Serious question: Is Germany more an ally of Vladimir Putin or of NATO?
We know where Germany’s loyalties rest when it comes to China: Germany is Beijing’s greatest ally in Europe. Still, the NATO versus Russia question would appear to have an easy answer: NATO. After all, Germany is one of NATO’s 30 member states.
Not so fast.
Berlin increasingly appears to be a NATO member in name only. Consider the evidence.
Six years after pledging to reach the 2%-of-GDP NATO basic target for defense budgets, Germany is hovering around 1.5% of GDP. Germany is also one of only five NATO members that fail to meet another target: spending at least 20% of its defense budget on equipment. Somehow, it’s about to get worse. Chancellor Angela Merkel is set to leave office, with a left-wing SPD-led government likely to take power. And prospective Chancellor Olaf Scholz has abandoned even the pledge to pursue the 2% spending target.
The devil isn’t only in the data.
Take Ukraine. Ukraine is now using drones to defend itself against Russian forces that have seized its territory. Germany’s response has been to condemn Ukraine. Russia, of course, gets a free pass from Berlin. At the same time, Germany rushed the approval of Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline this week. Berlin did so after Russia withheld energy supplies on condition of the gas pipeline’s rapid approval. The Germans will be fine, thanks to Nord Stream 2. But Russia is now suspending thermal coal exports to Ukraine. Germany appeases Russia, happy to leave Ukraine to its freezing winter hell.
Less freezing is the treatment Germany gives to the Russian government’s chemical weapons program. Germany allows that program an overt presence on its soil. Between beers and sausages, Putin’s scientists and materiel gatherers develop new assassination toxins.
Merkel recently won praise from former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Merkel, Medvedev said, was “a good chancellor of Germany and was a full-fledged and understandable, predictable partner for the Russian Federation.”
Indeed. We expect Scholz to follow in these footsteps. The last SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schroder is a director for Putin’s Rosneft energy giant.
You couldn’t make this up.
