Lenin once observed that “there are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen”. The invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation on February the 24th 2022 was one of those moments. Within days France and Germany lost their ascendancy, Poland and Britain came to the fore, the Baltic and Scandinavian countries gravitated towards the new coalition, leaving Germany isolated within northern Europe, with southern Europe reduced to the status of sullen onlookers.
The Russian invasion was the trigger that finally shattered a thirty five year consensus in Europe. It happened, as Hemingway describes in The Sun Also Rises, like bankruptcy: gradually and then suddenly. This crisis has been building for years, but we are now moving fast.
Best take I’ve read on the last two years.
The title is phrased a little weird though, as if Ukraine is to be blamed for this cluster fuck of a situation.
In reality, Germany became entirely dependent on Russian gas, oil and coal. Think about it as Schroeder, Merkel, Nord Stream. For some reason no one really talked about it.
It was left to Donald Trump to point out the contradictions and dangers in that position. When he did, everybody laughed and pointed to it as proof of what an idiot he was.
While I get that it was obnoxious to have the German contingent there laughing at him as he warned him – prior to Russia draining down Germany’s storage and then using it as leverage – that was also not Donald-Trump-the-individual. That will have been at the tail end of a long chain of warnings from the American government that eventually made it up to recommending that the President publicly comment on it. Trump won’t have been the one to identify it; he’ll just have been the last messenger in a chain of many.
The New Balance of Power in Europe is going to look a lot more like 1848 than 1948. In place of the Austrian Empire, however, will be the alliance of the UK and Ukraine, bound in a hundred year Covenant to secure the peace of Europe.
Ehhh. I think that that’s stretching things.
There were also EU member states who acted; the article is specifically talking about Poland.
I think that there is a fair accusation that the EU as an institution was not very active on this. I think that it’s also fair to say that there are some members who took a long while to move. But the EU isn’t a monolith, either: some member states did move.
And the EU-as-an-institution isn’t static and unchanging, either. Like, I don’t know what changes are being made, but I would assume that having been burned once, EU politicians are probably looking at what they can do to avoid a repeat. Countries don’t normally just sit there are get burned over and over. I would be reasonably confident that Russia isn’t going to be able to use natural gas access as leverage to split the EU again. Maybe it’ll be changes to the Single Market, maybe political changes, maybe counterintelligence stuff, maybe mandates on some minimum level of supply diversification, dunno.
In reality, Germany became entirely dependent on Russian gas, oil and coal.
For all that talk of dependency preciously little happened when Russia closed the valves. There’s press reports about BASF going into gas saving mode but that’s a bit misleading – actual gas saving mode would be to change their processes on a fundamental level (they have plans and infrastructure for that), what they did do is to use the flexibility in their standard processes to not rely on gas as precursor where there’s more readily available options – as they’ve been doing for literal decades, depending on market prices they’re using more of this, or more of that. They pulled a lever over to one side, they didn’t build a whole new set of levers to pull.
Germany ended up having more gas reserves at the end of the winter than usual because people were quite mindful when heating their homes, mindful as in “it doesn’t need to be t-shirt temperature in here, 20C suffices”, not as in “let’s heat our homes like English pensioners”. Gas prices actually sunk, presumably due to lower demand companies invested in things like waste heat recycling.
The whole concept of Wandel durch Handel relied on the assumption that economical entanglement makes war ruinous, and thus states are heavily disincentivised to be belligerent. You can now interpret that in two ways: a) It didn’t stop Russia, therefore, it failed or b) it succeeded in ruining Russia’s economy because all their what ball bearing companies went belly-up during entanglement, German ball bearings being cheaper (not necessarily unit price, you also have to take lifetime, service costs etc. into account) and now they have severe shortages (that’s simplifying quite a bit but that’s the net effect).
In the end there’s only one thing to take away: Policy can’t influence non-rational actors. All you can ensure is that if an actor becomes irrational they’re shooting themselves in the foot.
Or we could see a reimagining of the EU as it transitions from a national led organization to a supernational one. We are already seeing some national heads make moves to support their party over nation in EU politics. It is possible that this continues as politics in the EU becomes more important than member nations, especially as the EU starts gaining increasing budgetary and policy power.
The entire post war international order was to make sure Germany does not engage in military power politics in general and France does not do it in Europe in particular. The EU functioned as designed and that’s good. WW2 is still too raw for anyone to accept German military power in Europe. It’s just not politically acceptable.
And the author completely underplayed the role of NATO. The deal has always been that American muscle will be funded by German money. The EU and NATO are not at odds with each other, they complement each other.
Also, bro should not drop a quote every other paragraph, it makes it annoying to read.
Good read, but damn the author really has it in for Germany. I think the case against them is greatly overstated.
How so? I think it’s quite an accurate summary. The German economy has been stagnating for a while, mainly due to its poorly handled transition towards an economy based on renewable energy. Their reliance on cheap Russian gas was shattered by the onset of the war in Ukraine, and their economic and political influence within the EU has been in steep decline ever since.
Germany also has an economy that is most threatened by China’s increasing manufacturing prowess, both within the EU and outside of it.
It is also becoming apparent that Merkel’s leadership was in just being able to maintain the status quo, something that Germany can’t do now.
German economy has been stagnating for a while
Germanies GDP went up every year since at least 2010, except 2020.
Yes, before the war Germany also relied on russian gas and renewables, but also nuclear (mostly russian uranium) and its own coal.
Germany acted fast though and it’s transition to 100% renewables is on track even despite the war.
