Moscow’s decadeslong weaponization of energy against Europe became an incontrovertible fact in late 2021 and early 2022, when the Kremlin throttled natural gas deliveries to stop Germany and other European countries from aiding Ukraine. To make sure that Russia cannot use energy to wage war again, it’s time for the United States to place permanent sanctions on the remaining Russian gas pipelines to Europe, starting with the existing but soon-to-expire sanctions on Nord Stream 2, the inactive gas pipeline that connects Russia with Germany under the Baltic Sea.
With Europe’s energy imports from Russia now down to a trickle, attention has increasingly focused on other questions—above all, just how reliable U.S. support for Ukraine will be going forward. Not only did the Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives block nearly $60 billion in military aid to Ukraine last fall and early this year, but the Biden administration has also been slow-rolling aid, is about to let several billion dollars in aid expire unused, and continues to dither on allowing Ukraine to strike military and infrastructure targets with long-range weapons.
Moscow’s decadeslong weaponization of energy against Europe became an incontrovertible fact in late 2021 and early 2022, when the Kremlin throttled natural gas deliveries to stop Germany and other European countries from aiding Ukraine. To make sure that Russia cannot use energy to wage war again, it’s time for the United States to place permanent sanctions on the remaining Russian gas pipelines to Europe, starting with the existing but soon-to-expire sanctions on Nord Stream 2, the inactive gas pipeline that connects Russia with Germany under the Baltic Sea.
With Europe’s energy imports from Russia now down to a trickle, attention has increasingly focused on other questions—above all, just how reliable U.S. support for Ukraine will be going forward. Not only did the Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives block nearly $60 billion in military aid to Ukraine last fall and early this year, but the Biden administration has also been slow-rolling aid, is about to let several billion dollars in aid expire unused, and continues to dither on allowing Ukraine to strike military and infrastructure targets with long-range weapons.
But recent developments suggest that the next big question mark concerning support for Ukraine and Europe’s ability to withstand Russia is emanating not from Washington, but from Berlin.
In the years running up to Russia’s most recent invasion of Ukraine, successive German governments under Chancellors Gerhard Schröder, Angela Merkel, and Olaf Scholz pursued a policy of accommodation toward an increasingly authoritarian and aggressive Russia under President Vladimir Putin. This included the concepts of Neue Ostpolitik—or the “new eastern policy,” a supposed reboot of former Chancellor Willy Brandt’s Cold War-era rapprochement toward the Soviet bloc—and Wandel durch Handel, or “change through trade.”
In theory, the two concepts were supposed to lead to stable relations and even democratic reforms in Russia, based on the notion that increased commercial ties with Europe would show Putin the benefits of peaceful relations with Germany and the West. Unlike Brandt—who knew that the carrot of Ostpolitik only worked with the stick of strong Western deterrence—successive German administrations not only let their defense capabilities atrophy, but also vetoed NATO contingency planning on its eastern frontier, lest the Kremlin be offended.
Close ties with a resource-rich Russia also coincided with the interests of the German corporate sector, which has long wielded an outsized influence over policy in Berlin and has rarely let pesky distractions such as national security or human rights get in the way of deals with authoritarian nations.
This is not just hindsight. For almost two decades, there was a persistent chorus of contemporaneous warnings against Berlin’s policies toward Russia, the folly of which remains as evident today as it was at the time of their enactment. Despite Putin’s increasingly brutal crackdowns at home, multiple occupations of neighboring countries, and mounting attacks against Western democracies, successive German leaders kept rolling out their tired nostrums on Russia to cover the increasingly sordid business and energy ties they forged with Moscow.
Each of the three German leaders contributed. Schröder signed a highly controversial energy deal with Russia only a few months before departing office in 2005—and went to work for Kremlin-controlled Gazprom shortly thereafter. He eventually held posts at multiple Russian state-controlled energy enterprises, including as chairman of the shareholders’ committee at the Gazprom-backed Nord Stream 1 pipeline project, which he had greenlit as chancellor.
Merkel, his successor, then pushed through another pipeline project—Nord Stream 2—even as Russians were conducting cyberattacks against the German parliament and a campaign of assassinations in Europe, including one just steps from the Chancellery in Berlin. Not even Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014 could stop the project.
In mid-2022, Merkel admitted that she had never been under any “illusion” that Putin would change his ways through increased trade with Germany—yet she pursued the deals anyway. To be fair, Merkel never ruled alone, and for 12 out of the 16 years of her chancellorship, the traditionally Russia-friendly Social Democrats held powerful positions. These included then-Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, a close confidant of Schröder’s, and then-Economic Minister Sigmar Gabriel, who greenlit the sale of Germany’s largest domestic gas storage infrastructure to Gazprom.
Steinmeier, who embodies Berlin’s failed Russia policies like few other politicians, is today Germany’s ceremonial president and missed a splendid opportunity to step down on Feb. 24, 2022, following the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Gabriel, meanwhile, has also paid little political cost. He belatedly admitted mistakes in his relations with the Kremlin and seems to have reinvented himself as a staunch trans-Atlanticist with plum positions at Atlantik-Brücke, Harvard University, and the Eurasia Group.
