Disarmed diplomacy

ANGELA MERKEL, like many Germans, views Russia with both suspicion and sentiment. As the first German chancellor from the ex-communist east, she has few illusions about the legacy of the Soviet Union or the nature of Vladimir Putin, an ex-KGB man who served in Dresden. She is more willing than her predecessors to speak out against his human-rights record. Yet she also understands his dismay over the loss of Ukraine. On her desk she has a portrait of Catherine the Great, the German-born princess who became Russia’s empress and conquered Crimea.

Such mixed feelings, to which one might add post-war guilt and even pacifism, help to explain the paradox of Germany’s reaction to Russia’s invasion of Crimea. Mrs Merkel is Europe’s most powerful leader, yet her country has so far been the main obstacle to a firm, unified Western response. When America suggested Russia should be thrown out of the G8 rich-country club, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German foreign minister, opposed it. When east Europeans wanted to threaten explicit sanctions, he insisted that dialogue should take priority. “Diplomacy is not a sign of weakness. It is more needed than ever.”

Social Democrats such as Mr Steinmeier have tended to treat Russia indulgently; his former mentor and chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, even became chairman of the shareholders’ committee of Nord Stream, a pipeline consortium dominated by Russia’s gas giant, Gazprom. But as European Union leaders prepared for an emergency summit this week, Mrs Merkel did not demur from Mr Steinmeier’s views. The need for close relations with Russia is widely understood. Germany’s response is best summed up by the front cover of Tageszeitung, a daily paper, which ran a picture of a blue telephone with the headline: “Europe’s most potent weapon.” Diplomats say Mrs Merkel, more than anyone else, has been “at the heart of the web” of diplomatic contacts, calling Mr Putin to try to set up a contact group and deploy international monitors, in the hope that Russia might release its grip on Crimea or at least stay out of eastern Ukraine.

Is Germany’s desire to keep talking to Russia born of a genuine belief in diplomacy, or is it cant to protect its commercial interests? Certainly, German business is strongly against any escalation. The Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations, a big-business lobby group, argues that tit-for-tat sanctions would endanger the jobs of 300,000 Germans dependent on trade with Russia. As a destination for German exports, Russia ranks 11th, behind Poland and just ahead of Spain. Germany has a large (and rare) trade deficit with Russia, which provides about a third of its oil and gas. Still, it would be wrong to accuse Germany of blocking sanctions merely to sell lots of Mercedes to oligarchs.

Germany’s rapprochement with Russia dates back to the cold-war Ostpolitik pursued by two earlier Social Democratic chancellors, Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt. They believed the division of Germany would be ended only by normalising relations with East Germany and the Soviet Union, through a succession of small steps in trade, as well as cultural, personal and political contacts. For the Social Democrats, in particular, Ostpolitik was a means of averting a third world war fought on German soil, and of rebalancing Germany’s relationship with America. Germans also feel lingering gratitude to the Soviet leadership for allowing reunification and withdrawing troops from the east.

The Germans thus draw different historical lessons to the Americans. For America the cold war was won by decades of military and diplomatic firmness. For Germany, it was as much if not more because of patient diplomatic engagement. The cold-war belief in the power of dialogue, or “change through rapprochement”, now applies to dealings with Russia in hopes of promoting democratic change. For many Germans, says Stefan Meister of the European Council on Foreign Relations, peace in Europe can only be secured with Russia, not against it.

How to talk to the bear

Germany’s accommodation with Russia creates its own problems, however. First, the offer of partnership for modernisation has patently failed. Mr Putin has become more autocratic, not less, and he has now resorted to military force on the very borders of the EU. Second, by embracing Russia Germany risks upsetting eastern neighbours that are far more exposed to Russian troublemaking. The Baltic states, for one thing, all have large Russian minorities.

Just as Germany wanted central and eastern Europe to join NATO and the EU, so Poland and others want a buffer of friendly, westernising democracies against the Russian bear. Hence their push for an activist policy in the former Soviet republics. In 2008 Germany blocked efforts to grant Ukraine and Georgia NATO candidate status. Poland and Sweden (with Germany’s acquiescence) then pursued a new “eastern partnership”, designed to bind neighbours into a tight economic, political and free-trade relationship, but stopping short of EU membership. But this too was resisted by Russia ahead of last November’s Vilnius summit, provoking first revolution in Kiev and then Russia’s invasion of Crimea. To Russophiles, among them Mr Schröder, the crisis is proof that playing tug-of-war with Russia broke Ukraine. To Russiaphobes, it shows the contrary: that it was naive to think Mr Putin would ever be a European democrat.

No country is prepared to risk war with Russia, so all want a diplomatic solution. Mrs Merkel is as well placed as anybody to talk to Mr Putin. But as she works the telephone to the Kremlin, she should ask herself this: is Mr Putin more likely to listen to her if she offers only her friendship, or if she is also armed with an unequivocal commitment by the EU to impose clearly defined sanctions unless Russia stands down its military threat?

^{Economist.com/blogs/charlemagne}