© REUTERS/Costas Baltas

Late last week, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier visited Kalamata, the southern city of Greece best known for its olives. He was invited by Greece’s President Prokopis Pavlopoulos, a proud Kalamatan himself; they toured the nearby archeological site of Messene, one of the best-preserved ancient cities in the world, and Steinmeier received Kalamata’s golden key from the mayor.

The city’s left wing parties, however, are strongly against such niceties toward German officials, and they made their voices heard ahead of Steinmeier’s arrival. They are calling for Germany to pay Greece World War II reparations, and it’s a demand the Greek government has taken up as well, again.

On the first day of Steinmeier’s visit to Greece, both Pavlopoulos and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras told the press—in front of Steinmeier—that Germany must pay reparations to Greece for WWII atrocities.

Tsipras said that the differences between the two countries shouldn’t be swept under the rug but resolved, according to international law.

Under the Nazi occupation of Greece, some 300,000 people perished–around 10 percent of the population at the time. Greek Jews were eradicated. The country’s infrastructure was destroyed and archeological treasures stolen. In Kalamata itself, Nazis rounded up some 520 men on February 8, 1944 and killed them, secretly burying their bodies on the outskirts of the city; families only found out about the mass grave days later. The World War was later followed by a civil war and it took decades for the country to recover.

For all these reasons, there has been a long-simmering debate in Greece on whether the country should take Germany to court.

Steinmeier, blinking in front of the press, apologized for the Nazi atrocities but didn’t comment on the reparations. An answer had already been given by Angela Merkel the previous week, when she denied that any discussions would commence.

Old Resentments and Politics

The awkward dance is nothing new for these two governments. In 2015, when Tsipras’ left-wing Syriza was first elected, a reparations committee was set up in parliament. The committee produced a report in 2016 with Greek claims totaling more than 270 billion euros, including reparations for victims’ family members, for the destruction of the country’s infrastructure, and for the 476-million-Reichsmark loan that the Nazi regime forced the Greek Central Bank to hand over.

Since he started the negotiations on the third bailout, Tsipras hadn’t brought up the reparations issue –until now, that is, and for an important reason: Greece exited the eurozone’s final bailout program in August. Yet the country is still crippled after nearly nine years of a debt crisis that saw the economy contract by more than 40 percent.

Athens might also be taking advantage of deep-seated resentment towards Berlin, a chief driver of stringent austerity measures during the crisis; many Greeks believe that policy has prolonged the crisis and sent thousands of people tumbling below the poverty line.

The Germans are fixed in their position, however. Berlin claims that after the Two-plus-Four agreement struck between East and West Germany and co-signed by France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States, no further war reparations would be made against Berlin. The Greeks, on the other hand, say they never signed such an agreement.

If Greece’s government wanted to push the matter now, however, a decision by the country’s Supreme Court would give Athens a bargaining chip. According to the decision, any German government property in Greece should be confiscated and given to the survivors of the Distomo massacre, where the SS killed more than 214 people in the village of Distomo, in retaliation for an attack by the resistance movement. If the justice minister were to sign the court’s decision, it would become binding. But no minister until now has dared to do so.

Whether the Greek government is earnestly trying to take advantage of the country’s momentum after exiting the bailouts, or if it’s just trying to cash in votes for next year’s national elections, is not yet clear. Europe, and in turn Germany, still holds immense political and economic power over Greece, even post-bailout: Athens is still paying back its massive debt, and whatever the government does has to be approved by its creditors.  If Greece stays on a hardline course to seek reparations, the situation could escalate.

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© REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

Remember the Austrian presidential election a few months ago? The excitement, the tension, the rush of international media? The fear of a right-wing nationalist entering the country’s highest office?

Not so here. When Germany’s former Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was elected to the office of Federal President on February 12, things went exactly as planned. The day was as uneventful as if populism had never happened.

The difference is not in the office – in Germany, the president has as little power as in Austria. But in Germany, with its experience of the Weimar Republic and its last President Paul von Hindenburg, there is no direct election. Even more importantly, Germany’s solid economic growth has been protected it relatively well against the wave of populism sweeping the world.

