A Big Loss for the West

The numbers above (from Wikipedia) are the percentage of total natural gas that each of the European Union nations listed above imports from Russia. And this is one of the biggest reasons why Europe’s responses to the Russian invasion and de facto annexation of Crimea have been generally muted, leaving the American position fairly isolated as extreme.

But as Russia escalates its military presence on Ukraine’s western border, European leaders fear either a parallel annexation of eastern Ukraine (heavy on ethnic Russian residents) or, worse, the imposition of a pro-Russian puppet government in the entire country. You can see how much power Russia has, particularly as the harshly cold winter is anything but over, to bring these EU nations to their knees simply by shutting off the tap. But to most Western powers, Russia has gone rogue.

The 10,000 economic-gorilla in the EU is clearly Germany, and her leader, Chancellor Angela Merkel, grew up in the harsh Soviet-era world of East Germany. She speaks fluent Russian and knows as much about the Russian perspective – from the inside – as any European leader. In Russia, in the meantime, Vladimir Putin is reveling in popular support for his actions in Crimea. Since Soviet Premiere Nikita Khrushchev ceded Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 (but it was still part of the Soviet Union), many in Russia found that move inappropriate. With its own economy in disarray, the show of Russian power in Ukraine is a distraction that Putin desperately needed.

Meanwhile in Washington, reflecting a sense that Crimea might be a fait accompli: “In a show of solidarity for the besieged Ukraine, Mr. Obama hosted a White House visit by Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, the country’s pro-Western acting prime minister, and vowed to ‘stand with Ukraine.’ But he also hinted at a formulation that could be the basis for the coming talks between Mr. Kerry and Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, recognizing Moscow’s interest in helping the Russian-speaking population in Crimea while affirming that it is part of Ukraine… [with hints of a compromise for] a political solution that could lead to more autonomy for Crimea if Russian troops withdraw, as the United States embarked on a last-ditch diplomatic effort to defuse a crisis that reignited tensions between East and West.” New York Times, March 12^th. The consensus seems to be that Crimea isn’t coming back, and that absent some strong push-back that has to include Europe, Ukraine will be left to twist in the wind. Still Obama has made it clear that such Russian military moves necessarily will have “costs” that Putin will have to face, but without EU support, his threats carry little real weight.

Which is where Angela Merkel’s perspective becomes critical. A heavily industrialized nation dependent on Russia for natural gas, Germany becomes a barometer for how far Putin can go in Ukraine (and presumably elsewhere) before even Europe pushes back. “Since the first Russian forces infiltrated Crimea on Feb. 28, Ms. Merkel, 59, has spoken to Mr. Putin, 61, at least four times on the phone, her spokesman says. In the space of 10 days, she went from warning him to avoid ‘any step that could contribute to escalation’ to bluntly telling him that Crimea’s plans for a referendum on joining Russia are ‘illegal.’

“After one recent conversation with the Russian leader, she now-famously remarked to President Obama that Mr. Putin was in ‘another world.’ She appears exasperated by his unwillingness to avoid further provocative steps, much less de-escalate the crisis, and her government is increasingly signaling a willingness to depart from its preferred approach of consensus building and lead Europe toward a harder line on sanctions and other steps to pressure and isolate Russia…

“‘There is no compromise in sight,’ said Alexander Rahr, a longtime Kremlin observer and the head of the German-Russian Forum, a nongovernmental group in Berlin. ‘Nobody really wants to move toward the other.’… In the absence of diplomatic progress, the European Union intends to move forward with tougher sanctions [in the near term], the political part of the Association Agreement with Ukraine that first sparked unrest in Kiev in November, Ms. Merkel and Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland announced on [March 12^th].

“Speaking after talks in Warsaw, Ms. Merkel said she thought the West would need ‘a great deal of patience’ before the Ukraine crisis is over. The ultimate way forward lies through diplomacy, she said, but noted that six days had elapsed since the European Union demanded a Contact Group bringing together Russia, Ukraine and other powers, making sanctions almost unavoidable… ‘We are in the 21st century,’ she told reporters, speaking of Europe. ‘We don’t solve conflicts militarily, we’ve said that. But we also don’t try to avoid conflicts.’… And the current crisis, she said, ‘is a very serious conflict in Europe.’” NY Times.

As GOP leaders excoriate the Obama administration’s “feckless” efforts against Putin’s aggression, the question is exactly what he could have accomplished in a go-it-alone posture without global support. Clearly, strong economic sanctions could hobble Russian businesses from maximizing their economic opportunities in global trade and finance, placing even more negative pressure on Russia’s rapidly deteriorating economy. As this conflict moves into a trade war, the question is how far the EU will be willing to go to make sanctions and whether they will have any impact on a rogue government, hell-bent on hegemony if not out-and-out annexation.

I’m Peter Dekom, and we are watching a fascinating and horrific rekindling of the Cold War.