatively pro-Western Medvedev \u2013 continued to hold the reins of power as Russia\u2019s prime-minister from 2008 to 2012.<\/p>\n

Another questionable aspect of the invitation to the Bundestag was that it was extended after Putin had launched the Second Chechen War in September 1999, with thousands of civilian casualties. Moscow started this war against the backdrop of some curious terrorist attacks in central Russia after Putin had taken over the chair\u00admanship of the Russian government in August 1999. Appar\u00adently, the apartment bombings that were used to justify Putin\u2019s escalation in the North Caucasus had been orches\u00adtrated by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). As detailed by John B. Dunlop, Yuri Felshtinsky, Alexander Litvi\u00adnenko, Vladimir Pribylovsky, and David Satter, the FSB as the KGB\u2019s main successor organi\u00adzation, headed by Putin until then, had blown up several Russian apartment buildings.[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

The cold-blooded mass murder of over three hundred Russian civilians was intended to provide Putin, who had just advanced from the position of FSB Director to that of prime minister, with a pretext for a punitive action against separatist Chechens. Above all, the new head of government and future president was to be given a propa\u00adganda template for his incipient accumu\u00adlation of power in Moscow. Notwith\u00adstanding the disturbing devel\u00adop\u00adments from 1999 onward, the Russian head of state was publicly feted two years later in the German parliament by most of the deputies present.<\/p>\n

The consid\u00aderable domestic and foreign policy regres\u00adsions under Putin, already visible by September 2001, were not a topic of his visit to Germany. This omission consti\u00adtuted the problem of Putin\u2019s appearance in the Bundestag and his talks in Berlin. The invitation of the German parliament as well as the reaction of the MPs to Putin\u2019s speech sent a fatal signal to Moscow. Ongoing viola\u00adtions of inter\u00adna\u00adtional and human rights are of secondary impor\u00adtance when it comes to the bilateral relationship. The chemistry between Moscow and Berlin is more important than the principles laid down in such documents as the 1975 Helsinki Final Act or the 1990 Charter of Paris. At least that is how many Russian politi\u00adcians and diplomats have seemingly under\u00adstood Berlin\u2019s loud silence on Transnistria and Chechnya in 2001. East-West trade, good personal relations, and fair-weather rhetoric take prece\u00addence over Western values, the inter\u00adna\u00adtional order, and European security.<\/p>\n

Against this backdrop, some so-called Russland verstehen<\/em> (Russia under\u00adstanding) would be appro\u00adpriate. In light of the applause for Putin in the Bundestag in 2001, one can under\u00adstand that Moscow was surprised in 2014 when Berlin was suddenly more resolute regarding Russia\u2019s attack on Ukraine. Why couldn\u2019t the same principles be applied to Crimea and the Donbas as had been applied to Transnistria, Abkhazia or South Ossetia (on which more below)?<\/p>\n

How exactly is the Kremlin supposed to under\u00adstand the German political class when comparing its reaction to the relatively similar Moldovan and Ukrainian situa\u00adtions of 2001 and 2014? The Bundestag applauded a Russian president when Moscow troops stood illegally in Transnistria and after they had killed thousands of civilians in Chechnya. Yet, for more than seven years now, Berlin has been supporting EU sanctions in response to Moscow\u2019s activ\u00adities in Crimea and the Donets Basin. These regions are more obviously part of the \u201cRussian World\u201d than Transnistria, which is far away from Russia. \u201cWhere is the much-vaunted German strin\u00adgency and logic?\u201d some in the Kremlin may have asked themselves.<\/p>\n

Berlin\u2019s destructive pipeline policy from 2005<\/h2>\n

A second fateful decision by Berlin that prede\u00adter\u00admined the eastern policy of Merkel\u2019s chancel\u00adlorship was made in 2005, around the time she took office. In the final weeks before the end of Gerhard Schr\u00f6der\u2019s term as Federal Chancellor, as well as in the months that followed, the first Nord Stream project was initiated. Schr\u00f6der\u2019s subse\u00adquent employment by Gazprom (and later Rosneft) and the massive propa\u00adganda of Europe\u2019s allegedly dire need for Russian undersea pipelines, set the course for Merkel\u2019s future Ostpolitik<\/em>. These devel\u00adop\u00adments created legal, informal, and discursive frame\u00adworks at the beginning of Merkel\u2019s reign that had a lasting impact on her approach to Russia. The serious reper\u00adcus\u00adsions of these early decisions continue to shape the German foreign policy debate as well as Berlin\u2019s relation\u00adships with Moscow, Warsaw, Kyiv and Vilnius.<\/p>\n

