Beyond the “Strategic Partnership”
The E.U.-Russia Centre Conference, Munich, September 15, 2011
The “Strategic Partnership” between Berlin and Moscow is usually understood in the English-speaking world in somewhat simplified terms: Russian energy meets German technology with a lot of high-minded political rhetoric on top. In the meantime, the received wisdom goes, Germany remains firmly anchored in the Euro-Atlantic framework of political, economic and military institutions and relationships. In other words, Moscow may be Germany’s partner, “strategic” or otherwise, but Washington remains Berlin’s primary ally and its primary institutional focus is still in Brussels.
This may have been so over the years but it need not be so in the future. A foreign policy realist would argue that in the years ahead of us the German decision-making elite would be well advised to critically reconsider old assumptions and to develop an overall strategy of greater equidistance vis-à-vis Moscow and Washington. (Instead of equidistance, “more equal proximity” may be a better term.)
If German political, economic and civilizational interests are considered in realist terms, without the rhetorical ideological shackles of common values and ideals, it transpires that the Federal Republic has a more natural community of long-term geopolitical interests with Russia than with the United States.
The fundamental German-Russian compatibility is that they are traditional European nation-states pursuing limited objectives by limited means. By contrast, the leaders of the United States of both parties still subscribe to the notion of America’s exceptionalism and to the propositional creed rooted in Puritan millenarianism.
In world affairs this neurosis translates into self-appointed missions of “spreading democracy” and “humanitarian interventionism.” There is precious little to choose between the neoliberal interventionists, notably the ladies’ trio of Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, and their neoconservative counterparts, such as Richard Perle, Paul Wofowitz, or Douglas Feith. They are but two sides of the same coin.
Germany has gone along with various American idiosyncrasies for a long time, but its elites have never been fully comfortable with the ideological arsenal of American postmodernia. Let it be noted that announcing the failure of the multiculturalist experiment, as Chancellor Merkel has done earlier this year, is unimaginable for an occupant of the White House from either party.
In geopolitical terms, like Russia but unlike the U.S., Germany is a continental power; and also like Russia but unlike the U.S., Germany has limited and “rational” strategic and security objectives. Both are weary of America’s self-appointed global missions, although Russia is unsurprisingly more vocal about its misgivings. Looking back over the past decade we find numerous areas of actual discord between Berlin and Washington reflecting divergent interests and strategic philosophies:
- During the Bush years Germany was consistently lukewarm about NATO’s eastward expansion and notably unsupportive of the inclusion of Ukraine and Georgia in the Alliance, although this course was strongly advocated in Washington.
- In 2003-4 Moscow and Berlin effectively developed a common front against the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
- In the fall of 2004 Germany took a back seat during the U.S-driven financial, political and financial support for the “Orange” takeover in Ukraine.
- In 2005, having rejected the U.S.-endorsed Polish proposal for a Western energy alliance, former Chancellor Schroeder went on to initiate the Nord Stream project, regardless of Washington’s displeasure at the bypassing of its Baltic-Polish clients.
- Although reputedly more Atlanticist than her predecessor, Angela Merkel was unwilling to join the U.S.-led chorus of condemnation of Russia after Moscowt responded forcefully to Saakashvili’s aggression in South Ossetia in 2008.
- In 2009 the U.S. exerted political pressure on General Motors, which had just received a massive Federal bailout only months earlier, to cancel plans to sell Opel to a Russian-backed consortium, although the deal was supported by the German government.
- On the southeastern front, the Germans have been lukewarm about the stalled Nabucco pipeline, which has been strongly favored by the U.S., and have suggested Russia’s inclusion in it, even though it is clear that this would defeat the project’s rationale.
- At the same time Germany is not averse to the Russian South Stream project, which is anathema to Washington and a number of its chronically Russophobic East European clients.
- The United States and its European clients (notably Poland) would prefer the EU to present a single interface in its foreign and economic relations with third parties—including above all energy—while Germany wisely pursues bilateral arrangements which are also preferred by Russia.
- Last but not least, earlier this year Germany remained on the sidelines while the U.S., Britain and France intervened in Libya under the aegis of NATO.
It is noteworthy that some of these trends have gelled, or maintained momentum, under Angela Merkel’s chancellorship, even though her government has made few moves to deepen German-Russian relations from the pinnacle of the Schroeder-Steinmeier years and she is personally by no means a cultural Russophile. This indicates that the logic of interests and objectives determined by the relatively constant factors of geography, resources and political culture, operate to a considerable extent independently of the decision-makers’ personal preferences.
