Germany is a case study — perhaps the case study — of a Western middle power which made a strategic bet on a full embrace of interdependence and globalization in the late 20th century: it outsourced its security to the U.S., its export-led growth to China, and its energy needs to Russia. It is now finding itself excruciatingly vulnerable in an early 21st century characterized by great power competition and an increasing weaponization of interdependence by allies and adversaries alike. The war in Ukraine, which touches on almost every one of Germany’s bilateral, regional, and global interests, only accentuates its exposure. That this horrific conflict is taking place in the region that was part of the “Bloodlands” (the term coined by Yale historian Timothy Snyder), where Hitler and (to a lesser degree) Stalin murdered tens of millions of people is lost on few of my fellow citizens.
For much of the three decades after German reunification in 1990, Berlin saw Moscow (as well as Beijing) as a reliable strategic partner in a two-way bargain: Germany would import cheap energy, and export good governance in much the way that Eastern Europe had been transformed through entry into NATO and the EU. Ultimately, German policymakers hoped, this would transform not only these countries’ economies but also their political systems. And they believed — in an attempt to reconfigure West Germany’s Cold War Ostpolitik for a united Germany in the middle of Europe — that NATO and the European Union could and should be encompassed in a pan-European security architecture that included Russia.
The Kremlin, for its part, saw Germany as a friend, a partner, and as a strategic bridgehead into Europe — not least because it was importing roughly a third of its oil and gas from Russia. What the Germans called their “modernization partnership” with Moscow made for excellent business for a while; but in every other way, it proved to be a failure. Economic integration turned out to be strictly downstream, while many German businesses got burned by corruption and organized crime; political reform remained elusive.
Putin’s war and European energy security: A German perspective on decoupling from Russian fossil fuels | Brookingshttps://www.brookings.edu/articles/putins-war-and-european-energy-security-a-german-perspective-on-decoupling-from-russian-fossil-fuels/