The under\u00adwater projects initiated by the outgoing Chancellor Schr\u00f6der in 2005, which he subse\u00adquently promoted in his function as chair of the super\u00advisory boards of Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2, were resolutely imple\u00admented despite being energet\u00adi\u00adcally super\u00adfluous. In the apolo\u00adgetic narra\u00adtives, the projects are presented partly as purely commercial, partly as clever geo-economics, and partly even as smart security policy initia\u00adtives. Such stories have broad appeal, even though the absurd excess capacity for trans\u00adferring Siberian natural gas to Europe and the serious geopo\u00adlitical conse\u00adquences of the new pipelines are now readily apparent.<\/p>\n

Reducing Moscow\u2019s depen\u00addence on the Ukrainian gas pipeline system by commis\u00adsioning the first two Nord Stream strings in 2011\u20132012 was from the outset more than a new Russian foreign trade strategy. While the claim of a need for the Nord Stream projects for European energy security was and is misleading, the Kremlin does see a real need to reduce Ukraine\u2019s role as a transit country for Siberian and Central Asian gas flows into the EU. The partial achievement of this goal with the commis\u00adsioning of the first Nord Stream pipeline in October 2012 made it possible to continue the Russian policy of revenge for the collapse of the USSR, which had previ\u00adously been imple\u00admented in Moldova and Georgia, now also in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Gazprom\u2019s option, from late 2012, of bypassing Ukraine for much of its exports to the EU was necessary for the subse\u00adquent increase in Russian aggression towards Ukraine. The Kremlin\u2019s new intran\u00adsi\u00adgence manifested itself even before the Euromaidan revolution began. Over the course of the last peace year of 2013, there were a number of belligerent signals and actions by Moscow vis-a-vis Kyiv.<\/p>\n

For example, in August 2013, the Kremlin imposed a mutually harmful blockade of all trade between Ukraine and Russia that lasted several days. Moscow\u2019s escalating rhetoric and sanctions led to rising tensions in Russian-Ukrainian relations before the Kyiv protests began in late 2013. This occurred even though Ukraine was still under an explicitly pro-Russian leadership with President Viktor Yanukovych and Prime Minister Mykola Azarov (an ethnic Russian), and their imminent loss of power was not yet in sight. The pro-Russian president was removed from office on February 22, 2014 by the Ukrainian parliament, which until then had been loyal to Yanukovych, and not by the Maidan revolu\u00adtion\u00adaries, as is often claimed.<\/p>\n

In response to Yanukovych\u2019s ousting, Moscow shifted its Ukraine policy to the strategy it had pursued some years earlier vis-\u00e0-vis Moldova and Georgia. Following years of rhetorical, political, and economic attacks on Kyiv, Moscow began a partly military, partly paramil\u00aditary inter\u00advention and occupation of Ukraine in late February 2014 on Crimea and in March 2014 in the Donets Basin, as it had done earlier in Transnistria, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia.<\/p>\n

It is surprising that to this day many Western inter\u00adpreters of Putin fail to recognize the regularity in the Kremlin\u2019s behavior. Despite the older examples of Moldova and Georgia, some commen\u00adtators regarded as experts on Eastern Europe insist that the Ukraine is a special case and emphasise the key role of misguided EU policies in the escalation in Eastern Europe in 2014. But long before Russia\u2019s attack on its Western-oriented brother state, the republics of Moldova and Georgia found themselves on the receiving end of military punishment from the Kremlin without being part of Eastern Slavic culture or involved in associ\u00adation negoti\u00ada\u00adtions with Brussels. The two post-Soviet republics had lost control of larger propor\u00adtions of their state terri\u00adtories in the 1990s than Ukraine did in 2014. Chi\u015fin\u0103u and Tbilisi met their sad fate earlier than Ukraine in 2014, allegedly incited by radical nation\u00adalism and Western stupidity.<\/p>\n

