GMF - The German Marshall Fund of the United States - Strengthening Transatlantic Cooperation

Germany plays a specific role for Russia and vice versa. It is apparently no coincidence that the German chancellor and the Russian President communicate in Russian and German - after all German-Russian relations have always been complex and changeable. Mutual fear and admiration, phobic defensiveness and empathetic fondness have characterized the situation on both sides - not merely in recent times, but always.

Peter the Great initially brought Germans to Russia to boost the economy. Pharmacists, doctors and craftsmen were among the immigrants. Like the last Tsarina, Alexandra Fjodorowna, Catherine the Great was a German - deriving from impoverished nobility, the sovereigns of Anhalt-Zerbst. Both facts stand for the close relations between the Romanov Tsar dynasty and the German nobility. Germans, predominantly of Baltic-German nobility, constituted about a third of the high-ranking government officials and military officers in the Tsar's empire following the Tsardom's victory over the Baltic States in the eighteenth century.

The German and the Russian Empires rivaled for influence in Eastern and Central Europe on one hand, while on the other, the Prussian and German Empire's foreign policy was continually concerned with attempting to assure an understanding with Russia. Impelled by Bismarck's "Cauchemar des Coalitions", the Germans tried to create an alliance with the Tsardom after 1871, in order to prevent a coalition between France and Russia. Succeeding Bismarck, Kaiser Wilhelm II failed to continue this alliance, which has been one reason for the outbreak of World War I.

Despite difficulties relating to foreign affairs, both countries have been economic partners since the nineteenth century. Russia exports raw materials to Germany and imports German machinery. The German Empire was Russia's main supplier of industrial goods and technology up until the First World War.

Hate and distrust of "the West"

The Russian worldview is related to a national feeling, ever recurrent in German history and characterized by a tragic self-pity and an accompanying feeling of being a fallen nation dominated by the triumphant West. These attitudes seemed to be confirmed in the Treaty if Versailles, imposed on the German Empire by the Western victors to the exclusion of Russia. The similar worldviews of the Germans and the Russians ultimately led to close and secret military cooperation from 1921 until 1933 between the German Imperial Army and the Red Army. 

A further expression of close cooperation was the German-Soviet Treaty of Rapallo in 1922: instead of signing the accord with the Western powers, the German government recognized the Soviet Union under international law. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 also belongs to this tradition of German-Russian foreign policy relations. Since then, the ghost of Rapallo has been viewed by western and central-eastern Europe as representing Germany's latent tendency to opt for "Separate Paths" (Sonderwege) when it comes about cooperation with Russia in the context of foreign affairs.

The Weimar Republic and the young Soviet Union were bound by a particular human and cultural proximity. Left-wing, liberal and right-wing German intellectuals such as Oswald Spengler, Hermann Hesse, Friedrich Naumann, Arthur Möller van den Bruck, Thomas Mann and Ernst Bloch perceived a fundamental outbreak of the "Russian spirit" or "Russian thought" in the new Soviet bolshevism following Germany and Russia's defeat in the First World War. Thomas Mann spoke of the "holy Russian literature".

Ernst Bloch in turn discovered the "empire of depth" in which the yearned for "empire of the third gospel" took shape. The new Soviet literature and the Stalinist architecture counted in inter-war intellectual Germany as the embodiment of the modernism project. They are symptomatic of the long phases of a cultural affinity between Germans and Russians - with all their respective transfigurations.

Brandt's ‘Ostpolitik' needed the USA
This was another reason for which the United States were concerned with integrating the Federal Republic of Germany into the West with the aid of development aid and NATO membership following the Second World War. Egon Bahr's concept of "change through rapprochement " and Willy Brandt's policy of détente in relation to the GDR were skeptically followed by Washington. Washington was similarly concerned about German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher who seriously considered waiving NATO membership of a reunified Germany shortly after the fall of the wall.

