If there’s a moment that betrays Germany’s wobbly geopolitical instincts, it is Berlin’s we-won’t-think-of-fighting response to Russian military maneuvers that followed Moscow’s takeover of Crimea.
About three weeks after Russia’s flag was hoisted over Crimea’s parliament building in 2014, up to 40,000 of its troops were reportedly massing along Ukraine’s eastern border. U.S. General Phillip Breedlove, NATO’s supreme allied commander in Europe, speaking at a German Marshall Fund event in Brussels, described the build-up as “very, very sizeable, very, very ready” and “very worrisome.”
German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, a Christian Democrat, responded with solidarity and concern, saying that it is important for NATO countries bordering Russia that the alliance “show its presence” there.
Then she got clobbered. “The impression must not be given that we’re playing with military options, even in theoretical terms,” warned Sigmar Gabriel, then the Social Democrat economy minister and vice chancellor.
Rather than defend von der Leyen, Chancellor Angela Merkel stayed silent. Gabriel’s words — signaling doubt about a U.S. general’s description of a real-time Russian threat and making clear Germany’s flight from military commitment — were allowed to define Berlin’s position at a critical point in modern European history.
A German majority rejects the country’s pledge to meet NATO’s target for rising military spending
More immediately troubling in Germany’s relations with America and Russia — and arguably more important than the effect of any perceived disruption caused by U.S. President Donald Trump — is the increasingly unfavorable view of the West, and the refusal of obligations to the West, that has hardened in the German mindset.
A German majority rejects the country’s pledge to meet NATO’s target for rising military spending; 69 percent of the German public want more cooperation with Russia and only 35 percent with America; a consistent German polling majority refuses to defend Poland and the Baltic states if Russia invaded them.
Now, a singular exclamation mark has been added to Germany’s wobbling: Gabriel has been nominated to become chairman of Atlantik-Brücke, a nonprofit association of wealth and influence founded in 1952 as an “elite” — in its words — organization seeking ‘’to strengthen and preserve the [German] bond with the West.’’
This would be a miserable choice.
In contrast to Atlantik-Brücke’s history, the policies pursued by Gabriel reflect years of Social Democrat election manifestos calling for Berlin’s “equidistance” between Moscow and Washington.
Sigmar Gabriel | Alexander Koerner/Getty Images via Gruner + Jahr
It’s important not to forget that Gabriel was the prime protégé of former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who has come to hold both the chairmanship of Gazprom’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline and Rosneft, Russia’s energy giant. Schröder’s jobs were enough for a Wall Street Journal columnist to call him Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most important oligarch — one who personally deserves a place on America’s Crimea sanctions list.
Gabriel turned up the volume of Schröder’s Putin-loyalty line to full blast. During his time in Merkel’s coalition government, Gabriel pushed, almost obsequiously, for renewed trade with Iran and banged the drum for the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline with a paradiddle of statements pleasing to Moscow, including a promise to block foreign “meddling” against Russia by the European Union and the United States.
Gabriel also opposed Germany increasing its defense budget to meet NATO’s target of 2 percent of GDP.
When Merkel slipped into a kind of dematerialized political trance after the 2017 election campaign, Gabriel, then foreign minister, grabbed hold of Berlin’s foreign/security microphone for a full six months.
In the process, he established himself as the next man in the notional Schröder hierarchy of political wisdom in Germany — ahead of Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier who, while foreign minister, was rated by John McCain as coming from the “Neville Chamberlain school of diplomacy.’’
Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, of the liberal party, offered this judgment on the two men’s approach: “Steinmeier and Gabriel simply ignored what we know” about Russian missiles targeted on Berlin since 2014.
The idea of Gabriel as head of Atlantik-Brücke brushes the absurd — rather like his argument that spending 2 percent on the German armed forces will result in their outsized growth, terrifying Germany’s eastern neighbors.
Voting no to Gabriel when the opportunity comes up in June will give the organization a new relevance
Hardly. Instead, real terror will be assured through disregard à la Gabriel for NATO’s stated needs. This neglect carries the numbing prospect for members from the old Soviet bloc of American disengagement, however unlikely, that leaves them home alone to be “defended’’ by Germany.
Fortunately, Atlantik-Brücke’s statutes allow its 500 members to decide on whether to accept its directors’ publicly unexplained choice of Gabriel to replace the conservative Friederich Merz, who is chairman of Black Rock’s German investment management operation.
Voting no to Gabriel when the opportunity comes up in June will give the organization a new relevance and non-conventional aura in a German political environment that is leaning dangerously in Russia’s direction.
John Vinocur was executive editor and vice president of the International Herald Tribune.