The day when the heads of state and government of NATO looked together into the abyss began with a cheek. He was “sad that Germany is making a huge deal with Russia while we’re supposed to be defending Germany,” said US President Donald Trump in the morning before the start of a summit at which he then threatened to blow up the alliance. In July 2018, the US President mixed up the issues of defense and energy, much to the outrage of then Chancellor Angela Merkel. Trump attacked the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project and he dared to state: “Germany is a prisoner of Russia.”
It is a bitter turn of history that Merkel’s successor, Olaf Scholz, is now forced to subsequently agree with Donald Trump of all people. With his admission that Europe’s supply of energy for heat, mobility, electricity supply and industry could not be secured without deliveries from Russia, the Chancellor is doing just that. He is acknowledging a dependency that allegedly makes it impossible for Germany and Europe to defend themselves against the aggressive warrior Vladimir Putin to resort to the most effective means, an oil and gas embargo. What Scholz sounds like force majeure is, however, the result of decades of failed German policy.
Behind the justified anger about Gerhard Schröder, what could have caused much more outrage for many years is currently receding into the background. For years, the central task of the former chancellor has been to maintain and, if possible, increase Germany’s dependence on Russian energy supplies. While Putin was making his preparations for war, Schröder and many others took it upon themselves to scorn admonishers as irrational and Russophobic. Even after the annexation of Crimea and the start of Russia’s war in the Donbass, Germany still managed this almost effortlessly.
There was no significant difference between the SPD and the Union. It is true that the former SPD Foreign Minister Heiko Maas denied any dependency, the SPD Prime Minister of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Manuela Schwesig, acted as Gazprom’s outpost and Scholz, as Chancellor, also wanted to portray Nord Stream 2 as a harmless economic project. As chancellor, against all odds, Angela Merkel pushed ahead with the pipeline. She continued to resist the diversification policy proclaimed by the EU. In Brussels, they fought hard to break resistance from eastern EU states to the project. She wrested a formula compromise from US President Joe Biden that did not make Ukraine any safer.
Responsibility for the current dilemma cannot simply be shifted onto the whole of Europe: it was primarily Germany that failed to build terminals for liquid gas and it was Germany that handed over its gas storage facilities to Russian hands. One of the few pieces of good news these days is that Kremlin boss Putin was completely wrong, especially in Germany. Even if Chancellor Scholz does not want to do without energy supplies from Russia, he has placed himself at the forefront of global efforts to shake the Putin regime to its economic foundations. If Scholz now believes that he cannot use the most effective means, he also bears responsibility himself.