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GERMAN POWER AND THE UKRAINE CONFLICT
By Ulrich Speck via CarnegieEurope
GERMANY HAS BECOME THE LEAD NATION IN DEALING WITH THE UKRAINE CRISIS
GERMANY HAS BECOME THE LEAD NATION IN DEALING WITH THE UKRAINE CRISIS
The UKRAINE crisis has
revealed both the strengths of GERMAN foreign policy—diplomatic skill and
economic power—and its weakness—a lack of military muscle.
In the course of the UKRAINE
conflict that erupted in 2014, GERMANY has for the first time taken the lead on
a major international crisis. The main center of WESTERN action and
coordination hasn’t been WASHINGTON, BRUSSELS, PARIS, or LONDON, but BERLIN. The
crisis has illustrated the strength of GERMANY’S foreign policy: its skilled
use of economic power and diplomacy. But the confrontation has also
demonstrated BERLIN’S weakness: the lack of a military dimension to GERMAN power.
GERMANY has become a
leader in the UKRAINE crisis for three reasons. First, GERMAN power has grown
since the country’s reunification in 1990. GERMANY not only has the biggest
economy and the largest population in the EU but also lies geographically at
the center of the union and is deeply embedded in EU structures. Second, the
crisis is of vital importance for GERMANY because the entire geopolitical order
to the country’s EAST is at stake. Third, there was no one else to take the
lead. PARIS has weakened in recent years. LONDON is increasingly disconnected
from the EU. WASHINGTON has taken a step back from EUROPEAN affairs. And BRUSSELS
lacks the capability to lead the EU on foreign policy.
As the UKRAINE conflict
continues, the question is whether GERMANY will be able to maintain a leadership
position by permanently moving the conflict from the field of military
confrontation, where RUSSIA has the upper hand, to the diplomatic and the
economic spheres, where a GERMAN-led EU has the comparative advantage.
GERMANY
STEPS UP
Against the background of
GERMANY’S interests, it was already likely that the country would play an
important role in the UKRAINE crisis. And yet, the decisiveness and dedication
with which GERMAN Chancellor ANGELA MERKEL has taken on a leadership role on UKRAINE
came as a surprise.
MERKEL, in office since
2005, had not previously shown a great appetite for foreign policy leadership.
She had tended to follow the mainstream on most dossiers. The only important
foreign policy issue on which she played a leading role was the management of
the slow, difficult process of integrating the WESTERN BALKANS into the EU; but
she did so only behind the scenes. When MERKEL did use GERMANY’S growing power,
it was in most cases to apply the brakes on the initiatives of others, such as
the NATO-led military intervention in LIBYA in 2011 or FRANCE’S efforts to
build a coalition to stop the civil war in SYRIA.
Background
Information:
GERMANY
MOVING CENTER STAGE IN THE GEOPOLITICAL THEATER
EUROPE
HAS BECOME GERMANY
ENTIRE
GEOPOLITICAL ORDER TO THE EAST OF GERMANY AT RISK
When the UKRAINE crisis
broke in February 2014 with the ouster of then president VIKTOR YANUKOVYCH, a
combination of factors put BERLIN in the driver’s seat. On the one hand, MERKEL
was already used to occupying a leadership position in the EU because of GERMANY’S
dominant role in the euro crisis. On the other hand, the political unrest in UKRAINE
was simply too important for GERMANY to stand on the sidelines. Since 1990, GERMANY
had moved away from being a frontline state to become a country surrounded on
all sides by friends. If RUSSIA were to change its character, return to an
imperialist attitude, and challenge the status quo reached at the end of the
Cold War, then the entire geopolitical order to the East of GERMANY would be at
risk.
While
the MIDDLE EAST and NORTH AFRICA are important areas for GERMAN foreign policy,
it is the EASTERN neighborhood—CENTRAL EUROPE, EASTERN EUROPE, and RUSSIA—that
is vital to GERMAN security and prosperity.
RUSSIA is not only a
provider of energy and an important market for GERMAN exporters but also the
country that has the biggest potential to threaten GERMAN security, as it did
for decades during the Cold War. BERLIN’S Eastern neighbors have become deeply
interwoven with the GERMAN economy. And POLAND has in recent years risen to be GERMANY’S
second most important partner in the EU after FRANCE, as BERLIN and WARSAW have
built a close relationship based on considerable mutual trust.