This year, France’s presidential elections may bring Marine Le Pen, leader of the nationalist and xenophobic Front National, to power. In the Netherlands, which will also be holding elections this spring, Geert de Wilders’ Freedom Party is expected to come in first. Italy, where elections are expected for June, may sweep in Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement.

In contrast, the Alternative für Deutschland – an unpleasantly nationalist and revisionist movement – is stuck between 10 and 15 percent, and riven by leadership struggles. Neither of the two politicians who have a chance of being elected in September will have the least little bit to do with the AfD.

Angela Merkel, the incumbent, is the epitome of sobriety and common sense, and as far away from populism as one can get. Martin Schulz, the Social Democratic candidate, is more direct and aggressive, but his politics are liberal and pro-European. Whoever wins the next elections will not bring any dramatic change of policy to this key country.

It seems fitting, then, that Steinmeier’s election was a grand celebration by the country’s political establishment. After attending an ecumenical service, 1,260 electors in their Sunday best – mostly members of the Bundestag and the state parliaments – crowded into the Reichstag.

To add color, there were also a few celebrities. German national football trainer Joachim Löw was there, the television actress Veronica Ferres, publisher Friede Springer, and Olivia Jones, a drag queen and political activist nominated by the Greens. With her bright orange hair, Jones was the day’s most popular photo motif, easily eclipsing the new president.

Steinmeier, 61, is smart, personable, and well-spoken. He served as head of the chancellery under Gerhard Schröder and twice as foreign minister under Angela Merkel. He is thoroughly decent and reliable, and according to a weekend poll, 59 percent of Germans believe he will make a fine president.

There is one thing Steinmeier, however, is not: he is not exciting. In 2009, he ran as the Social Democrat’s candidate for chancellor against Merkel and lost. Some blamed his lack of charisma and pugnaciousness. Then again, Steinmeier was neither the first nor the last man to have lost out to Merkel over the course of her career.

Herald of Merkel’s Defeat?

In a twist of history, it is his election now which may herald Merkel’s defeat in the parliamentary elections later this year. According to this country’s political lore, presidential elections have often foreshadowed changes in government. Merkel’s political bloc – her own Christian Democratic Party and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Party – is still unhappy that in 2015, she opened the borders to nearly a million refugees.

That grumbling increased when late last year Merkel could not find anybody from her own Christian Democratic party to stand for president. Even though the Social Democrats are only the junior partners in her government coalition, she ended up agreeing to their choice, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Then such a choice may have seemed relatively harmless to Merkel. After all, Social Democrats, due to a thoroughly unpopular leader, were stuck at the bottom of the polls. Since then, however, the party has selected a new candidate. Martin Schulz, former president of the European Parliament, has had remarkable success in reviving the Social Democrats’ fortune and self-confidence.

Now Schulz is flying high in the polls – and his party is catching up as well. From 21 percent, the SPD has jumped to 33 percent, the party’s best rating in a decade.

Of course, it is still early days, and the “Schulz Effect”, as it is known, may collapse before long. In the meantime, however, a number of Christian Democrats are losing faith in Merkel. Steinmeier still won the presidency by a wide margin, but more than a hundred abstentions and some extra votes for the AfD’s candidate reflect some serious doubts inside Merkel’s own bloc.

“No, we aren’t living on an island of the blessed,” Steinmeier said in his acceptance speech. Yet in comparison to other countries, German politics are still pretty tame.

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Germany’s Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier caused consternation 
when he criticized a NATO exercise long in the making. His party, the SPD, seems to be testing out whether foreign policy could be an election winner.

© REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is used to surprises. But on the weekend before the Brexit vote, she read a headline that even she did not see coming: her foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, complained in a newspaper interview about NATO’s “saber-rattling” and “war cries” on Russia’s border.

The word choice might not have been out of place in a Kremlin press release. But this was Merkel’s top diplomat criticizing a set of long-planned, multilateral military exercises in Poland and the Baltics in which Germany played a leading role. In Berlin, the corridors of power erupted in chatter over Steinmeier’s unexpected remarks just three weeks before a crucial NATO summit.

