Divided loyalties to hang over Olaf Scholz’s visit to White House

When chancellor Olaf Scholz meets US president Joe Biden on Monday, Frank Kracht and his neighbours in Germany’s Baltic region will be watching and listening closely.

Two shadows hang over Scholz’s inaugural White House visit: the prospect of Russia invading Ukraine, and doubts from Germany’s western partners that Berlin will stand with them in facing down Moscow.

If war does break out, western threats of hard and immediate sanctions against Russia will hit Germany’s northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern – and Franz Kracht already knows how that threat feels.

In August 2020 the mayor of Sassnitz, a harbour town on the Baltic island of Rügen, received a letter from the US Senate. It threatened Sassnitz with “crushing legal and economic” sanctions unless it turned away Russian ships assisting with the final stages of Nord Stream 2, a 1,200km undersea gas pipeline to transport Russian gas directly to Germany.

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Uncertainty

After months of uncertainty, Biden vetoed the Bill last year and averted sanctions. The pipeline was completed and is awaiting a permit, but Kracht says the threat lingers – as does the resentment.

“In the back of our minds we know that all we need is the president’s signature for all this to flare up again, it’s very wearisome,” said Kracht. “The Americans should leave us alone. We can decide what’s good and, as far as gas goes, people say that Russia has always been a dependable energy partner.”

Germany draws nearly one-third of its energy from natural gas and, of that, 55 per cent comes from Russia. Nord Stream 2 will add additional gas capacity as Germany shuts down its last nuclear power plants this year in its shift to renewables.

But with high energy prices and low gas reserves, the Ukraine-Russian standoff has revived an old dilemma for Germany’s new Scholz administration – and the ruling Social Democratic Party (SPD).

Apart from an offer of 5,000 soldier helmets, Berlin has refused Ukrainian requests for military equipment and weapons. Under pressure from the US and other Nato allies, however, Scholz made a grudging admission that a Russian incursion into Ukraine would put “all options on the table” for sanctions.

Furious

But many eastern Germans are furious that this should includes the multibillion-euro Nord Stream 2 project on their doorstep.

Ask locals in Sassnitz why they think Russia has 100,000 troops on the border with Ukraine, and they ask why the US is building up Nato troops in the Baltic countries and Poland. Ask about Germany’s growing dependency on Russian gas and they wonder if a US offer of liquid gas imports is better.

Germany’s complex geography and history with Russia cannot be discounted in how it responds in this crisis. From tsarist Russia to the Soviet Union and beyond, many here see strong Russian ties as existential, not threatening. A short coastal drive from Lubmin, where Nord Stream 2 makes land, lies the birthplace of the princess who became Russian empress Catherine the Great.

A poll this week indicated that 49 per cent of Germans see Russia as the aggressor in the Ukrainian standoff. And while just 17 per cent of western Germans blame the US, that rises to 43 per cent in eastern regions.

Mayor Joachim Pukowski of Hanshagen, another Baltic region village, says threats to abandon Nord Stream 2 will cost 300 jobs, which are needed in a popular tourist destination hit badly in the pandemic.

“Germany is not playing a laudable role at the moment simply because no one knows what it wants,” said Pukowski. “The new coalition parties have been surprised by power and are struggling to balance it with their parties’ own policies.”

Nowhere is that struggle more visible than in Scholz’s own SPD. After weeks of public squabbling, SPD leaders warned MPs this week not to allow guilt for 20 million Russian war dead or nostalgia for days of Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik cloud their vision of today’s challenges with a very different Russia.

“Unfortunately a positive agenda with Russia is now a long way off,” said Lars Klingbeil, SPD co-leader.

Tougher line

While some eastern SPD state premiers remain ambivalent about a tougher line towards Moscow, ex-SPD chancellor Gerhard Schröder has blamed the stand-off on Ukraine and its “outrageous” sabre-rattling against Russia.

Before leaving office in 2005, Schröder signed Germany up to the original Nord Stream project and then signed up as a Russian gas consultant. In June, the 77-year-old will reportedly join the board of Russia’s state-owned energy giant Gazprom.

Despite mixed German signals, and fears of divided loyalties, analysts say the SPD administration views close partnership with the US as more decisive for European peace and security than a gas pipeline.

“German economic interests loom large here,” said Dr Gero Neugebauer, political scientist at Berlin’s Free University, “but, at the end of the day, they will not be decisive.”