THE
MERKEL FACTOR
There is also a personal
dimension to GERMANY’S leadership role: the MERKEL factor. The chancellor grew
up in EAST GERMANY, a country that was a satellite of the SOVIET UNION and had
a large SOVIET occupying force. MERKEL speaks RUSSIAN but never entertained the
kind of close, buddy-like relationship with RUSSIAN President VLADIMIR PUTIN for
which her predecessor, GERHARD SCHRÖDER, became notorious.
While she cautiously
cooled the relationship between BERLIN and MOSCOW to some degree, the
parameters of GERMANY’S RUSSIA policies that had been put in place by former
chancellors HELMUT KOHL and SCHRÖDER remained largely intact when MERKEL came
to power in 2005. That is partly because FRANK-WALTER STEINMEIER, a close aide
to SCHRÖDER, was foreign minister in MERKEL’S first term. KOHL and SCHRÖDER’S approach
had been to invest heavily in the relationship with MOSCOW in the hope that RUSSIA
would modernize economically and politically, and STEINMEIER continued in the
same vein when he became foreign minister in 2005.
Yet GERMAN policy
vis-à-vis RUSSIA started to change slowly when PUTIN came back to the
presidency in 2012. MERKEL maintained close contacts with MOSCOW but changed
the tone. Having no illusions about the character of the RUSSIAN regime, she
clearly saw the necessity to push back against a regime that was becoming increasingly
aggressive against alleged internal and external enemies.
LEADERSHIP
THROUGH PARTNERSHIP
GERMAN leadership in the UKRAINE
crisis has always been multilateral. BERLIN’S efforts to build a joint Western
position on the crisis have included two key components: coordinating on all
important issues with the UNITED STATES, and winning a critical mass inside the
EU in support of GERMANY’S approach.
The UNITED STATES has
been happy to see GERMANY to take the lead. Ever since former U.S. president GEORGE
H. W. BUSH spoke in May 1989 about GERMANY and the UNITED STATES as “partners
in leadership,” there has been an AMERICAN expectation that GERMANY would one
day assume a leading role in EUROPE in close cooperation with WASHINGTON.
That MERKEL has led on
the UKRAINE conflict has been welcomed by U.S. President BARACK OBAMA’S administration,
which is particularly keen on sharing more of the burden of global crisis
management with its partners. An in-depth report by AMERICAN journalist GEORGE
PACKER confirms that OBAMA and MERKEL “have consulted frequently on the timing
of announcements and been careful to keep the AMERICAN and the EUROPEAN positions
close.”
France has become GERMANY’S
second key partner. Having PARIS on board for a given policy early on is usually
key for BERLIN to build a critical mass inside the EU. If these two capitals
agree on their approach to an issue, they stand a good chance to convince the
other 26 to support them. In addition, FRANCE represents those EU countries
that are more skeptical of a confrontation with RUSSIA—mostly states in SOUTHERN
EUROPE—with the result that a GERMAN-FRENCH compromise amounts to a compromise
between the two opposing camps in the EU.
LONDON has also given its
green light to GERMAN leadership, helping BERLIN secure the critical mass it
needed within the EU. Because of the ongoing debate about a possible BRITISH
exit from the union, BRITAIN’S weight in the EU has dramatically declined. LONDON
didn’t play an important part in shaping the EU’s response to RUSSIAN aggression
against UKRAINE, a task on which BRITAIN has been happy for MERKEL to lead. BRITISH
Foreign Secretary PHILIP HAMMOND said that MERKEL Is one of the “weapons” the
free world is using against RUSSIA. In his view, the GERMAN chancellor’s access
to PUTIN is “the best chance we have of negotiating an effective solution to
the problem in the UKRAINE.”
JOINT
EU FOREIGN POLICY, THE DRIVING FORCES OF THE LISBON TREATY, HAS NEVER BECOME A
POLITICAL REALITY
An alternative candidate
for leadership on the UKRAINE crisis besides GERMANY was the EU as represented
by the institutions in BRUSSELS. But the vision of a joint foreign policy led
by those institutions, which was one of the driving forces of the LISBON
Treaty, has never become a political reality. While the EU has built up a
diplomatic service and beefed up the office of the foreign policy high
representative since 2009, the most important external relations dossiers have
remained in the hands of the EU member states. As a consequence, the high representative
today is not so much a leader as a coordinator on foreign policy.