Colleagues from Steinmeier’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) sprang to his defense, repeating peace mantras from the days of party legend Willy Brandt, who as West German chancellor pushed detente with the Soviet Union through his Ostpolitik. Words of support echoed from the opposition Greens and Left Party. To top things off, news trickled out that Sigmar Gabriel, who wears the hats of vice chancellor, economy minister, and SPD chief, was planning his second trip to see Russian President Vladimir Putin in less than a year.

Merkel, a Christian Democrat (CDU), and Steinmeier, have a curious division of labor in their coalition government: the chancellor sets foreign policy while her foreign minister busies himself with daily diplomacy. Merkel, not Steinmeier, owns the Minsk peace process in eastern Ukraine, and she was the mastermind behind a controversial deal with Turkey on sending back boat people washing up onto Greece’s shores. Steinmeier seems more interested in analyzing how his own ministry works than making bold initiatives.

That is what made Steinmeier’s criticism of NATO so unusual — and indicated that it had more to do with party politicking than a new direction in German foreign policy. The CDU’s junior partner in the second “grand coalition” since 2005, Social Democrats have struggled to be seen as anything more than Merkel’s little helpers. Voters punished the SPD in recent regional elections, and Germany’s storied workersʼ party is now hovering just above the twenty percent-mark in national polls.

Looming Elections

With the next general elections due in September 2017, the most likely way the SPD could break out of the CDU’s embrace is by heading a “red-red-green” coalition with the Left Party and Greens. Cue the SPD’s most popular politician to use Cold War language the party faithful will recognize. According to a recent poll, 58 percent of Germans think Steinmeier would make a good SPD candidate for chancellor next year, while only 31 percent believe the same about party chief Gabriel.

On the surface, Steinmeier’s jab at NATO looks like the handiwork of Gabriel, who is under increasing pressure within the party to start working miracles. But on closer examination, the renewed calls for rapprochement with the Kremlin two years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine bear the fingerprints of former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who still pulls considerable weight inside the SPD. Steinmeier started his political career as an aide to Schröder, then premier of Lower Saxony, and followed him into the Federal Chancellery as chief of staff. Gabriel filled the premier’s seat in Lower Saxony before moving into national politics.

Schröder has largely vanished from public life after reaping scorn for his undying friendship with Putin and his job at Nord Stream, a Russian pipeline project he had advocated as chancellor. But on the same weekend that German tabloid Bild printed Steinmeier’s “saber-rattling” comments, the Munich daily Süddeutsche Zeitung ran a rare interview with Schröder. Seventy-five years after the Nazis’ attack on the Soviet Union, Schröder said, it was a mistake to station additional NATO troops in Eastern Europe. “We Germans have a special responsibility toward Russia,” he said. Willy Brandt’s success in bringing redemption to Germany via Ostpolitik shouldn’t be “gambled away.”

Schröder’s comments are not really surprising; they reflect SPD orthodoxy since 1989. Germany’s Social Democrats have largely attributed the fall of the Berlin Wall to Ostpolitik, which established the economic ties that made the later political transformation of the Soviet bloc possible. Brandt’s contribution was undeniably outsized. But the fact that today’s SPD can only recycle a forty-year-old policy in response to the new challenges posed by Putin’s Russia shows that the party leadership is stuck in the past.

Willful Misreading

Brandt’s legacy is preventing his political heirs from thinking big and new. In a speech delivered in late June, Steinmeier lauded Germany’s ability to understand other nations and questioned why the term Russland-Versteher — someone who understands Russia — had become an insult. It is hard to say whether the foreign minister was being disingenuous or naive. Schröder’s defense of the Kremlin does not stem from any profound knowledge of Russia as much as a willful misreading of the nasty nature of Putin’s regime.

In the speech, Steinmeier called Germany an “honest broker,” basking in a Swiss-style neutrality that was appropriate in the decades after World War II. Russia and Syria have become so difficult to deal with not because other Western powers are unwilling to sit down and talk, but because Moscow and Damascus make no bones about putting military solutions before political ones.

In an article in Foreign Affairs, Steinmeier had the opportunity to tell the world what to expect from Berlin after spending more than a year on an internal review of German foreign policy. Instead, he soberly described the sad state of the world and explained why Germany sees itself as a “reflective power” focused on “restraint, deliberation, and peaceful negotiation.” There’s nothing wrong with Steinmeier’s analysis, it’s just that a German foreign minister should be proposing a plan of action – or, at the very least, a list of priorities.

