December 2, 2008
Germany Aims to Protect Its Interests by Guiding the West’s Ties to Russia
By NICHOLAS KULISH
NYT

MOSCOW — In the heat of the Georgia crisis in August, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany flew to Russia to warn about the consequences of renewed militarism. Two days later she was in Georgia, voicing support for the country’s eventual entry into NATO.

Autumn crept in and passions cooled. The beginning of October found Mrs. Merkel back in Russia, looking on as the German utility E.ON and the Russian state energy giant Gazprom signed a significant deal in St. Petersburg, giving the German firm a stake in the enormous Yuzhno-Russkoye natural gas field in Siberia.

Mrs. Merkel’s shifting focus served as a reminder of the pivotal role played by Germany in shaping the West’s relationship with Russia. It is Russia’s largest trading partner, Europe’s single biggest economy and one of America’s closest allies. Moscow’s aggressive posture has not only thrust Russia, a nuclear-armed energy power, back to the geopolitical spotlight. It has also dragged Germany there with it.

Just as the United States is struggling to redefine its relationship with a resurgent and at times antagonistic government in Moscow, Germany is scrambling to protect the close commercial, cultural and diplomatic ties with Russia it has forged since the end of the cold war — and, in some areas, long before.

How broad that divide has grown will become clearer this week, when NATO foreign ministers gather in Brussels. Berlin and Washington are at odds over how to deal with NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine — a tussle that at its heart is about how to deal with Russia.

As the United States aims mainly to counter Russia’s newfound military assertiveness, Germany favors steps to develop Russia economically and ensure its political stability. Germany sees its responsibility to guide Russia, not contain it.

The incoming Obama administration, which has vowed to pursue a new path to curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions as well as achieving other foreign policy goals that involve Russia, may find that one road to Moscow runs through Berlin. At a minimum, it seems likely to have to address Germany’s deeper interests in Russia.

“There are serious disagreements between Washington and Berlin from which Moscow can only benefit if there is not better coordination,” said Angela Stent, who served as the top Russia officer at the United States government’s National Intelligence Council from 2004 to 2006 and now directs Russian studies at Georgetown University. “The Obama administration should work with the Germans as it reassesses U.S. policy toward Russia.”

Weary of American lectures about the fact that 36 percent of the natural gas that heats German homes comes from Russia, some German politicians wonder how Americans can worry more about this energy dependence than they themselves do.

“Many Germans believe Bush only invaded Iraq for oil, and many Americans believe Germany’s Russia policy is determined by gas,” said Karsten D. Voigt, who coordinates German-American relations in the German Foreign Ministry and who for years ran the German-Russian parliamentary group in the German Parliament. “Every German government since at least the 1970s has tried to bind Russia, and before that the Soviet Union, more closely with Europe.”

Sergei Kupriyanov, a representative of Gazprom, said, “Our cooperation began during the cold war,” referring to deals — opposed by the United States — that laid gas pipelines between Russia and Germany in the 1970s. “The Berlin Wall still existed,” he said. “Compared to what we had then, Georgia is just peanuts.”

Germans see not dependence on Russia, but interdependence. The European Union’s 27 nations account for 80 percent of the cumulative foreign investment in Russia, a fact starkly exposed — if the Kremlin ever forgot — by the flight of capital after the Georgia crisis.

The Europeans, after Georgia, angrily froze negotiations with Russia over a new partnership agreement. Barely 10 weeks later, they decided to resume the talks. “We cannot build a European architecture against Russia or without Russia, only with Russia,” said Alexander Rahr, director of the Russian/Eurasian program at the German Council on Foreign Relations.

While Germany needs Russia’s raw materials and covets the significant market there for its precision machine tools, Russia is equally dependent on European investment to diversify its economy, a fact driven home all too clearly for Russians now that the financial crisis has sent energy prices plunging.

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the sky is a beautiful shade of cerise in Rice's world....

Rice warns Nato against closer ties with Moscow – for now
Outgoing US secretary of state sets out 'touchstone' tests for Russia after Georgia invasion

* Owen Bowcott and agencies
* guardian.co.uk, Tuesday December 2 2008 12.09 GMT

Nato should beware of cooperating too closely with Russia after the invasion of Georgia last summer, the outgoing US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, warned today.

Speaking in London before attending a meeting of the military alliance in Brussels, she signalled that the US was willing to improve strained diplomatic relations with Moscow. "In principle, we don't have any problem [with closer ties]," Rice said.

However, the timing of renewed cooperation should be subject to tests, such as whether Russia was meeting its ceasefire commitments or "acting on its quite ill-tempered decision" to recognise two breakaway Georgian provinces as independent. "Those are ... the touchstones of when it makes sense," Rice said.

Two days of talks at Nato are expected to focus on Georgia's and Ukraine's hopes of joining the alliance. France and Germany fear that opening pre-membership negotiations with the two states would antagonise Russia.

The US government recently backed away from its call for Ukraine and Georgia to be prepared for Nato membership. It has called, however, for such "post-Soviet" nations' to modernise their armed forces and develop stronger democratic institutions.

Rice hinted that the US was considering seeking to improve relations with Moscow. "I think you would want to be very careful, for instance, about doing things that look military-to-military, because the Russian military is still sitting in the states," she said, referring to the standoff in the breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The US-backed government in Georgia claims the territories as integral parts of the nation.

"This [war] turned out badly for Russia, very badly," Rice said. Moscow had failed to bring down the Georgian government, its economy or international support for it, Rice said. "If they did anything, they managed to increase international support for Georgia, not decrease it."

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via WSJ op-ed.

By Vanessa Mock in Brussels
Wednesday, 3 December 2008

Georgia's hopes of joining Nato were dealt a blow last night, when Western European countries blocked a bid to offer it a path to membership.

In a move bitterly contested by Condoleezza Rice, Nato's 26 foreign ministers pledged to deepen ties with Georgia and Ukraine, but refused to set them on the formal road to joining the trans-Atlantic club.

The outgoing US Secretary of State had hoped to end her last visit to Brussels on a high note by granting Georgia a Membership Action Plan (MAP), which has been seen as the final stepping-stone toward joining the alliance.

But her European colleagues feared that such a step would antagonise Russia. They argued that neither Kiev nor Tbilisi were ready and should instead first embark on a long process of reform. "Both countries have made progress but both still have significant work to do," said Nato's secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. "Any membership decision will depend on future progress."

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