The regional office of the Germany-based Friedrich Ebert Foundation (Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung) in Ukraine and Belarus has organized a visit of a group of Ukrainian experts to Berlin to attend the debate “Energy and Foreign Policy after the Gas Crisis.” The group consisted of Hryhorii Perepelytsia, director of the Institute of Foreign Policy of the Diplomatic Academy at Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Mykhailo Honchar, energy expert, member of the Nomos Strategy-1 civic organization; Alla Yeriomenko, chief of the environmental safety section of the weekly Dzerkalo tyzhnia; Taras Mykhalniuk, executive at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation’s regional office; and Yurii Shcherbak, this writer.
Meetings and exchanges with representatives of various political, civic and academic circles of Germany, Bundestag members, and German foreign ministry officials were extremely frank, helping us better understand Germane’s perception of the 2009 “gas war,” and were also a good opportunity to put across to our Berlin colleagues the viewpoint of Ukrainian experts on the current dangerous situation in the field of energy security in the most detailed way. Nor did we leave untouched the question of security situation in Europe, Germany, and Ukraine, the global financial and economic crisis and the prospects of overcoming it.
1. “GAS WAR:” WHO WON?
Our German colleagues included Rolf Hempelmann, Bundestag member, chairman of the energy workgroup in the Social Democratic Party (SPD) faction; B rbel Kofler, SPD Bundestag member, head of the Germany — Ukraine inter-parliamentary group; Berthold Leimbach, Friedrich Ebert Foundation energy expert; Achim Post, deputy chairman of the SPD executive committee; Alexander Rahr, a well-known political scientist, director of the German International Relations Council; and other representatives of Berlin’s think tanks. They described in no uncertain terms, with the typical German accuracy, their society’s viewpoint on the events of January 2009:
– the “gas war” stirred up “very serious resentment” about the actions of Russia and Ukraine, which the vast majority of the public thinks are equally to blame for what happened: what caused “General Frost” to attack European countries is opaque gas deals between Russian and Ukraine. The two countries have tarnished their image as irreproachable partners in gas supple and transit;
– EU member states are also unanimous in showing a negative attitude to Russia and Ukraine. The mass media have found no place for pro-Russian or pro-Ukrainian views. Public opinion was formed spontaneously and quickly: the grassroots did not wish to look into the conflict’s intricacies and judge who was right and who was to blame for the causes and effects of the “gas war;”
– at the same time, Berlin’s participants in the dialogue believe that Russia prepared for the conflict far better than Ukraine did: Russia’s propaganda attack in the first days of the “gas war” was a systemic, carefully coordinated action that involved the media, diplomats, and secret services. Yet, to tell the truth, Moscow failed to benefit much from the information war because after the Russian-Georgian conflict Europe has been generally taking a skeptical, if not hostile, attitude to Russian complaints about its neighbors;
– later on Ukrainian explanations somewhat improved the attitude to Ukraine but still left deep mistrust intact; the events of January 2009 only strengthened German leadership’s intention to build the Nord Stream gas pipeline from Russia across the Baltic Sea directly to Germany at any cost in spite of the protests from Poland, Sweden, and the Baltic States.
Our interlocutors emphasized that the majority of Germany’s population favor the construction of Nord Stream. The SPD leadership is also fully supporting this project. This is Russia’s only victory in the “gas war.”
All the other attempts to present Ukraine in the eyes of Europe as the one guilty of all the gas-related woes, make a “whipping boy” out of our country, and direct the European noble wrath against Kyiv have been thwarted.
It was, above all, Russia’s loss, for it showed again that it can use the “weapon of gas destruction” against certain countries to achieve its geopolitical goals. During the gas blockade of Ukraine and Europe, the Russian Federation incurred immense economic losses — about two billion dollars — and confirmed the reputation of an unpredictable partner. Unfortunately, Ukraine also lost, for the public opinion of Germany still associated it, as it did Russia, with the formidable shadow of the Soviet empire: some experienced ordinary Germans even recalled the Soviet blockade of Berlin in 1949. Isn’t Ukraine’s slippage from the role of a NATO and EU prospective member to that of a mythological member of the inexistent “Eastern bloc” an obvious loss of image and geopolitical defeat of our state?
The reasoning of Ukrainian debaters was heard attentively because it was of an unbiased and well-balanced nature and free of such a typical Ukrainian feature as romantic self-praise and uncritical attitude to glaring mistakes. In the opinion of Ukrainian delegation members, despite corruptive ties between the Russian and Ukrainian parties to gas deals, it is Moscow that deliberately provoked the 2009 “gas war” to serve its geopolitical as well purely practical interests.