What is also perplexing about the Berlin debate on the dramatic deteri\u00ado\u00adration in Russian-Western relations since 2014 is that the glaring historical parallels to the results of the Ostpolitik<\/em> of the 1970s are overlooked. In 1970, Bonn concluded the largest West German-Soviet financial deal to that date with the Kremlin in the form of the R\u00f6hrenkredit\u20111<\/em>. Nine years after this agreement to build new gas pipelines, Moscow invaded Afghanistan in December 1979. The Soviet inter\u00advention ended the relative d\u00e9tente of the 1970s and ushered in a period of tension in inter\u00adna\u00adtional relations 1980\u20131985.<\/p>\n

The first Nord Stream agreement in 2005 launched Europe\u2019s largest infra\u00adstructure project for a pipeline under the Baltic Sea. Nine years after the German-Russian agreement, Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2014. To be sure, as in the 1970s, other devel\u00adop\u00adments around the world were also disrupting the West\u2019s relationship with the Kremlin. But Moscow\u2019s military inter\u00advention in a neigh\u00adboring country was a major factor in the rise of its tensions with the West in both 1979 and 2014.<\/p>\n

One could extend this into a forecast for the near future of Eastern Europe. In 2015, the Nord Stream 2 deal was concluded. If we add nine years, following the formula of 1970+9 and 2005+9 , we arrive at 2024, the year in which the current Russian-Ukrainian gas agreement will expire. And the regular presi\u00addential elections of both Russia and Ukraine are also scheduled for 2024. Notorious Russian TV propa\u00adgandist Dmitry Kiselyov might comment such quirks with his famous conspiracy formula \u201cSovpadenie? Ne dumaiu!\u201d<\/em> (\u201cA coinci\u00addence? I don\u2019t think so!\u201d).<\/p>\n

There is more to such parallels than providing an oppor\u00adtunity for ironic oracles. Moscow\u2019s inter\u00adven\u00adtions in Afghanistan in 1979 and in Ukraine in 2014 illus\u00adtrate the limited effec\u00adtiveness of Germany\u2019s allegedly new Ostpolitik<\/em>. The eventual reper\u00adcus\u00adsions of large-scale energy projects contradict the pacifist claims of the inter\u00adde\u00adpen\u00addence theory usually invoked to justify lucrative business ventures with author\u00adi\u00adtarian states. Not peace, but wars of expansion and escalation of tension in 1979 and 2014 followed the launch of the mammoth energy projects with Moscow in 1970 and 2005.<\/p>\n

The well-known German formula of \u201cAnn\u00e4herung durch Verflechtung\u201d<\/em> (\u201crapprochement through closer ties\u201d) has taken on a meaning in recent years that goes beyond the merely metaphorical. Germany and the Russian sphere of control have meanwhile moved closer together not only econom\u00adi\u00adcally and polit\u00adi\u00adcally, but also geograph\u00adi\u00adcally. The almost fateful accuracy of Berlin\u2019s inter\u00adde\u00adpen\u00addence formula is confirmed by the fact that not only econom\u00adi\u00adcally inter\u00adtwined countries are moving closer together. As practice shows, the reverse conclusion of this law of inter\u00adna\u00adtional relations is also true. Those new gas volumes \u2014 via the Baltic Sea \u2011which since 2011 have brought Germans and Russians ever closer together, are corre\u00adspond\u00adingly lacking for the mainte\u00adnance of Russian-Ukrainian proximity.<\/p>\n

As both inter\u00adde\u00adpen\u00addence theory and the entan\u00adglement formula predict, the devel\u00adopment of economic ties leads not only to more peaceful relation\u00adships between the countries involved. An associated weakening of economic ties with third countries can mean less peace for them. As a result of Germany\u2019s increasing energy inter\u00adde\u00adpen\u00addence with Russia since 2005, the transit states for Siberian gas flows that were simul\u00adta\u00adne\u00adously disen\u00adtangled suffered a recip\u00adrocal alien\u00adation from Moscow. In particular, Ukraine\u2019s economic untying from the Russian Feder\u00adation after completion of the first Nord Stream pipeline in late 2012 led to an increase in tensions between the two countries during 2013. Ultimately, this escalation led to Moscow\u2019s occupation of first southern and then eastern Ukrainian state territory in 2014.<\/p>\n

