Saturday 1 November 2014

Is the West endangered by Russia? No. By an ineffective Germany? Yes.

In recent weeks, there have been murmurs of Russian expansion into Western Europe, both in military terms and economic terms. I for one don't buy the theory that they are preparing for a wholesale takeover of the continent, or even a partial one; we should just keep them at arm's length, get on with trade and leave it at that. I fear Germany and its dismissive inactivity in areas of security and territorial integrity, combined with its grip on Eurozone austerity much, much more.

I live in Germany, a country that looks east and west in equal measures. Because of its self-instilled role as benign regional superpower, it had bestowed on itself a mainly symbolic role in diplomatic affairs. This troubles me, because I see this policy as breathtakingly hypocritical. Germany is a country with a recent history of washing its hands of highly-charged political and economic upheaval, not throwing enough energy into the fight against the international threats of terrorism, disease, poverty, hunger, or saving the planet, and seems to be happy enough to let the poorest EU member states drown in the waters of its own enforced austerity measures. Germany is getting rich off the backs of others' misery. At the same time, despite jittery Poles, nervous Balts and baffled Swedes, all who have been recent victims to Russia's mind games, Germany seems to want to carry on playing the old appeasement tune, as if in some sarcastic way to say "you emasculated us in 1945, now you'll see what the consequences are!" At this time, sitting on the fence is the most alarming thing to be doing. It is making countries who have had a peaceful recent history get second thoughts on their alignments and allegiances.

Poland and the Baltic States have had a long and troubled relationship with Russia, and no other countries are better experienced in trying to second-guess Russia's next moves. They are justified in being worried about the future and believing they need to start preparing for a Russian onslaught. This is not necessarily because they think it will happen - it is because they do not trust the bigger powers, especially Germany, to defend them if necessary. I for one believe that Russia will stay away from Poland, although the Baltic States I am not sure. But we should encourage those four countries nonetheless to increase their military spending. We should also be helping them by bolstering the number of NATO troops in the area even further. This is however not happening. The West is running out of military personnel running around putting out little fires in other parts of the world, like the Middle East and East Africa. What it should be doing is watching its own back.

Russia is loving every minute of this - watching its former underlings criticising the senior NATO members for not providing enough reassurance that they will honour the NATO promise to come to the aid of any of its members. And this is the fundamental reason why we need not fear a Russian invasion: Russia has always believed politics to be like chess - you win the game not by a full-on attack, but by tricking your opponents and making them paranoid about you. Chess is war by proxy. You manoeuvre your pieces in a way that makes the opponent fear and respect you. But it is not about territory, war or invasion. Russia wants NATO and the EU to implode by itself and so it is sowing the seeds of doubt. And at the moment it is winning very comfortably.

The Poles and the Baltic States should rightly worry about the future, and prepare for the worst just in case, but the US and especially Germany should hang their heads in shame at the ambiguous and complacent way they are treating those countries. In the end, Realpolitik may win the day, as it should, where Russia and Europe co-exist and rely on each other for trade, but we should not allow Germany and Russia to ruin us by doing nothing to defuse the situation.

Germany needs to man up, start throwing some of its weight around and act like the geopolitical power it is. 1945 is no longer an excuse; it needs to prove itself militarily. Herein lies the problem - after such a protracted period of demilitarisation, Germany is now full of conscientious objectors: people who are against war whatever the reason. How can any nation justify that in this day and age? We should all strive to avoid war, but sometimes it is the only option. There is no other way to defeat the barbaric 12th-century mob of mercenaries that calls itself the Islamic State. Al-Shabab and the like neither. At the same time, we should not seek war with Russia, Iran or any state where diplomacy would be more appropriate, but we should encourage the defence of all of our borders, no matter what the threat, and with nobody in particular in mind. Germany has shirked its responsibilities in all these areas, and continues to lord it over the Eurozone, enforcing its draconian and remorseless policies of austerity on countries whose governments have become more or less de facto puppet states of Brussels and Berlin.

This is the type of country that goes about its business with nothing in its conscience except saving its own bacon by cuddling up to Russia and China, whilst at the same time looking like the Good European. Germany's ability to persuade countries from Finland to Portugal and Greece to Ireland dance to its tune unquestioningly but with a modicum of fear and reverence, is testament to its stranglehold on European affairs. Countries like the Czech Republic, Denmark and the UK, which have a tradition of being slightly more aloof in the European context, are often isolated to the point of humiliation, the UK often being the last one standing. These are all trade-offs, you see, and the UK doesn't often give in to that, even if others do.

However, I think our feckless and thumb-twiddling politicians need to start acting a bit more streetwise. At the moment, they look like a group of bumbling and out-of-touch buffoons not dissimilar to the two hapless detectives in the ever-relevant Tintin comic strips. If I were a member of the EU Council of Ministers, no matter which country I was representing, I would be trying to persuade or even embarrass Germany into changing its stance of selfish inaction on many fronts, the UK to stop listening to the oil lobby about its objection to creating more wind farms, and also to stop reducing the size of its military, and the rest of Europe to start getting a lot quicker in its response to everything. It is so slow - it often meets and talks about matters that may have happened a week or more earlier and the world has moved on by then.

Russia though is not off the hook. Crimea seems a long way off, and the east of Ukraine has dropped off the newsreels. But it does not mean it is over - far from it. Right now, the people of that region don't know what the world is doing to them. It could be that through Europe's own policy of letting Germany actively do nothing (yes, you can actively do nothing!) we are letting the people of Ukraine down. Who is to say that the same would not happen to Poland or the Baltic countries, if such a scenario were to happen there? And this is where the UK and France come in - if Germany, having its hands firmly squeezed by Moscow due to its patronage of a lot of Russian trade, is reducing talks between Russia and Ukraine to "kiss and make up", what does that tell us about its leadership? As long as its economy is going along nicely, there's food on the table for everyone, its austerity measures kicking in everywhere except in Germany itself, what does it care? It has never acted in the interests of the whole, only its own.

According to a recent opinion poll, Germany is the most positively-viewed country in the world. Within 5 years, I think people will see that going down. It is starting to look a lot like Europe in the 20th century, as Germany is adopting a similar air of careless disregard for Poland, but this time as its so-called ally, not its master. If the EU is to survive Putin's mind games, Germany needs to stop relying on the UK and France as the EU's military wing, and allay the fears of Poland and the Baltic States by more than just words. Angela Merkel's dismissal of other nations' concerns, from protection of Polish and Baltic territorial integrity, through British repatriation of powers from Brussels, to Spanish and Greek austerity, could cause the EU to collapse. It is time we either started to take some of the responsibility away from Germany whether it likes it or not, or made it realise it is doing great harm to everyone else through its own lazy and two-faced policies.