In misjudging the extent of own dependency on the parameters set by international affairs, many Germans are not aware about the fact that Willy Brandt's "Ostpolitik" was only achievable after the US successfully started its "policy of détente" with the Soviet Union. After all, German reunification was only possible with the support of President G.H. Bush Senior while François Mitterrand und Margaret Thatcher were opposed to it.

Germany as a vehicle for Russian policy

The Russia question lost importance for German foreign affairs following the withdrawal of the last Russian troops from former East German territories. Together with the other western states, the Kohl government nevertheless supported the democratisation of Russia under President Yeltsin. The personal relations between Helmut Kohl und Boris Yeltsin were good and trusting, as they were later between Gerhard Schröder und Vladimir Putin. German-Russian economic relations slowly recovered following the collapse of the Soviet economy.  Russia was, however, overly self-concerned in the nineties and thus unable to act as an effective foreign affairs player. This should change.

How the specific historical, cultural and economic ties to Russia could be made instrumental for a sober German and European Russia-policy - taking into account Germany's responsibility for Europe and a common European policy?

For the Soviet Union and Russia, Germany has always been considered a vehicle for introducing Russian interests into European and transatlantic debates as well as for dividing transatlantic partners. Among the historical objectives was always to alienate Germany from an integration into the West. In turn, German foreign policy was successful when it recognized these attempts of alienation and defied them.

In 1952 Stalin made an offer to the young Federal Republic - the so-called ‘Stalin Note' - that he would consent to German reunification on the condition that Germany remains neutral. Chancellor Adenauer declined this offer and continued steadfastly to further the Western integration of the Federal Republic into NATO and the European Community. The Soviet government understood this consistent approach: it became possible to negotiate the return of German prisoners of war and the resumption of diplomatic relations thanks to Adenauer's steadfastness.

Political separate paths (" Sonderwege") are less suitable than ever

On account of the complex and changeable German-Russian relations, reunified Germany, with its particular political and economic heavy weight in Europe, is less than ever able to afford political alternate routes. This calls for a sober appraisal of areas which allow for cooperation with Russia and those which seem to be excluded for the time being.

The EU-Russia Summit in Russian Samara on 19^th May 2007 marked a historical turning point in Europe-Russia relations. The convention ended fruitlessly as Putin was unable to play off the remaining EU countries against Estonia and Poland. The German government, in its position of EU Presidency, did not allow itself to be sidetracked into German-Russian understandings as had its predecessor. Instead, it turned Estonian and Polish issues to affairs concerning the entire EU. The fact that negotiations relating to a new Partnership and Cooperation Agreement could not commence on account of a Russian import ban on supposedly substandard Polish meat is neither an omission on the part of the EU nor on the part of the German government. The Kremlin could now demonstrate how serious it is about a new partnership agreement.
Vladimir Putin reacted to news of America's intention of stationing ten defense rockets in Poland as well as the Czech Republic with shrill rhetoric about an impending arms race. The reference is to "retaliatory measures" and the suspension and termination of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE). Vladmir Putin is conjuring up horror scenes of the Cold War. Indeed, the Russian president expressed the view that Iran presents a security risk. This comprises the Russian offer to  join existing Russian defence facilities in Azerbaijan with the new US military technology. At the same time this point exposes Putin's interest in attaching presently independent states of the former Soviet empire to Moscow.

The American plans may not be technically perfected as yet and perhaps could have been more gracefully introduced into the European security debate. Germany and other European states can however not escape from their responsibility to define their own political security position. Do we share the opinion that Iran presents a threat and how do we want to address this danger? Under what requirements will Germany and the other EU states participate in counteractive measures? The German government will have to find answers to these questions. The collapse of the Soviet Union heralds the end of Germany's long security policy sleep of a Sleeping Beauty. During the Cold War the American defense shield guaranteed Germany's security. Today Germany has to assume much more political security responsibility than previously, particularly for neighboring European states in the Balkan and South Caucasus.