The relative gain in national security from the Nord Stream projects is small for Germany as a NATO state that is located far away from Russia. In contrast, the equiv\u00adalent reduction of Russia\u2019s depen\u00addence on its former colony and neighbor state Ukraine proved very damaging for the integrity of the latter. The all-European loss of stability as a result of Moscow\u2019s Crimea annex\u00adation and Donbas inter\u00advention in spring 2014 far exceeds the marginal security gains for the EU from the completion of the first Nord Stream pipeline.<\/p>\n

While Merkel bears little respon\u00adsi\u00adbility for the ill-fated Bundestag invitation to Putin in 2001, she is partly to blame for the Nord Stream projects and their conse\u00adquences. Merkel may no longer have been able to prevent the completion of the first Nord Stream pipeline in 2012, if she ever to wanted to. But the start of construction of Nord Stream\u20112 in 2015 is a puzzle and creates an impression of cognitive disso\u00adnance in Berlin. Had the Kremlin not made its inten\u00adtions suffi\u00adciently clear with regard to Ukraine in 2014?<\/p>\n

The double error regarding Georgia in 2008<\/h2>\n

In 2008, Berlin made two further mistakes with regard to Georgia that \u2014 in contrast to the two Nord Stream projects \u2013 have been hardly discussed in Germany. The German signals sent to Moscow at that time were to have far-reaching conse\u00adquences for Russia\u2019s Ukraine policy, as had been the case with the Bundestag\u2019s invitation to Putin in 2001 and the signing of the Nord Stream contract in 2005. Germany\u2019s double snub of Tbilisi within a year added to the impression already created in Moscow that Berlin tacitly respects Russian hegemony in most of the post-Soviet space.<\/p>\n

When Georgia and Ukraine applied for NATO membership in early 2008, they were in different starting positions. In Georgia, more than two-thirds of the population at the time supported the country\u2019s appli\u00adcation. At the same time, in Ukraine, nearly two-thirds still opposed NATO membership \u2013 a Ukrainian attitude that turned around only after the Russian attack in 2014.<\/p>\n

Also, unlike Ukraine at the time, Georgia had not been a fully sovereign state for long in 2008 and had troubled relations with Russia. In the regions of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali \u2014 also known as \u201cSouth Ossetia\u201d \u2014 Moscow had already installed separatist satellite regimes in the 1990s controlling approx\u00adi\u00admately 20 percent of Georgian state territory. (The Ukrainian terri\u00adtories that came under official or de facto Russian control in 2014 are larger than the corre\u00adsponding Georgian areas; but they account for only about 7 percent of Ukrainian state territory in total.)<\/p>\n

Last but not least, prepa\u00adra\u00adtions for NATO membership in Georgia were already advanced in early 2008. They had begun the usual process of reforming a country before joining the alliance. At that time, Kyiv had also already fixed the goal of NATO membership in law, to be sure. In 2003, Ukraine\u2019s Law on the Funda\u00admentals of National Security \u2014 adopted under pro-Russian President Leonid Kuchma and Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych \u2014 stipu\u00adlated not only accession to the EU but also to the Atlantic Alliance as a state goal. However, the corre\u00adsponding trans\u00adfor\u00admation of the Ukrainian army and legis\u00adlation by the time of the NATO Summit in April 2008 lagged behind the results of the impressive Georgian reform successes.<\/p>\n

Against this background, the Bucharest NATO summit marked another unfor\u00adtunate milestone in Western policies towards the post-Soviet area which was largely due to Berlin\u2019s influence in the alliance and was, above all, Merkel\u2019s doing. During the contro\u00adversial internal Western delib\u00ader\u00ada\u00adtions on the alliance\u2019s reaction to the two membership appli\u00adca\u00adtions in the Romanian capital, Berlin could have proposed a differ\u00aden\u00adtiated treatment of the membership appli\u00adca\u00adtions of Georgia and Ukraine, as a compromise. Instead, Germany insisted on a de facto rejection not only of Kyiv\u2019s membership appli\u00adcation but also of Tbilisi\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Georgia\u2019s advanced prepa\u00adration for NATO membership could have been rewarded in 2008 with the start of a so-called Membership Action Plan. This would have brought the country directly under the influence of the West and swiftly into the alliance. In the Georgian accession agreement, the non-government-controlled regions of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali could have been exempted from the Washington Treaty\u2019s mutual assis\u00adtance Article 5, as is the case for special terri\u00adtories of old NATO member states, such as the United States (Guam, Hawaii), the United Kingdom (Falklands), or France (Reunion). Also, a military recon\u00adquest by Tbilisi of the de facto Russian-controlled parts of Georgia could have been ruled out.<\/p>\n

