Анджела Стент - Putin's World - Russia Against the West and with the Rest

In September 2017, Germans went to the polls. Unlike in the US, French, and British election campaigns, Russia appears to have refrained from interference, although there were concerns in Germany that it would. The outcome sent shock waves around Europe. Support for traditional parties—including the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union, Free Democratic Party, and Social Democratic Party—fell, while the nationalist, populist, anti-immigrant, pro-Russian Alternative for Germany party gained enough votes not only to sit in the Bundestag but emerge as the largest opposition party. It took eight months of painstaking negotiations for Merkel to cobble together a coalition, returning to the grand coalition model. The new Social Democratic foreign minister, Heiko Maas, sounded a more cautious note on Russia, unlike his predecessors Frank-Walther Steinmeier and Sigmar Gabriel. Maas accused Russia of having become a difficult partner and listed a series of unwelcome actions it had perpetrated beyond its borders. He also admitted for the first time that a recent cyberattack on Germany’s foreign ministry had likely stemmed from Moscow. “We will keep up the political pressure on Russia,” he pledged. 59

The contrast between US and Russian leaders’ treatment of Angela Merkel could not have been more striking. By May 2018, a series of US actions caused serious rifts between the United States and Germany, including levying new tariffs on German goods and withdrawing from the nuclear agreement with Iran, which Germany had worked hard to create and enforce. After a difficult meeting in Washington with Trump, in which he continued to berate her, Merkel traveled to Sochi and was greeted by a beaming Putin, who presented her with a large bunch of pink and white roses—instead of a large dog. The tables had surely turned. Putin and Merkel discussed the need to maintain the Iran agreement despite the US withdrawal; they talked about the situation in Ukraine and about trade and the Nord Stream II pipeline. 60Commentators speculated about a “new détente” between Germany and Russia.

The advent of the Trump administration and its marked distancing from Germany—as compared to the Obama administration—has led Berlin to reassess its relations with Russia. For Trump, Merkel embodies the liberal global order he despises. Merkel’s visits with Trump have been awkward, and Trump has accused Germany of not contributing enough to its own defense and of engaging in underhand trade practices against the US. While Merkel remains wary of Putin’s Russia, both she and Putin understand the need for pragmatic cooperation on issues such as Iran, faced with an unpredictable US administration. At their joint press conference in Sochi, Merkel said of their discussions on Iran, Syria, and Ukraine, “I think these major problems can only be resolved if we discuss the topics on which our opinions differ, discuss these topics, analyze them, and try to bridge the gaps, to discuss the facts together and to seek solutions; therefore, the negotiations have been important and we will continue these negotiations later.” 61

Since 2017, the German chancellor has faced the unenviable challenge of balancing between Trump and Putin. Merkel’s relationship with Trump deteriorated sharply in 2018 in the wake of the G-7 summit in Canada and the July NATO summit in Brussels. In Canada, he accused Germany of unfair trade practices and of owing the US $1 trillion in back payments for contributions to NATO. In an unprecedented attack at the opening breakfast in Brussels, Trump made an unfounded claim that “Germany is totally controlled by Russia, because they’re getting between 60 to 70 percent of their energy from Russia and a new pipeline” 62(the figure for gas is 37 percent). Merkel responded, “Because of given circumstances I want to point out one thing: I experienced the Soviet occupation of one part of Germany myself. It is good that we are independent today.” 63

The Trump administration’s treatment of Merkel had caused much soul-searching in Germany and a recognition that Germany not only can no longer count on its relationship with the United States but may have to devise strategies for dealing with Washington as an adversary. 64Will that induce Germany to return to acting as a mediator between East and West? For now, Putin will seek to draw Merkel back into his world as she continues to confront her unpredictable American ally.

The headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) lies in a leafy northeastern suburb of Brussels, a futuristic set of buildings flying the flags of the twenty-nine member states. The organization was founded in 1949 to create a common defense against the Soviet Union, ensuring that the United States would remain committed to that defense—and equally ensuring that Western European countries would eschew conflict with each other. One of NATO’s founding fathers, Lord Hastings Ismay, in 1949 explained that the collective defense alliance had three main purposes: to “keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down.” 2The first two remained as constants, but the third changed once West Germany joined NATO in 1955. From the beginning, it was clear that NATO was designed both to deter any possible future Soviet attack on Europe and to reassure Western Europeans that the United States would protect them.

The foundation of NATO represented a radical transformation of US foreign policy, away from its previous isolationist inclinations, which reached all the way back to George Washington’s admonition in his Farewell Address: “Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice?” 3But in the mid-twentieth century, after the war, it was a very different world. Secretary of State Dean Acheson, responding to skepticism from senators who wanted the United States to resume its historic isolationism after World War Two, made both a moral and a practical case for US membership in NATO:

We were decent people, we could keep our promises, and our promises were written out and clear enough. They were to regard an attack on any of our allies as an attack on ourselves and to assist the victim ourselves and with the others, with force if necessary, to restore and maintain peace and security. Twice in twenty-five years there had been armed attacks in the area involved in this treaty and it was abundantly clear what measures had been necessary to restore peace and security. 4

What might have reassured the Europeans had the opposite effect on the Soviets. NATO was the first tangible embodiment of George Kennan’s policy of containment, which he had enunciated in his famous “Mr. X” article in 1947, in the midst of the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe. Kennan, then head of the Department of State’s Office of Policy Planning, argued that the USSR would, if unchecked, continue to expand its international reach, and his prescription was clear: containment of the USSR. However, he opposed the creation of NATO.

The Soviet takeover of Czechoslovakia in February 1948 was the final act in the consolidation of Moscow’s control over Eastern Europe—and was the event that galvanized the United States and Western Europe into forming NATO. On April 4, 1949, the foreign ministers of twelve countries gathered in Washington to sign the agreement establishing NATO. The US Marine Band—perhaps presciently—played two songs from the popular musical Porgy and Bess : “I Got Plenty of Nothin’” and “It Ain’t Necessarily So.” 5Joseph Stalin, apparently with a straight face, complained about NATO’s aggressive character, contrasting it with the ostensibly benign nature of Moscow’s intentions. 6