The absence of another
power center willing to take the reins has given BERLIN a relatively free hand
to lead on the EU’s response to RUSSIAN response in UKRAINE. The character of that
response, therefore, has been shaped by the character of GERMAN foreign policy.
That foreign policy is strong on diplomacy and in the economic dimension of
power, but weak in the military dimension of power.
MAKING
USE OF DIPLOMATIC AND ECONOMIC STRENGTH
The main goal of the BERLIN-led
Western strategy on UKRAINE has been to move the conflict from the military to
the diplomatic and economic levels.
BERLIN has gone to
extraordinary lengths to push for negotiations in various formats: many
meetings and phone calls between MERKEL and PUTIN, negotiations with Ukrainian
and Western leaders, and similar talks on the level of foreign ministers led by
STEINMEIER. Besides RUSSIA and UKRAINE, the diplomatic track has involved
different countries at different stages of the conflict, mainly POLAND, FRANCE,
BRITAIN, ITALY, and the UNITED STATES.
The primary goal of these
efforts has been to bring RUSSIA and UKRAINE to the negotiating table. They
have resulted in the two MINSK agreements of September 2014 and February 2015.
The second, known as MINSK II, now provides the main framework for WESTERN
efforts to wind down the conflict in EASTERN UKRAINE. Implementing the deal by
the end of 2015 is at the center of current Western efforts.
Another pillar of the BERLIN-led
WESTERN strategy has been the use of sanctions. A first round of EU measures
was put in place after the annexation of CRIMEA by RUSSIA in March 2014, and EU
leaders agreed to so-called tier-three economic sanctions in July 2014. These
sanctions have two purposes.
The first is internal, to
build a consensus inside the EU. At the beginning of the conflict, there was
considerable disagreement among the 28 EU member states on the character of a
joint response. Each time EUROPEAN leaders agreed on a new round of sanctions,
the EU was forced to reach an internal consensus to develop a common approach.
EU unity during the crisis has been built around the sanctions policy.
WITHOUT
IMPOSED SANCTIONS, THE RUSSIAN ARMY WOULD MOST PROBABLY HAVE INVADED THE
SOUTHERN PART OF UKRAINE AS FAR AS ODESSA
The decision to impose
sanctions clarified the position of the EU member states and of the EU as a
whole—both internally, toward the public in the EU, as well as externally,
toward RUSSIA and the wider world. The KREMLIN, probably to its surprise, had
to learn that the EU was united in its rejection of the annexation of CRIMEA
and RUSSIA’S attack on EASTERN UKRAINE, and that it was ready to pay a price
for that unity in the form of economic sanctions that would affect the EU as well
as RUSSIA.
The second purpose of the
sanctions has been to limit the KREMLIN’S options in UKRAINE. In combination
with a falling oil price, sanctions have led to an economic crisis in RUSSIA,
which may result in a crisis of legitimacy of the current regime. Whether the
EU’s measures have played a role in stopping the advance of RUSSIAN-controlled
troops in EASTERN UKRAINE is difficult to say. RUSSIAN opposition leader ALEXEI
NAVALNY has argued that without the sanctions, the RUSSIAN army would have invaded
the southern part of UKRAINE as far as ODESSA.
MILITARY
WEAKNESS
GERMANY has been
successful in uniting the EU behind tough sanctions, in cooperating closely
with the UNITED STATES, and in leading on Western diplomacy with RUSSIA. One
may conclude that the U.S. vision of partnership in leadership and of elevating
GERMANY to the role of AMERICA’S primary partner in EUROPE, at least on the
continent, has come true during the UKRAINE conflict.
However, GERMANY has also
shown some weaknesses, which reveal the limits of a GERMAN-led EU foreign
policy. BERLIN has been quite reluctant on the military aspects of the crisis.