“Germans do not believe that talking at roundtables solves every problem, but neither do they think that shooting does,” Steinmeier wrote. This kind of binary worldview inevitably forces him to choose “dialogue.” Even more wishy-washy was his conclusion: “Germany will be a responsible, restrained, and reflective leader, guided in chief by its European instincts.”

Steinmeier is wrong: Germany should be guided by human beings of sound mind. The Brexit vote showed that instincts are an unreliable guide, and that the commitment to European ideals is a conscious decision grounded in history and rationality.

Lessons of Brexit

Ironically, Brexit will also make Berlin even more important in determining Europe’s direction as London’s influence evaporates. At the same time, Germany needs the EU more than ever, because without the clout of the 27-member union, it becomes just another middling power.

On Brexit, as on Russia, Steinmeier went his own way without consulting Merkel. The day after the referendum, he invited his colleagues from the five other founding EU member states to Berlin — in line with Schröder’s concept of a “two-speed” Europe. Ignoring the SPD’s calls for a swift British departure from the EU to prevent the Brexit contagion from spreading to other countries, Merkel voiced support for a measured response so as not to hurt one of Germany’s most important trading partners.

The SPD could well take a lesson from British politicians, who by trying to play domestic politics on the back of foreign policy turned a storm in a teacup into an international crisis.

Read more in the Berlin Policy Journal App – July/August 2016 issue.

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(c) Mykola Lazarenko/Handout via REUTERS

After years of a “partnership,” Berlin and Moscow are back in “crisis mode.” It is the third phase of German-Russian relations since protests in Kiev began during the winter of 2013-14. By fall of 2014, recognition sets in that the conflict is not going to blow over in a few weeks – the West has to settle in for the long haul, a point that Merkel acknowledges in demanding “strategic patience” in the West’s dealings with Russia and Ukraine.

After the annexation of Crimea, Berlin’s determination surprises Moscow. Yet it takes until November 2014 for a serious debate to begin over how long-term concepts of Germany’s relations with Russia need to change given this breach of trust. The Chancellery and the Federal Foreign Office both see previous ideas on security, political, economic, and even societal cooperation with Russia as outdated.

Russia, until recently a partner, has become an adversary, and not only in the conflict in Ukraine, which increasingly is seen as and called a “war.” Russia has become an opponent of the West itself. And there is more: The Russian leadership suddenly went from an uncomfortable proximity with Europe’s left- and right-wing populist, anti-EU parties to full interference in the internal politics of EU member states. Germany’s ruling coalition of Merkel’s conservative CDU and the Social Democrats (SPD) of Steinmeier and Economics Minister Sigmar Gabriel agrees: Russia is now defining its foreign policy interests not in alignment with Europe’s, but in opposition.

For several reasons, the driving force for such a shift in Berlin is the Federal Foreign Office. Time and again, Foreign Minister Steinmeier has suffered setbacks over Putin’s handling of the Ukraine crisis. During the negotiations to form Merkel’s third government in autumn 2013, Steinmeier had clung onto his “modernizing partnership” approach. One year on he no longer harbors illusions. A different framework for German foreign diplomacy is needed.

Successful and sustained cooperation with Russia on international problems, such as nuclear negotiations with Iran, is not enough on its own. Work with Russia in fora and organizations like the NATO-Russia Council and the Council of Europe – which were believed to be effective in bridging the gaps between East and West – has collapsed. In Merkel’s Chancellery, interest grows in a new, long-term line of argument: The German government must equip itself for the 2015 EU debate over the extension of Russia sanctions, originally imposed for a single year. It must be made clear to EU partners that even though hope for future cooperation with Russia has not been lost, sanctions remain essential until the situation improves.