Scholz, in turn, clung to Nord Stream 2, which was close to completion as Russia’s war on Ukraine was brewing in 2021 and early 2022. He refused to consider sending even strictly defensive weapons to Ukraine, offering to provide 5,000 helmets instead. He finally gave in to overwhelming pressure to revoke the pipeline’s operating permit just hours before Putin launched the invasion.
To Scholz’s credit, just days after the large-scale invasion of Ukraine, he proclaimed a bold reorientation of German foreign policy—the so-called Zeitenwende, or change to a new era—which was aimed at finally facing up to the Russian threat and renewing Germany’s defense posture. Since then, Germany has become the second-biggest provider of aid to Ukraine after the United States, including military, financial, and humanitarian aid.
Little is left of the Zeitenwende today. Last month, Germany slashed military aid for Ukraine in a draft federal budget for 2025 released last month, roughly halving it from the previous year’s total of 8 billion euros ($8.9 billion). While Berlin’s defense budget has finally reached NATO’s minimum of 2 percent of its GDP, the German government shows little hurry to build up weapons stocks and raise military readiness. With a view to next year’s national elections and rising support for Kremlin-friendly parties shaping recent regional elections, Scholz appears to be positioning himself to campaign as the “peace chancellor” who kept Germany out of the war. Too much help for Ukraine would only get in the way. Obviously, Berlin slashing aid would deal a major blow to Kyiv’s war effort, especially given doubts about Washington’s reliability following the November elections and the possible need for Europe to stand on its own.
Even as a cloud of uncertainty rises over German military aid to Ukraine, the cloud over Berlin’s future energy policy could turn out to be just as dark. Germany accomplished the feat of replacing Russian gas supplies in an astoundingly short time, but it’d be naïve to think that there won’t be strong pressure from German corporations and across much of the political spectrum to restore commercial ties with Russia the moment that a cease-fire between Moscow and Kyiv were announced. This pressure would be especially acute in the energy sector, where Germany long sought deals for relatively cheap pipeline gas from Russia. Germany’s energy options have shrunk even further following the shutdown of the last of its nuclear power plants last year.
It’s in the interest of the United States and all supporters of a free and peaceful Europe that Germany does not go back to its old Russia tricks.
Fortunately, the United States can help ensure that this does not happen. In 2019, the U.S. Congress passed limited, technology-calibrated sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline—in the form of the bipartisan Protecting Europe’s Energy Security Act—resulting in a one-year delay in construction as Russia scrambled to find other technical means to complete the project. But the law, which was expanded in scope a year later, will sunset at the end of this year if Congress doesn’t act. Even though Nord Stream 2 has never come into operation, members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee recently introduced new legislation that would renew the sanctions.
This should be a no-brainer for Congress. Already, the Senate Armed Services Committee and Banking Committee have reportedly approved extending the sanctions via an amendment to the annual National Defense Authorization Act. All that is required now is for the leadership of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to sign off, which is likely to happen soon.
The problem, however, is the White House. In late 2021, even as Putin was amassing troops at Ukraine’s doorstep, the Biden administration waived the sanctions that had delayed Nord Stream 2. It made a deal with the outgoing Merkel government: In exchange for sanctions relief, Berlin promised national and EU-level sanctions the moment that Russia “attempt[s] to use energy as a weapon or commit[s] further aggressive acts against Ukraine.”
Despite clear evidence that the Kremlin was already undersupplying European gas storage and threatening Moldova following its 2019 election of a pro-Western government, no German-led sanctions were forthcoming. Instead, the Merkel government fast-tracked approvals and dispatched envoys to Washington just weeks before the Russian invasion to lobby Congress to spare Putin’s pipeline. Biden and Scholz—who replaced Merkel as chancellor in December— finally stopped the project shortly before Russian tanks rolled across Ukraine’s frontier.
There is no excuse for a reprise. The era of Gazprom’s domination of Europe must finally be over, and neither the German business community nor the country’s pro-Kremlin political factions should contribute to undermining European peace and stability again. And if the Biden administration—which has pandered to Berlin to the exclusion of most other European allies—decides to oppose bipartisan congressional plans to extend sanctions, it should rethink that approach.
After all the sacrifice of the last few years, there is no reason to let malign Russian energy interests use their friends in Germany to creep back into Europe. And whoever wins the U.S. presidential election in November, American policy toward Europe should no longer pay such lopsided attention to the opinions of Berlin.
Biden, however, may once again be accommodating Scholz’s worst instincts if he intends to block the renewal of Nord Stream 2 sanctions, which will expire if Congress does not act. On Capitol Hill, support for sanctions renewal is bipartisan. It’s time for Biden and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Ben Cardin—who both have less than five months left in office—to bolster Europe’s long-term security by allowing the extension of sanctions.
While they’re at it, Biden and Cardin might also encourage new laws to prohibit, once and for all, former public officials from working for Russian state-owned-enterprises or their subsidiaries. And they should pressure Berlin to do likewise. Otherwise, Russian interests will make sure that a whole lot of trade without much change is coming down the pipeline.
The post Don’t Let Germany Go Back to Its Old Russia Tricks appeared first on Foreign Policy.
