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

After the summit, the dreams of the Foreign Office of a, "change through interdependence," must be set aside ad acta. The form of government in the Kremlin is indeed transforming, but unfortunately in the direction of less democracy rather than more. "Openness instead of Harmony," as Chancellor Merkel concluded, has now been announced.

This means more Realpolitik and less wishful politics for Germany and Europe. The ghosts of die-hard Russia nostalgists waft through certain parts of the SPD, who dream of a special relationship between Germany and Russia and are only too ready to romanticize Putin's autocratic authority as democracy. Putin himself possesses the chutzpah to equate the regulation of peaceful demonstrators, among them Garri Kasparow, with the crackdown on potentially violent G8 opponents. As EU Parliamentary President, Angela Merkel found explicit words for this.

But if Peter Struck as fraction leader of the SPD and her partner in the Grand Coalition can speak of Germany as equidistant from Moscow and Washington, this is, in spite of all faults in American foreign policy, completely incomprehensible. Only those who can fall for Putin's propaganda trick that ten defence missiles stationed in Poland are more threatening than a thousand Russian long range missiles, would disavow the international security risks of North Korea and Iran because they are enforced by the U.S. government.

The reprimand concerning this discussion in the NATO-Russia Council is no more candid, for it was at this body that the U.S. began to introduce this proposal two years ago. A clear positioning of the EU member states in NATO would be more helpful than a merely formal reprimand for an already existing practice.

The crises evoked by Moscow boycotting the import of Polish meat and the sovereign right of the Estonians to transfer the Soviet monument in Tallinn serves to demonstrate the new Russian strength to the states of the former Soviet space. These crises concern the entire EU and not only these particular states. Therefore a common European foreign policy must be developed, which would no longer allow Russia to cause rifts in the EU. This is especially important for energy policy; everything that reduces dependence on Moscow's oil and gas must be enhanced, from energy saving via alternative forms of energy, to new sources, and pipelines.