Tag: GermanySanctions

A Shot in Their own Leg

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From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2022 by Uwe Bahr

In the main German news yesterday (September 16), a commentary said that Russia is waging an economic war against Europe. This is now the usual choice of words in most of the media in my home country – not much better than elsewhere. But they know very well how untrue this phrasing is, for the sanctions have been initiated by the Europeans and the Americans as a reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, while the responding Russia is accused by the German government of breach of treaty in trade relations.

In reality, the Europeans are shooting themselves in their own foot. What were they thinking the Russian reaction would be if the country was hit with one sanction package after another?

Anyone who trades with Russia does not at the same time make himself an accomplice in the Ukraine war. If this were true, then Germany – and not only Germany – would have been an accomplice in countless wars so many times. The Americans in particular have instigated so many wars of aggression that even German history cannot keep pace. But no Western European country, let alone Germany, has ever started an economic war because of this.

It is Germany that has to pay the highest price for the nonsensical sanctions, while the Americans rub their hands. Not only can they now sell their dirty fracking gas to Europe, but thanks to low energy prices and the discriminatory deregulation of workers’ rights in their own country, they will also become even more profitable as an industrial destination for companies from overseas. Whether the U.S. has a real interest in ending the war in Ukraine as soon as possible is at least open to doubt.

I hope for resistance from the German people not to let their own government rob them of their livelihood. It would not be the first time in our history that pressure from the street forces a government to resign or an entire system to collapse.

From my perspective, only non-violent protest can bring about a change to rationality, hopefully without playing into the hands of right-wing populists as in the USA. But the situation is not much better in many other countries: Millions of people in the developed world are susceptible to dangerous populist slogans because they have legitimate concerns and feel abandoned by politicians from moderate camps who are more intertwined with the interests of big business than actually contributing to a solution for the world’s pressing problems – such as man-made climate change – with the necessary resolve.

These are the consequences of a globalization that no one imagined 30 years ago.

Germany Reels under Sanctions

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From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2022 by Uwe Bahr

The claim that Germany and other European countries have made themselves too dependent on a political adversary like Russia with their energy policy is highly simplified and therefore simply nonsensical. The Americans in particular should be careful with such accusations, for they have never cared about ideological sensitivities when it came to enforcing their intentions in all parts of the world by any means as soon as tangible American profit interests were at stake. American wars of aggression grew out of this substance.

Of course, the initial West German rapprochement with Russia after Germany’s barbaric war against the Soviet Union also had its own interests in mind. Six decades ago, the Adenauer government gave away pipelines to the Soviet Union in exchange for cheap oil and natural gas later. That is how it had all begun. The emerging economic power of the Federal Republic of Germany, the German economic miracle after World War II, would very likely not have existed without the energy agreements with the former Soviets. The demand was huge. For 60 years, the Soviet Union and later Russia proved to be reliable trading partners, despite all international crises and ideological antagonisms.

The economic partnership between Soviets and Germans survived the Berlin crises of the late 1950s/early 1960s, including the construction of the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the Eastern Bloc invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the dramatic events in Poland in 1981, and finally the fall of the Berlin Wall, including the demise of East Germany, and even the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union itself in 1991 – to name only the most important events.

During the entire period, there were no other energy sources equal in price and quantity to Russian natural gas that Germany and Europe could have turned to. True – the reproach that can be levelled at the Germans today is that they looked too long and too hesitantly for alternatives instead of relying on Russia alone. Instead of becoming more independent from only one source, the country took the path of convenience, counting on “change through trade” to heal up the terrible history between Germans and Russians. Peter Altmaier, CDU politician and last Minister of Economics in the Merkel government, recently stated: “Nobody was prepared at the time to pay billions in costs for more safeguards. Not us politicians, not the executives and not the taxpayers.”

This worked for a long time without any problems. Then came the war in Ukraine and the demand of alliance partners, especially the USA, to engage against Russia. Nonsensical sanctions, from which only Americans and Russians benefit, are now seriously reeling Germany economically: For it suffers more from the war with natural gas than others, having allowed itself to be dragged towards an economic hara-kiri. On the other hand, due to the increased prices caused by the sanctions, Putin can sell his gas and oil advantageously elsewhere, while the price for natural gas in the USA is currently nine times lower compared to Europe, making the country more attractive as an industrial location for companies from all over the world. In the U.S., where the simple man of the street counts for little, the deal makers, their lobbyists, and the politicians they pay know how to win a dirty poker game.

The war in Ukraine is a crime, without question – but the sanctions do not end it. For the time being, it looks like the sanctions war is hurting Germany more than Russia. Germany’s most important gas importer Uniper had to apply for state aid today because there is no longer enough natural gas flowing from Russia. How the situation will develop when scheduled maintenance on Nord Stream 1 begins on July 11 and is to be completed after ten days is still unclear. By the end of the year at the latest, millions of private households will be faced with final bills for energy consumed, which many will probably not be able to pay on their own. And of all things, the federal government in Berlin with Green participation is thinking about reactivating decommissioned, environmentally harmful coal-fired power plants.

Germany is bound to the alliance, but it cannot jeopardize its economic foundations with a nonsensical sanctions war with Russia. There is also a responsibility to its own people. This is why it should open Nord Stream 2 – that is my opinion. As a result, the Americans would not voluntarily withdraw militarily from Europe, because they are never going to give up their imperialistic world domination.