Of course, there was a broad agreement in the West that sending troops to UKRAINE
or providing arms or training on a massive scale was not an option. But there
were nevertheless important shades of gray when it came to other military
aspects of crisis management. GERMANY regularly spoke out early and publicly
against anything that could appear as a more muscular, hawkish approach.
THE
OLD DOCTRINE THAT SHAPED EUROPE’S GEOPOLITICS FOR CENTURIES: PERMANENT
DEPLOYMENT OF TROOPS ON THE EASTERN FLANK
The military dimension of
the West’s response to the UKRAINE conflict was largely limited to an internal
reorientation of NATO toward collective defense. In April 2014, NATO decided to
increase its presence on its Eastern borders through more air policing,
deployment of ships in the BALTIC SEA and the EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN, and NATO
land training and exercises.
And in the months before
the September 2014 NATO summit in WALES, a debate began about the possible
permanent deployment of NATO troops in POLAND, the BALTIC countries, and ROMANIA.
Leaders in those countries argued that this was necessary for the alliance to
have a credible deterrent. General PHILIP BREEDLOVE, NATO’s supreme allied
commander in EUROPE, said that the organization had to “consider” a permanent
deployment of troops on its EASTERN flank.
Already in early July,
however, MERKEL publicly pushed back and ruled out such a permanent deployment.
Instead, BERLIN put its weight behind an alternative proposal: to build up a
new rapid-response force able to operate at short notice to counter threats
against NATO members (as part of a larger, longer-term Readiness Action Plan,
which reorients NATO toward collective defense).
For GERMANY’S Eastern
neighbors, the new “spearhead force” was a weak substitute for permanent
troops. Only if a considerable number of U.S. and Western EUROPEAN soldiers
were permanently stationed in NATO’s Eastern member states, they argued, would
there be a credible guarantee that the West would defend NATO’s Eastern front
in case of a RUSSIAN attack. That is a view, it must be noted, which West GERMANY
itself had shared when it was a frontier state during the Cold War.
But BERLIN argued that a
permanent deployment of NATO forces on the territory of the Eastern member
countries would violate the 1997 NATO-RUSSIA Founding Act, which set out a road
map for cooperation between the two sides. BERLIN was not willing to scrap this
document, even if RUSSIA itself had significantly violated the agreement by
annexing CRIMEA and attacking EASTERN UKRAINE (as the conclusions of the WALES
NATO summit stated). The counterargument has been that GERMANY’S unwillingness
to put its weight behind a permanent deployment would not induce RUSSIA to
honor its commitments but would instead invite RUSSIA to test NATO’s Article
5—that an attack on one ally is an attack on all. In other words, the failure
to station permanent NATO troops at the alliance’s Eastern front might result
in the very RUSSIAN escalation that GERMANY feared would follow from such a
deployment.
Since the WALES summit,
however, GERMANY has shown considerable engagement in building up NATO’s new
rapid-reaction force, and it has, from the beginning, participated quite
willingly in other alliance reassurance measures. While GERMANS are unwilling
to consider permanent deployment in the East, there is a broad consensus in GERMANY
about the vital need to have NATO as the cornerstone of GERMAN security. As BERLIN
frustrated the hopes of its NATO allies in its Eastern neighborhood, it had to
provide them with some “Ersatz” (alternative) measures.
As in the debate about
permanent troop deployment, MERKEL again came out early and publicly with a
statement on February 2 against arming UKRAINE in its fight against the RUSSIAN-controlled
separatists in the country’s East. In doing so, she deprived herself of a
potential stick in the peace negotiations she subsequently held with FRENCH
President FRANÇOIS HOLLANDE, UKRAINIAN President PETRO POROSHENKO, and PUTIN in
MOSCOW on February 6. Saying that every option was on the table, as the U.S.
side did at the same time, would have given her a much stronger hand during
negotiations.
GERMANS
TEND TO REJECT THE USE OF MILITARY POWER AS A FOREIGN POLICY TOOL
MERKEL’S early efforts to
block proposals that would have forced GERMANY to participate in collective
measures with a military dimension can be defended as a reasonable policy: a
message that there is almost nothing that the West can do on the military side
of the conflict.