Finding a new concept is also crucial for Steinmeier in his role as leading SPD politician. Germany’s Social Democrats not only experienced the crumbling of their Russia policy in 2014. The party also struggles with the (not entirely welcome) input of its previous leaders. Former Chancellors Gerhard Schröder and Helmut Schmidt, even Willy Brandt’s Security Adviser Egon Bahr publicly voice their “Putinversteher”-views on the Russia debate. These are out of tune with Steinmeier’s recent experiences of Russian behavior in Ukraine. As the SPD has seen itself as the guardian of German Russia policy since Brandt’s Ostpolitik, Steinmeier and Gabriel consider it essential to stake out a new position for intra-party debate.

On November 16 Steinmeier suggests to further trade between the EU and the Moscow-driven Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). He hones in on Putin’s remarks at the end of October, when the Russian president requested further dialogue between these organizations. Three days later, at the 17th German-Polish Forum in Berlin, Steinmeier stresses, “There is a consensus in the crisis among EU foreign ministers that Europe’s long-lasting security is only conceivable with Russia, not against it. For that we need conversations … and we need venues – something like the Council of the Baltic Sea States, or an exchange between the EU and the Russia-founded EEU, and of course the OSCE.” A few weeks later, during a discussion with students in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg on December 9 Steinmeier again emphasizes the necessity of cooperation. He makes clear that this should be a part of a greater conceptual framework in a December 14 letter to an SPD party colleague: “As Social Democrats we must confirm the basic concepts of our Ostpolitik under these new and more strenuous conditions.”

He is not alone in this approach – four days later at the EU summit Merkel advocates the introduction of a free trade zone between the EU and the EEU: “Indeed, we have nothing against working together with Russia, with Kazakhstan, with Belarus on a large common economic area, and I believe that with appropriate progress in the course of the Minsk agreement we can keep that goal in sight.”

But closer cooperation with Russia will depend upon developments in eastern Ukraine. Even discussing closer cooperation is only possible thanks to a perceived relative quiet in eastern Ukraine at the time. Pro-Russian separatists do make further territorial gains, but these are mainly unnoticed by the broader western European public. With the Ukraine conflict knocked off the top of news broadcasts, voices in the German public grow louder to “offer something to the Russians.”

During the World Economic Forum in Davos, the debate over an “offering to Putin” dominated the media. When Merkel and Gabriel repeat their suggestion for a common free trade zone as a long-term vision, it too generates much media coverage.

Back in Crisis Mode, January 24-30

Yet events again intervene – the search for long-term cooperation is dramatically interrupted on January 24 by a rocket attack in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol. Attributed to pro-Russian separatists, it kills more than 30 people. Perceptions of the conflict become more acute, not just in the public mind, but also among political actors. Western intelligence had already reported a massive secret operation supplying separatists with modern equipment from Russia. Berlin increasingly gets the impression that the relative quiet since Christmas was no more than preparation for a new offensive. The attack on Mariupol in particular revives previous fears that separatists could, under Russian leadership, seize enough territory along the Black Sea coast to create land access to the Crimean Peninsula, which remains difficult to supply. Putin himself used the term “New Russia” (Novorossiya) in April 2014 among Russian nationalists to refer to the Black Sea coast as far as Odessa.

That fear is heightened by a massive attack by separatists on the Debaltseve railway junction between Donetsk and Luhansk. The size of the attack on the several thousand-strong Ukrainian force assembled there alarms the German government. In the EU the question of stronger sanctions return to the agenda; proponents of a softer approach, among them Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, now have trouble making their case. The United States openly accuses the separatists and Russia of seeking territorial gains in the Ukraine. In Washington, a serious discussion starts about supplying weapons to Ukraine.

On January 29 the EU foreign ministers – including their new Greek colleague – decide to extend by six months the visa and banking restrictions imposed in March 2014 on pro-Russian separatists and Russians connected with Crimean annexation. They also consider further sanctions and ask the EU Commission and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini to compose a list with more candidates for visa and account restrictions.

Dramatic Diplomacy, January 30-February 12

One of the most dramatic diplomatic phases of the crisis begins on the weekend of January 30. Military action, with separatist attacks on 80 Ukrainian army positions, becomes so intense the German government fears an open war in the east. At the same time, behind the scenes, the Russian government makes suggestions to resolve the crisis – suggestions completely unacceptable to Ukraine and the Europeans. It prompts a hectic bout of telephone diplomacy with dozens of discussions on the highest levels, led by Merkel and Hollande and including Presidents Obama, Poroshenko, and Putin.