Instead, the NATO member states agreed on a contra\u00addictory compromise formula for the final decla\u00adration of the 2008 Bucharest summit. The alliance did state explicitly that Georgia and Ukraine \u201cwill become members.\u201d However, there was no indication of when or how the officially announced entry of the two post-Soviet states into the alliance would actually occur. It remained unclear on what condi\u00adtions the accession processes of Georgia as well as Ukraine would depend and whether they would proceed in a package or separately. The middle ground the alliance found in 2008 was ultimately worse than an outright and official rejection of Georgia\u2019s and Ukraine\u2019s appli\u00adca\u00adtions would have been. The membership pledges distracted Kyiv and Tbilisi from pursuing other security-enhancing strategies and created a sense of urgency in Moscow.<\/p>\n

The Kremlin inten\u00adsified both its Georgia and Ukraine policies in response to the Bucharest NATO summit. While Moscow still had suffi\u00adcient levers of domestic political influence in Ukraine at the time, Georgian domestic politics was already largely autonomous. Therefore, in early summer 2008, Putin thawed the frozen conflict in the Tskhinvali region, provoking a hasty response from then President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili and the Russian-Georgian Five-Day War. The Russian invasion of Georgia was ended by the so-called Sarkozy Plan. In the EU-brokered cease-fire agreement, Russia committed in mid-August 2008 to withdraw the regular troops it had stationed in the Tskhinvali and Abkhaz regions during previous week.<\/p>\n

However, in the following weeks, months and eventually years, the Kremlin repeated regarding Georgia the pattern of behavior described earlier towards Moldova. As in the case of the bilateral and multi\u00adlateral documents signed by Russia regarding Transnistria in the 1990s, Moscow did not implement the Sarkozy Plan of 2008. In violation of the treaty, Russia left its troops on Georgian territory.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the Kremlin trans\u00adformed the two Georgian separatist regions into the pseudo-states of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Unlike the so-called \u201cPridne\u00adstrovian Moldavian Republic\u201d (and later the \u201cLugansk\u201d and \u201cDonetsk People\u2019s Republics\u201d), Russia even recog\u00adnized its two satellite regimes on Georgian territory as independent countries; the two quasi-states were also recog\u00adnized by Venezuela, Nicaragua, Nauru, Syria, and Vanuatu. With Moscow\u2019s official confir\u00admation of the statehood of the Russian artificial entities in northern Georgia, the Kremlin went beyond its previous neigh\u00adborhood policy and entered new territory in its foreign policy and inter\u00adpre\u00adtation of inter\u00adna\u00adtional law.<\/p>\n

Had a NATO Membership Action Plan begun with Georgia in April 2008 and the country been admitted to the alliance by August 2008, both Moscow and Tbilisi would have behaved differ\u00adently in the summer of that year. The Kremlin\u2019s risk calcu\u00adlation regarding a NATO accession candidate or member state would have been different. It is likely that the Kremlin\u2019s approach to Georgia would have instead aligned with its patterns of behavior toward the Baltic republics. The Georgian leadership, in turn, would also have been in a different behav\u00adioral mode during an ongoing accession process with NATO or after obtaining membership in the alliance; such a context would have limited Tbilisi\u2019s reaction radius regarding Russian provocations.<\/p>\n

Instead, NATO \u2014 largely at the insti\u00adgation of Berlin \u2014 sent a risky signal to the Kremlin in April 2008. According to the implicit German message, even elementary security interests of Russia\u2019s neighbors who are pro-Western but not integrated with the West are secondary to the Kremlin\u2019s prefer\u00adences. With its Georgia policy in 2008, Merkel\u2019s government reaffirmed an impression that Berlin had already left on Moscow in 2001 under Schr\u00f6der with its neglect of Moldovan security interests. For Putin & co., this \u2014 it can be assumed \u2014 estab\u00adlished a pattern of reassuring conti\u00adnuity in Germany\u2019s eastern policy behavior under different governments.<\/p>\n