But her stance on the
military aspects of the crisis also points to other possible motives. One of
them appears to be domestic. A large majority of GERMANS tend to reject the use
of military power as a foreign policy tool. Pacifist statements resonate
powerfully in GERMANY, and being branded a militarist can endanger political
careers, as MERKEL experienced personally. As an opposition leader, MERKEl in
2003 argued in an op-ed in the WASHINGTON POST against then chancellor SCHRÖDER’S
populist criticism of the IRAQ War. In return, she was labeled a warmonger in GERMANY
and saw her road to the chancellery at risk.
Against that background, MERKEL
may feel that distancing herself early on from anything that could be attacked
as “militaristic” is an important prerequisite for keeping domestic support for
her engagement in the UKRAINE conflict. A more muscular approach may also risk
breaking the governing coalition with the Social Democrats, the party of STEINMEIER,
which is more dovish on RUSSIA than MERKEL’S Christian Democratic Union. In addition to the dislike of military
engagements, there is also an element of fear at play in the GERMAN reluctance
to adopt a more assertive response to RUSSIA—fear of a return to the Cold War,
when GERMANY expected to become the core battlefield in a nuclear war between
the two superpowers.
A broader, more systemic
reason for MERKEL’S reluctance to engage more in the military side of power is GERMANY’S
own dependence on others when it comes to security issues. As a nonnuclear
power whose security is ultimately guaranteed by U.S. military might, GERMANY
has only limited ability to lead on behalf of the West in a confrontational
setting with a nuclear power such as RUSSIA. BERLIN does not see eye to eye
with MOSCOW on the military dimension of power.
GERMANY cannot credibly
threaten those who are on the opposite side of a conflict, nor can it give
security guarantees to weak or threatened countries. GERMANY’S relative
weakness in military terms makes the country naturally vulnerable to threats
and blackmail itself—tactics that MOSCOW has used during the UKRAINE crisis.
While the RUSSIAN
president has plenty of military options, GERMAN leaders don’t have any
military options in their foreign policy toolbox. What they can do on their own
initiative is support GERMANY’S allies in their military missions—preferably by
offering nonlethal backing such as training, equipment, or transportation. On
all other dimensions of military power, GERMANS rely almost entirely on the
NATO alliance, which in practice means its key member, the UNITED STATES.
GERMANY'S ECONOMIC STRENGTH - THE IDEAL BARGAINING CHIP
GERMAN leadership in the UKRAINE
crisis has demonstrated both the strengths and the limits of GERMAN power. That
power is multilateral, diplomatic, and economic, but it largely lacks a
military dimension.
In the UKRAINE crisis, GERMANY
has done what in the past only the UNITED STATES did: it has unified the West
behind a single policy in a major crisis. BERLIN has led the diplomatic
negotiations with RUSSIA and has pushed through sanctions on RUSSIA against the
resistance a number of reluctant EU member states. That is a major achievement.
One key strength is BERLIN’S
diplomacy. Many countries trust GERMANY to take the lead because it is seen by
many as nonpartisan, or less partisan than others. Of all Western states, GERMANY
has the best communication channel to MOSCOW, and at the same time, KIEV views BERLIN
as a reliable partner. No other country has a better chance than GERMANY to
build consensus inside the EU; and MERKEL is a leader who is taken very
seriously in the White House.
Another, related source
of GERMAN power is the country’s economic strength. This strength is one of the
preconditions for GERMANY’S relatively powerful position inside the EU. It
gives GERMANY leverage in internal EU negotiations as well as in bilateral
talks outside the EU. In concert with the EU, GERMANY can offer non-EU
countries advantages such as investment or market access or present them with disadvantages
such as sanctions (provided it can find a majority for its policies inside the
EU).
However, GERMANY does not
have the full spectrum of power at its disposal. With regard to military
matters, the country is weak. In a conflict, GERMAN civilian power can only
work if it is backed up—reassured and supplemented—by the U.S. military muscle.
GERMAN power has
developed in the postmodern context of the EU and the transatlantic alliance.
In that specific international environment, military might has lost its
primacy, while diplomacy and economic strength have become much more important
currencies of power. But GERMAN foreign policy leadership reaches its limits if
an adversary is not responsive to its tools, diplomacy, and economic
pressure—if the other side does not share the principles of postmodern
governance that shape international relations among liberal democracies.
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