Top German and French diplomats work on responses to Ukraine and Russia. On the evening of February 3, Merkel and Steinmeier and their closest advisers hold a long session. The chancellor also phones the Russian president. On February 4 the idea to start a diplomatic mission led by Merkel and Hollande starts taking shape, underlining the severity of the situation. The first priority seems to be to prevent further territorial gains by the separatists south-east of Mariupol and avoid a complete debacle for the Ukrainian army in Debaltseve. The September Minsk agreement remains the necessary basis for a renewed ceasefire, even if details need changing to take into account the separatists having since conquered more than a hundred square kilometers. In the background Merkel’s Foreign Policy Adviser Christoph Heusgen, Steinmeier’s State Secretary Markus Ederer, and Foreign Office Political Director Hans-Dieter Lucas race between Paris, Moscow, Berlin, and Kiev to explore which “adjustments” Kiev might accept, to enable ceasefire negotiations to begin. Poroshenko and Putin also talk at length on the phone on February 3 and 4.

Washington’s role remains ambivalent. On February 4, US Secretary of State John Kerry stops in Minsk and is informed of the united European effort. Yet both Merkel and Steinmeier regard the American debate over delivering weapons as unhelpful to their efforts. They fear it might raise false hopes within the Ukrainian government and reduce the potential for compromise.

On Thursday, February 5, Merkel and Hollande fly to Kiev – and then on to Moscow; a plan to which previously only a small circle has been privy to, including EU high representative Mogherini and EU Council President Donald Tusk. At the same time, Steinmeier visits Warsaw and Riga to inaugurate the Latvian EU Council presidency. Latvia and Poland are the EU members closest to Ukraine, and Steinmeier aims to clarify the current diplomatic approach. The hope is to avoid the impression that Ukraine is being coerced to concede its territorial claims in eastern Ukraine.

The talks between Merkel, Hollande, and Putin in Moscow on Friday, February 6 last four hours. The German-French duo stress that there will not be any rupture in the trans-Atlantic alliance even if the US were to deliver weapons to Ukraine over European objections. The message is twofold: Putin may be better off making an agreement over Ukraine under the mediation of the Europeans. And the repeated offers of establishing a Russo-EU free trade zone should not be misunderstood: Europe and the US would not be divided over the conflict.

On Saturday, February 7, Merkel and Poroshenko meet US Vice President Joe Biden at the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference and brief him on their discussions. The next day during a phone conference in “Normandy format” (France, Germany, Ukraine, and Russia) they arrange a summit in Minsk for the following Wednesday. Representatives of the “Trilateral group” – Russia, Ukraine, and pro-Russian separatists – are to join the meeting. After Merkel gets assurance by President Barack Obama that the US would back the European-led negotiations, February 12 sees the agreement of a 48-hour truce. It includes concrete implementation plans – complete with deadlines – for the essential points of the Minsk agreement.

During this period it becomes clear that the various levels of response – short-term crisis management, medium-term planning, and long-term consideration – must all be pursued simultaneously. Back on February 5, NATO’s foreign ministers had resolved to strengthen the rapid response force for eastern Europe to reassure increasingly uneasy eastern NATO and EU partners. In western capitals, efforts are also made to push back against the Russian “information war.” On February 16, in response to the earlier shelling of Mariupol and in spite of the Minsk agreement, 19 additional separatists and Russians are added to the EU sanctions list.

Agreement of the Minsk implementation treaty (“Minsk II”) affords little respite to the exhausted diplomats – it immediately becomes apparent that Putin’s request to delay the ceasefire for 60 hours was a ploy to give the separatists time to seize the crucial rail junction of Debaltseve. In marathon telephone conversations, Merkel, Hollande, their foreign ministers, and their advisers nevertheless convince Kiev, Moscow, and the separatists to keep to the agreement.

On the European side, the tone changes to a cautious optimism. In the coming weeks a trans-Atlantic discrepancy emerges as some American generals underline their concerns that the ceasefire will be exploited by the Russian side to resupply forces so they can later march on Mariupol. But Germany’s statements stress minor progress in implementation of the Minsk agreement.