Worse, Moscow\u2019s manifest violation of the Sarkozy plan and military dismem\u00adberment of Georgia into three states officially recog\u00adnized by Russia remained without conse\u00adquences for the Kremlin. Brussels lifted the slight European sanctions imposed to punish Russia for its war in the North Caucasus. The EU continued its negoti\u00ada\u00adtions of a new cooper\u00adation treaty with Russia, which had been inter\u00adrupted in August 2008.<\/p>\n

Germany went even further. At the 8th<\/sup> St. Petersburg Dialogue conference from September 30 to October 3, 2008 \u2014 i.e. only a few weeks after the Russian-Georgian war and shortly after Moscow\u2019s recog\u00adnition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia \u2014 a \u201cJoint Decla\u00adration of the Petersburg Dialogue on Shaping the Partnership for Modern\u00adization\u201d was signed by the Chair of the German Steering Committee of this bilateral organi\u00adzation, Lothar de Maizi\u00e8re, and the Deputy Chair, Liudmila Verbit\u00adskaia, the Rector of St. Petersburg University, (Putin\u2019s alma mater). In 2010, the initially German project of a so-called Modern\u00adization Partnership with Russia was adopted by the EU and subse\u00adquently many member states.<\/p>\n

Curiously, after Russia\u2019s invasion, bombing and dismem\u00adberment of Georgia, relations between Berlin and Brussels, on the one hand, and Moscow, on the other, did not cool down but warmed up. Of course, the German and other Western European advances toward the Kremlin did not contain any explicitly affir\u00admative signals regarding Russia\u2019s viola\u00adtions of inter\u00adna\u00adtional law and human rights in Moldova, Chechnya or Georgia. On the contrary, both Berlin\u2019s and the EU\u2019s so-called Strategic and Modern\u00adization Partner\u00adships with Moscow officially aimed to bring Russia closer to Europe in normative terms by means of positive political after-effects of an economic rapprochement.<\/p>\n

However, as we now know Berlin\u2019s noble inten\u00adtions and strategic calcu\u00adla\u00adtions were misguided. From the outset, they could not make good the high costs of Germany\u2019s rapprochement and inter\u00adde\u00adpen\u00addence strategy vis-\u00e0-vis Russia. The tacit neglect of elementary interests of small successor states of the USSR, such as the Republics of Moldova and Georgia, and implicit acqui\u00ades\u00adcence to the Kremlin\u2019s increasing under\u00admining of principles of inter\u00adna\u00adtional law in the post-Soviet space could not have ended well. German and European forbearance toward Russia\u2019s behavior on the Dniester and in both the North and South Caucasus have borne no fruit in either domestic or foreign policy terms. While Berlin appar\u00adently thought to promote a pro-Western change of direction in Moscow through its continued willingness to cooperate, the opposite has been the result.<\/p>\n

Ukraine as an aftermath<\/h2>\n

Russia\u2019s annex\u00adation of Crimea and inter\u00advention in eastern Ukraine in 2014 appear to many observers as unprece\u00addented aberra\u00adtions in the course of East European geopol\u00aditics after the end of the Cold War. In fact, these devel\u00adop\u00adments were mere contin\u00adu\u00ada\u00adtions of existing trends. In some respects, they were logical outcomes of earlier domestic political dynamics within Russia, their reper\u00adcussion for Moscow\u2019s foreign affairs, and inappro\u00adpriate Western responses. With Merkel\u2019s assumption of the chancel\u00adlorship in 2005, Germany had, what seemed at the time, an ideal occupant in its highest office of government to respond adequately to the new challenges in Eastern Europe after Putin had come to power in 1999.<\/p>\n

As it gradually became clear, however, the new chancellor was unwilling or unable to abandon the track Germany had taken in its Russia policy under Gerhard Schr\u00f6der. Merkel\u2019s diplo\u00admatic engagement in Eastern Europe was partic\u00adu\u00adlarly notable in 2014\u20132015. It may be thanks to Merkel that Putin did not push deeper into Ukrainian territory at that time. However, the need for a paradigm shift in Germany\u2019s Russia policy, which was obvious in 2014, failed to materi\u00adalize \u2013 a sad fact that became manifest with the start of the Nord Stream 2 project in 2015.<\/p>\n

