How the Russian Invasion of Ukraine Upended GermanyIn the few weeks since Putin’s forces moved on Ukraine, Germany has rethought its energy policy, overhauled its diplomatic stance toward Russia and reconsidered its military role in the world. Said one observer, “It’s staggering.”by Alec MacGillis
March 11, 2 p.m. ESTLast October, I sat in the office of Klaus Emmerich, the chief union representative at the Garzweiler brown-coal mine in western Germany, as he shared his misgivings about the country’s celebrated plan to stop burning coal. Germany’s build-up of renewable energy was lagging and, given that coal accounts for more than a quarter of its total electricity supply, that meant it would have to rely on another energy source for the time being: natural gas, which came mostly from Russia. “We’re giving ourselves over to the Russians,” Emmerich told me. “I have a bad feeling about it.”
Five months later, Emmerich’s premonitions have borne out, powerfully. President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has unleashed civilian and military carnage, ravaged cities and sent some two million people fleeing the country. As its effects have rippled across Europe and the world, one consequence has gone underexamined: The invasion has upended the political and economic policies of Germany, where the government has reconsidered its long-planned energy transition; undone a congenial political stance toward Russia that lasted for half a century; and reversed a policy of military minimalism that dates to the end of the Second World War. In many ways, Germany has rethought its place in the world — all in two weeks.
At the heart of the shift is Germany’s dependence on Russian fossil fuels, which until recently was not seen as problematic by German leaders. Quite the opposite: It was part of a deliberate, decadeslong effort by Germany to maintain comity with the huge, nuclear-armed neighbor with whom it fought in two bloody 20th century wars. Germany chose its dependence on Russia because it saw the economic links created by fuel imports — physical links, in the form of pipelines through Eastern Europe and under the Baltic Sea — as integral to keeping peace and integrating Russia into the rest of Europe.
On Feb. 22, Germany’s new chancellor, Olaf Scholz, announced a curtailment to that dependence on Russian energy. The country was halting Nord Stream 2, a new gas pipeline from Russia that would be capable of providing Europe with 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year at a time when the rest of the Continent’s gas production is declining. Not only would this leave Germany without a crucial source for its energy supply, it was an admission that the strategy of “Ostpolitik” — accommodation with Russia — that Scholz’s center-left Social Democratic Party had embraced, at least in spirit, for more than 50 years, was a failure.
On Feb. 27, Scholz made an even more stunning declaration. After having already decided to send heavy weaponry to Ukraine, Germany would vastly increase its defense spending — making it, by one estimate, the third-largest military spender in the world, after the U.S. and China — and shift its entire posture toward military engagement. “President Putin created a new reality with his invasion of Ukraine,” Scholz said. “This new reality requires a clear response. We have given it.”
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https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-russian-invasion-of-ukraine-upended-germany