The actions of Gazprom (read: the Kremlin) clearly showed a desire to punish Ukraine for its independent foreign-policy course (aspiration to join NATO and the EU) and democratic development (freedom of speech, political pluralism). It was also important for Moscow to set as high gas price as possible (a lesson for European consumers) and enlist the support of Germany in building the Nord Stream gas pipeline.
Among the main causes of the conflict is Moscow’s intention to establish control over the gas transit system and underground gas storages of Ukraine, which is of a strategic value for our state. Russian control of the Ukrainian gas transit system may some day make it possible for Gazprom’s military formations to occupy the gas pipeline area under the pretext of protecting the energy artery from sabotage.
What drew the German colleagues’ serious attention was the “M. Honchar Memorandum,” a German-translated document on the root causes and motives of an unprecedented event in the world gas history — a large-scale cut-off of gas supplies. One of the main causes of this event is Gazprom’s depleted resources at the peak of gas consumption on January 1 to 20, 2009. The overall deficit of “undersupplied” gas to Ukraine and EU countries was about 8.1 billion cu. m. (the yearly export of gas to five countries: Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Croatia), which was caused by the closure of 100 Russian wells. Gazprom disguised this shortage as “the problem of gas transit through Ukraine.” Honchar also points to Gazprom’s nearly critical financial condition caused by a price fall on the EU gas market.
We would like to believe that the arguments of Ukrainian experts will not remain unnoticed and will promote a better understanding of Russia’s and Ukraine’s “gas behavior” by the political and academic circles of Germany. For, as one of the experts noted bitterly and ironically, “I am optimistic. I am sure Moscow and Kyiv will go on waging ‘gas wars’.”
2. GERMANY’S ENERGY POLICY IS AN EXAMPLE TO BE FOLLOWED BY UKRAINE
“Gas wars” between Russia and its neighbors, which also draw in EU countries, is only the beginning of a dangerous 21st-century trend — the era of wars for energy resources, water, land, and mineral deposits. In the foreword to European Energy Policy: the Balance of National Interests and the Need of Political Changes coauthored by our interlocutor Berthold Leimbach, Vice-Chancellor of Germany, SPD leader, and Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs Frank-Walter Steinmeier (one of the likely candidates for the office of chancellor) wrote: “In the 21st century, peace and global, as well as climatic, security will be intricately linked with energy security. Therefore, foreign energy policy is the pivotal point of Germany’s external policy.”
According to the document authors, energy policy should be based on three goals, the so-called magic triangle: energy supply security, economic efficiency, and conservation of the environment. Germany, the EU’s largest economy, is a powerful consumer of energy resources, among which oil accounts for 36 percent, coal for 24, natural gas for 23, nuclear energy for 13, and renewable resources for 5.5 percent. The authors think that the dependence of Germany on gas supplies, especially from Russia, is dangerous. Russia is the largest supplier of oil and gas to Germany (34 and 41 percent of German imports, respectively).
Germany’s energy strategy is based on a number of fundamental approaches which Ukraine could quite make use of:
– Reducing the overall consumption of energy by means of strict economy and energy effectiveness measures. A striking example of the effectiveness of such a policy is that Germany has not increased the consumption of energy since the 1990s, although this period has seen a 30-percent economic growth;
– Germany has opted for reducing the share of nuclear energy in the overall energy balance (from 26 percent in 2005 to a projected 4 percent in 2020), with all the German nuclear power plants to be gradually decommissioned;
– since 2000 Germany has been vigorously pursuing the policy of increasing the role of renewable energy sources, such as wind, sunlight, and biomass): while the renewable sources will account for 12.5 percent in Germany’s energy balance, their share will go up to 30 percent in 2020;
– Germany is a pioneer in combating climatic changes. Out of all the OECD countries, it has shown the most drastic reduction of greenhouse gas emissions — by 19 percent in 1990 to 2005;
There is a general concord between the German populace and elite about the necessity of preventing climatic changes and strengthening energy security. Germany is the powerhouse of a common European climatic-change policy and is favoring a reduced dependence on Russian gas, the supplies of which accounts today for over 60 percent of European imports.
Hence Germany’s interest in the Nabucco project which could give Germany and other European countries access to natural gas deposits in the South Caspian region, bypassing Russia.