The likely return to Russia’s presidency of Vladimir Putin in 2012 would be beneficial to the development of various currently untapped potentialities in German-Russian relations. As a cultural Germanophile with a strong sense of history and a firm rooting in the realist approach to grand strategy, Putin would also give an impetus to the return of what I would like to call the Neo-Bismarckian Paradigm. It was under the Iron Chancellor, the towering genius of the European 19th century diplomacy, that Germany and Russia last had a genuine strategic partnership, based on the compatibility of interests and the absence of truly insurmountable obstacles. Bismarck’s incompetent successors had abandoned this paradigm in favor of an unnecessary and ultimately fatal bid for multi-spectral hegemony (a Wilhelmine brand of neoconservatism) which finally entangled Germany in the affairs of the Habsburgs in The Balkans—which, as Bismarck had rightly pointed out, were not worth the bones of a Pomeranian grenadier.
In the neo-Bismarckian framework Russia will pursue a strong, but bilaterally-based relationship with Germany and with other key European partners, such as France and Italy. It is neither in Russia’s interest, nor in the interest of Germany, to allow the apparatus of the European Union to impose itself as an interface. As the current financial crisis clearly indicates, the interests of different members and groups within the EU are too diverse, incompatible even, to allow for a single platform to interfere in the conduct of what are properly bilateral affairs.
It is almost axiomatic, for instance, that Russia cannot have the same kind of partnership with Britain as it does with Germany, and the terms of such relationships need to be determined in direct dialogue with London and Berlin, or Paris, or Rome. That is the optimal model for Russia benefiting from the German connection on its path to necessary modernization, and that is the optimal format for Germany to make its contribution. Had the Nord Stream project been subjected to a Brussels-based interface, it would not have been built.
As the global distribution of power regains its multipolar character and the United States continues to lose its briefly held position of full-specter dominance, as the European Union is in a period of chronic crisis, the traditional nation-states of Europe need to rediscover the benefits of togetherness based on spontaneously emerging, interest-based links, and not on multilateral, bureaucratically mediated institutional mechanisms.
To truly unite Europe by helping Russia modernize and deploy its full potential and by integrating it into the common European home, we need “Europe” indeed, but not necessarily in its current Brussels form, or let me be frank, not at all in that form—and certainly we don’t need interference or arbitration from Brussels when its traditional nations seek common ground on the basis of a plus-sum-game. Bismarck would understand this, I believe Vladimir Putin does, and I hope the German political and business elite will do likewise during his next mandate, to the benefit of all.
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My friend, the late Thomas Molnar, was making this argument eve before the collapse of the USSR. He argued that a German-Russian alliance, because of the advantages it brought to both parties, was inevitable. As for me, I don't believe anything is inevitable except sin and death, but US policy towards the Russians is a powerful force driving them into the arms of the Germans, who have been quietly going their own way in foreign affairs, notably in Libya.
The fundamental German-Russian compatibility is that they are traditional European nation-states pursuing limited objectives by limited means. By contrast, the leaders of the United States of both parties still subscribe to the notion of America’s exceptionalism and to the propositional creed rooted in Puritan millenarianism.
Dr. T. has very adequately summed up the fundamental difference between European nations on the one hand and the United States on the other. Europe is always at her worst when she tries to ape the United States, building political unions based on veiled coercion rather than cooperation (the euro, constitution of the European Union) or building its legal system around a generic framework of "universal human rights" rather than around Christianity (which though universal is also Europe's proper framework, not something to be diluted by stripping away anything that does not resemble what may be found in other religions).
I just have a question: concretely, is there any reason to believe that Russia would pursue any sort of territorial encroachments westward, especially if, as seems not unthinkable, at least some portions of Ukraine ultimately decide they would rather be in Russia? On that note, are the Ukranians justified in not wishing to be absorbed wholesale on the grounds that, despite their shared Russophone heritage ("Ukranian" being in its origins a patois of Russian), they do not care to be ruled "from Moscow"?
The impression given in the MSM is that Russia would love to gobble back up everything that it had had on the eve of World War II. Anything the MSM says should be taken with a grain of salt, obviously, but if Russia wanted to claim, for example, Ukraine, that would be understandable if not justifiable in view of the importance of the land around Kiev to Russian patrimony.
On the other hand, everything I've heard suggests most of the other former Soviet nations, including Belarus, have absolutely no desire to be in a Russo-centric federation of any-sort. And Georgia, for example, is one of the oldest Christian kingdoms and deserves our veneration on that point at least.