Thoughts on New Concepts

Despite the massive efforts demanded by the management of the immediate crisis, efforts to develop long-term concepts for dealing with Russia have continued. In January, the German government decides to establish a new Russia and Eastern Europe research institute. Steinmeier wants new policies to be grounded in an improved understanding of social, economic, and political developments in Russia and post-Soviet countries.
And again, Moscow is offered incentives to work with the EU, particularly in light of Russian economic troubles ­– a result not so much of Western sanctions, but of low oil and gas prices. In their conversations with the Russian government, the Germans and French insist that a new gas agreement with Ukraine and adjustments to the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement must be addressed in the first half of 2015. Indeed, Merkel explicitly emphasized on February 2 that she wants Russia to remain Europe’s energy provider, even as countries like Ukraine have turned away from Russian energy with surprising speed, threatening Russian gas provider Gazprom with the loss of important markets.

Steinmeier uses the Munich Security Conference to stress that the development of new concepts for dealing with Russia continue – necessarily so, despite the crisis. The relationship with Russia must be built on new foundations – even as the trust of ten years ago is now destroyed. His speech included this core section: “Germany has a particular responsibility for Europe’s security. That means that we must think beyond the current conflict in eastern Ukraine. I don’t mean that in the sense of going back to how things were – that won’t happen and it would be an illusion, a dangerous one at that. What I mean is that if we’re able to de-escalate and resolve the critical conflict, how do we then want to re-incorporate Russia into a European security architecture after trust has undoubtedly been lost. … And this is why what I am saying now is also a call to Russia to tell us what kind of contributions they want to make, what they want to contribute in order to bring about a security architecture that is beneficial to all of us.”

The same day, February 8, Steinmeier’s party leadership committee publishes a paper that refers back to Brandt’s Ostpolitik while aiming to point the way forward: “The EU and Germany cannot give up on a European Russia. Our goal remains the integration of Russia in the broader European political, economic, and security structure,” it says. “We should be aware of the opportunities that a trade policy initiative offers for conversations between the EU and the recently founded Eurasian Economic Union. This project shows an opportunity for equal partnership in the future.” Of course, respect for the democratic rights of self-determination of Ukraine and other countries of the eastern neighborhood of the EU is a prerequisite for such partnership. The goal is a common trade area “in which, beside the EU and the Eurasian Economic Union, all countries would be able to take part.”

On February 12 Merkel, Hollande, Poroshenko, and Putin sign a general declaration in Minsk saying: “The national leaders and heads of government commit to an unchanged vision of a united humanitarian and economic space from the Atlantic to the Pacific on the foundation of full respect for civil rights and the principles of the OSCE.” At the following EU summit, all 28 member states support the agreement. Meanwhile, Moscow continues to receive signals that further cooperation is wanted – if and when basic framework conditions are met. Steinmeier says in a March 5 interview with the German daily Handelsblatt: “I do not want Europe to be permanently walled off from Russia. Even if a political solution takes many years, possibly even a decade, we must do everything in our power to solve the conflict.”

Yet in Berlin talk of cooperating with the Eurasian Union is quieting down – partly due to the reticence of Eastern European countries who think little of the inclusion of Russia at the moment. The “wiggle room” for a new German and European Ostpolitik is narrow – especially as polls show that German citizens have lost their trust in Putin. Concern remains that Hungary and Greece might pursue a separate policy of rapprochement with Russia, thus undermining unity within the European Union.

Despite slow progress in the development of a new Russia policy, two important decisions are made within a week: On March 11 the International Monetary Fund decides to release $17.5 billion for Ukraine. And on March 12 the OSCE member states – including Russia – extend the Ukraine mission by a year and increase the number of observers to a thousand. Both decisions are seen in Berlin as important contributions to stabilizing the situation in Ukraine.

Shortly before, Merkel had sent a signal to Moscow: She will not attend the traditional military parade commemorating the end of World War II on Red Square on May 9. Instead, she agrees to join Putin in laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier a day later. The gesture is symbolic – when the present is marked by enormous problems and few specifics are known about the future, the memory of a shared, bloody past could help: “The duty to remember the dead exists independently of what currently separates us from Russia,” says Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert when announcing her trip.

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