The German strategy, consistently being applied by SPD and “grand coalition” governments (although it is somewhat doubtful that German big business bosses will flatly reject nuclear energy), is almost diametrically opposed to the Ukrainian strategy until 2030 based on mindless and dangerous, in terms of national security, expansion and construction of new nuclear power plants and ignoring renewable energy sources.
The development of renewable energy sources in Ukraine is still in its infancy: while Germany is the world’s and Europe’s No. 1 generator of wind power (22,247 MW), Ukraine is trailing 30th in Europe (seven 87-MW commercial wind power plants).
Meanwhile, Ukraine has a high research and technological capacity to ensure that renewable sources account for 50 percent of the overall consumption of energy resources until 2030. Moreover, it is a sober assessment of scientists at the Ukrainian Institute of Renewable Energy, not just a reverie of some daydreamers.
The Berlin meetings showed that it is possible to expand Ukrainian-German cooperation in the strategic areas of energy generation and consumption. All we need is political will of the Ukrainian leadership.
3. THE GLOBAL CRISIS AND UKRAINIAN SECURITY
The attempts of the Ukrainian experts, particularly H. Perepelytsia, to persuade their German colleagues that Ukraine needs to join NATO because this country has found itself in a dangerous “gray security zone” ran into a firm, if polite, “Nein.” It is Alexander Rahr, a very influential adviser to the German government, who most clearly spelled out Germany’s security doctrine.
“We want to build European security together with Russia,” he said. “In no way shall we come out against Russia. In this context we do not support (at least today) Ukraine’s NATO membership because Germany regards this as an anti-Russian factor.”
Another German analyst said: “We do not shudder at the word ‘Russia’.” Our interlocutors emphasized that Germany has long-term joint economic interests with Russia and energy (gas and oil supplies from Russia) is playing a pivotal role here. The above-mentioned Rahr was categorical when he claimed there are no grounds for a war between Russia and Ukraine in spite of threats from some Russian politicians. “You are not a small country like, say, Estonia,” he stressed. “Russia accounts for 50 percent of your economic, political, family and cultural ties. It should be noted that Russia wants to join the general European security system, but are opposing NATO. They do not like the alliance, and we should reckon with this.” In Rahr’s opinion, NATO’s first (Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary) and second (Romania, Bulgaria) enlargement were not aimed at Russia, while a third enlargement (Ukraine, Georgia) would be against Russia.
At the same time, all our interlocutors of all levels of government privately admitted that Russia is an undemocratic and authoritarian country and that there can be no European security without a powerful military component of NATO (the alliance as “hard power” and the European system of political security as “soft power”).
Surprisingly, one of the German analysts took anti-Polish attitude and claimed that Poland supports a Cold War-time model of NATO to use the alliance against Russia. This is clearly a Russian anti-Polish, anti-Ukrainian and anti-Georgian propagandistic stereotype aimed at ruining the North Atlantic defense alliance, ousting the US from the European continent, and causing a rift between the “new” and “old” NATO members.
The Berlin dialogue was full of calls for Ukraine to “make peace” with Russia, remove accession to NATO off the agenda (in spite of the Bucharest summit’s decision on Ukraine’s right to join the alliance), and build a partnership with the Russian Federation. None of the Ukrainian experts opposed this prospect, but when we asked what we are supposed to do if Russia itself, 65 percent of whose population consider Ukraine an unfriendly country, does not want to build the relations of equal partnership with Ukraine, we heard no answer.
During our sojourn in Berlin we heard a lot of scathing comments on us — from a likely default of the Ukrainian state to our farcical domestic situation which resembles a plate-smashing family scene in the top echelons of government. We had to listen silently to these, as a rule, correct observations. Being, like never before, under the powerful energy-related impact of Russia and feeling the deep-rooted “Stalingrad syndrome,” Germany is losing Ukraine from its radar screens, considering our chronically crisis-ridden country as a hotbed of chaos in Europe and a zone of Russia’s imperial interests. I, and not only I, am thoroughly convinced that this is a shortsighted policy of a society of prosperous German pensioners who want to live in a well-heated house, sip cold beer, and stay clear of 21st-century geopolitical upheavals. By some very gloomy forecasts, Germany may lose any kind of interest in Ukraine with which it shares no strategically important economic projects (cf.: Germany’s trade turnover with Russia and Ukraine is $56 billion and about $10 billion, respectively).