That Merkel, despite her high level of compe\u00adtence and obvious disap\u00adpointment with Putin, was unable or unwilling to make the long overdue shift in German Ostpolitik<\/em> away from Schr\u00f6der\u2019s approach toward the Kremlin is depressing. Instead, Berlin\u2019s mode of behavior toward Russia\u2019s author\u00adi\u00adtarian regime remains charac\u00adterized by the fateful decisions of a man who is a political friend of Putin and has been an official employee of the Russian state since 2005. Perhaps, the Eastern European and Caucasian blood toll will have to rise further in order for Berlin to turn away from this position.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> A variety of conflicting comments on Germany\u2019s Ostpolitik <\/em>during Merkel\u2019s first three terms as Federal Chancellor, on which I focus here, have been published over the years. See, among many other contri\u00adbu\u00adtions, the following state\u00adments: Rahr, Alexander: Germany and Russia. A Special Relationship, in: Washington Quarterly, <\/em>vol. 30, no. 2, 2007, pp. 137\u2013145; Chivvis, Christopher, Rid, Thomas: The Roots of Germany\u2019s Russia Policy, in: Survival, <\/em>vol. 51, no. 2, 2009, pp. 105\u2013122; Szabo, Stephen: Can Berlin and Washington Agree on Russia? In: Washington Quarterly, <\/em>vol. 32, no. 4, 2009, pp. 23\u201341; Stelzen\u00admuller, Constanze: Germany\u2019s Russia Question, in: Foreign Affairs, <\/em>vol. 88, no. 1, 2009, pp. 89\u2013100; Timmins, Graham: German-Russian Bilateral Relations and EU Policy on Russia. Between Normal\u00adization and the \u201cMulti\u00adlateral Reflex,\u201d in: Journal of Contem\u00adporary European Studies, <\/em>vol. 19, no. 2, 2011, pp. 189\u2013199; Heinemann-Gr\u00fcder, Andreas: Wandel statt Anbiederung. Deutsche Russland\u00adpolitik auf dem Pr\u00fcfstand, in: Osteuropa, <\/em>vol. 63, no. 7, 2013, pp. 179\u2013223; Mischke, Jakob, Umland, Andreas: Germany\u2019s New Ostpolitik. An Old Foreign Policy Doctrine Gets a Makeover, in: Foreign Affairs<\/em>, April 9, 2014, https:\/\/www.foreignaffairs.com\/articles\/western-europe\/2014\u201304-09\/germanys-new-Ostpolitik<\/a>; Frosberg, Tuomas: From Ostpolitik to \u201cFrost\u00adpolitik\u201d? Merkel, Putin and German Foreign Policy toward Russia, in: Inter\u00adna\u00adtional Affairs, <\/em>vol. 92, no. 1, 2016, pp. 21\u201342.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> In fact, there was, in 2001, a second case on the territory of Georgia where the legality of a Russian military base in Abkhazia was similarly questionable. See Vladimir Socor, \u201cRussia\u2019s Retention of Gudauta Base \u2013 An Unful\u00adfilled CFE Treaty Commitment,\u201d Eurasia Daily Monitor<\/em> 3 (99), 22 May 2006, jamestown.org\/program\/russias-retention-of-gudauta-base-an-unfulfilled-cfe-treaty-commitment\/.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Yuri Felshtinsky and Alexander Litvi\u00adnenko, Blowing Up Russia: The Secret Plot to Bring Back KGB Terror<\/em> (New York, NY: Encounter Books, 2007); Yuri Felshtinsky and Vladimir Pribylovsky, The Corpo\u00adration: Russia and the KGB in the Age of President Putin<\/em> (New York, NY: Encounter Books, 2007); John B. Dunlop, The Moscow Bombings of September 1999: Exami\u00adna\u00adtions of Russian Terrorist Attacks at the Onset of Vladimir Putin\u2019s Rule<\/em> (Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag, 2014); David Satter, The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep: Russia\u2019s Road to Terror and Dicta\u00adtorship under Yeltsin and Putin<\/em> (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016).<\/p>\n

\n

Andreas Umland, Dr. phil., Ph. D., is a Research Fellow at the Stockholm Center for Eastern European Studies (SCEEUS) of the Swedish Institute of Inter\u00adna\u00adtional Affairs, a Senior Expert at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future, an Associate Professor of Political Science at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, and the General Editor of the book series \u201cSoviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society\u201d published by ibidem-Verlag Stuttgart.<\/em><\/p>\n

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