Again, though, I do not pretend to understand the complexities of all this. For me to presume to have a voice would be akin to a non-Anglophone attempting to pass judgment on the political situation in Ireland over the past 90 years (I once had a very long and impassioned discussion with a fellow Catholic, a Frenchman who does not speak English, on the subject--it's amazing how easily the Irish rebellion is mistaken for a "Catholic movement" even among Anglophones, but it seems there is effectively no information challenging this perspective available in French).
Germans, who have been quietly going their own way in foreign affairs, notably in Libya.
It's too bad they didn't go their own way with regards to Greece. Merkel caved to Sarko pretty much overnight on that one.
Dr. Trifkovic, how much influence does Aleksandr Dugin really have in the Russian political establishment? A long term alliance with Germany is one of the strategies he has been pushing for a long time now. I am just curious.
Dr. Trifkovic will be on the radio today, doing the Paul Youngblood show at 4 PM (CDT). On the front page of this website is a button taking you to their live webcast.
@MOSES - I sincerely believe that there is a case to be made of Russia's perhaps keen unwillingness (despite her capabilities) to reestablish the imperial mantle, upon which she became best known to the world, over one hundred years ago. It is far more likely that she is seeking to reconsolidate her geographical, cultural and political heartland through creative political undertaking, in order to establish her historical legitimacy. Indeed, I have no reason to believe Ukraine would be carved up, nor does Belarus have much to fear from Russia, as far as her territorial integrity is concerned. Any "expansion" westward I still have reason to believe would exclusively be composed of constructive partnership with all its European partners, and nothing more.
#2: Russia is singularly uninterested in (re)absorbing any part of its "Near Abroad" and even a Moscow-friendly leader like Yanukovich is proving that he's not a "Kremlin Stooge" of the MSM lore. Cultural commonalities are no longer denied in today's Ukraine, as they were (absurdly) under the Orange crooks, which does not mean that differences of opinion and interest over gas prices & transit fees etc are eliminated. They are merely reduced to their proper scale.
#4 Dugin used to be somewhat influential about a decade ago, but his "Eurasian" and Islam-friendly eccentricities have largely discredited him.
See my "Northern Alliance" article of Feb 2009 in which I point out, disapprovingly, that Dugin and other "Eurasianists" see Russia's destiny in the great continental heartland and in strategic partnership with her southern/southeastern neighbors: "They believe that Russia's interests and those of the United States are inherently divergent. In their view, detente with Islam is more desirable than cooperation with the West. As Aleksandr Dugin says, the new Eurasian empire should be based on the rejection of Atlanticism and liberalism:
"[T]his common civilizational impulse will be the basis of a political and strategic union" between Russia and the Heartland, the Slavs and the Turkic peoples of the Central Asian steppe.
So is the occasional pro-American reflex in some places around Eastern Europe to be seen as pure folly, as an understandable but off-base and knee-jerk overreaction or as the proud product of US propaganda?
By the way, here in France and perhaps soon in Britain, far-right parties are openly pushing for a recapture of control of this side of the Atlantic: Marine Le Pen is campaigning for less American influence in Europe (not to mention the end of the EU in anything resembling its current form) and incorporating closer ties to Russia as part of France's long-term foreign policy strategy. We'll see how it plays out: the French MSM still worship B.H. Obama and have refused to act as catalysts for outrage about the stupid police wars in North Africa, but talk to anyone on the streets for a few minutes and he'll agree those NATO dances are pretty idiotic.
What goes on between Germany and Russia is their business. Any outside interference by the State Department must be roundly denounced, preferably with the naming of names, and the affiliation of those names with non-government trouble-makers; for example George Soros. Most of this conference has to do with a natural gas pipeline being strung along the floor of the Baltic Sea connecting the two nations.
The myth of "American Exceptionalism" is laughable at best and classic hubris at worts. But Gordon Liddy once stated that Americans have a deep and abiding commitment to the Tooth Fairy.
All states seek to further their own interests, and if they feel that someone else's conflict, they may escalate the conflict. The question is 1. whether the U.S. has any even remotely credible long-term economic or military interest in who exerts economic primacy in Eastern Europe, and 2. why the U.S. cannot consecrate even a tenth of the resources it consecrates to establishing fifth columns in about 60% of the world's sovereign nations to expelling the fifth column within its own borders (and we all know WHAT that fifth column is, so I don't need to repeat it).