The global financial crisis can foil all geopolitical scenarios and make serious changes to the situation in Germany, Ukraine, and Russia. We should give the German government its due: it began to actively resist the crisis in October 2008, when the sweet-mouthed Ukrainian Orpheuses were assuring people that there was no crisis and it posed no threat to us. Conversely, the German government took into account the bad forecasts of economic development (a 2.9-percent GDP drop in 2009) and made a number of steps to stabilize the financial market situation (establishing a €480-billion stabilization fund, drafting an employment pact, earmarking €50 billion for transport infrastructure development, constructing and reconstructing, above all, educational institutions, etc.).
One of the most optimistic present-day slogans in Germany is “Look on the crisis as a chance,” which calls for supporting the sectors that will allow the country to emerge stronger and more competitive, especially the companies that will be able to compete at worldwide markets in the future. Greatly encouraged are investments in education and research, i.e., the future-oriented sectors.
The crisis is an influential participant in Germany’s electoral process: the leading political parties have launched a battle for votes, trying to prove that they are not responsible for the crisis.
According to Achim Post, a leading SPD functionary, in spite of the Social Democrats’ participation in the “grand coalition,” the party has put an acute question to its voters: “Do you still wish to have a government that created this crisis?” When I asked if the voter will separate the Social Democrats from the rest of the coalition (SPD and CDU/CSU), Herr Post said: “Our electorate is not stupid and knows who is doing what.” The elections in September 2009 (to be more exact, 19 elections), also known as “historical-scale elections,” may change many things in Germany and, first of all, show a loss of votes for and trust in the “grand coalition.” It is presumed that the Free Democrats, who are not part of the coalition, will poll over 16 percent of the votes and will be able to form a ruling coalition either with the SPD and the Greens (the so-called “traffic lights:” the Reds, Yellows, and Greens) or with the CDU/CSU. The SPD participation in the nest government of Germany will reinforce the pro-Moscow lobby in Berlin: suffice it to recall the overtly pro-Russian stand of Herr Steinmeier, a loyal follower of the “Gazprom functionary” Gerhard Schr der, ex-chancellor of Germany.
4. REMINISCENCES AND HOPES
Fifty years ago I, a young Kyiv Medical Institute student, visited Berlin for the first time. Although the city was divided into occupation sectors, it was not yet cut apart by a monstrous gray structure, Berlin Wall, a symbol of the Cold War. You could come up to the Brandenburg Gate, and there was a subway line from Friedrichstrasse to West Berlin, in whose pubs East German students liked to have a good time. We saw the ruins of the Reich Chancellery, Hitler’s last shelter. Berlin has changed beyond recognition today: there is a wide expanse of green lawns, without any structures, around the restored Reichstag, now seating the Bundestag. Where the Reich Chancellery once was, there are now cozy residential houses built in the GDR era. Nest to the sidewalk is an information board with a photograph of Hitler and a detailed map of the Reich Chancellery’s underground bunkers. It is here, under a multi-meter layer of earth and concrete, that the Fuehrer committed suicide. But who cares for that today? Who is reflecting on the past?
Having shed the complex of historical guilt before humankind for the crimes of Nazism, Germany has become a prosperous future-oriented democratic state. The FRG is in many respects a role model for Ukraine and Ukrainians. Although the “Russian factor” is playing a powerful role, Ukraine should in no way turn away from Germany. The Ukrainian leadership, which must get rid some day of its schizophrenic duality, should open a serious dialogue with Germany in the field of energy, joint projects in mechanical engineering, ecology, social matters, agriculture, health care, i.e., in all areas of vital importance for Ukrainian society. To do so, Ukraine should clean itself of the scum of corruption and semi-legal banditry and give German business as much as preferential treatment as possible and offer high-profile joint investment projects. The already-received €50-million German technical assistance can be a good beginning of large-scale cooperation that will contribute to offsetting the consequences of the crisis.
The visit to Berlin showed that we can and must speak to the Germans in spite of all the unpleasant and harsh things that the Ukrainians have to hear.
As a rational and sound-minded nation, the Germans tend to listen attentively to the other side’s reasoning. Even when they disagree to the opponent’s viewpoint, they know how to take into account new and hitherto unknown information.
In its turn, Ukraine’s foreign policy should be based not on phantasmal hypotheses and egocentric Ukrainian illusions but on a realistic assessment of the complicated and changeable reality, on the selection of several basic benchmarks and highly important priorities.
Germany should undoubtedly become one of such topmost priorities.
P.S. On behalf of the group of Ukrainian experts, this writer is expressing gratitude to Stephan Hrobot, chief of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation’s office in Ukraine and Belarus, and the foundation’s headquarters in Berlin for the perfect organization of the visit and the high level of contacts in the capital of Germany.
Yurii SHCHERBAK is Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Ukraine
