It is a bitter truth that Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck is speaking about the Baltic Sea pipeline. The fact that Chancellor Scholz has not made a clear statement on this is evidence of a risky strategy towards Moscow. A commentary by Georg Anastasiadis.
A chancellor who doesn’t want to dictate political guidelines must expect others to do it for him. That’s what happened to Olaf Scholz in a painful way before his first visit to Washington: Scholz recently talked so often and so verbosely about the future of the Baltic Sea pipeline in the event of a Russian invasion of Ukraine that President Biden’s security adviser told the Chancellor the decision a few hours before whose arrival in the USA decreased: If there is a robbery, the pipeline is dead – basta.
Bitter truths that many in Merkel’s Germany didn’t want to hear for a long time
This is exactly what was once agreed between Merkel and Biden. The fact that the US side sees reason to emphasize this publicly shows that the Biden administration, despite all the friendliness at the American-German summit, has lost patience with the new SPD chancellor. However, the same applies to the Greens, for whom Minister of Economics Habeck also pondered the need for Germany to become more independent of Putin’s Russia in its gas supply at the weekend. Habeck relies on additional liquid gas suppliers from overseas, he worries that the Russian state-owned company Gazprom has taken control of a significant part of the German gas storage facilities, and announces that he wants to correct that: “If we don’t do that, we will become a pawn.” These are bitter truths that many in Merkel’s Germany didn’t want to hear for a long time. This is still the case for large parts of the SPD.
Only: why did Habeck announce the change of course – and not Scholz? Does he really think he has to show so much consideration for his party’s Schröder wing? In the best case, what looks like a hedging of the SPD chancellor by allies and coalition partners would be a division of labor with the goal that Scholz, with his soft line, remains the Western mediator towards Moscow. But the strategy is risky: after all, what counts in the end the word of a chancellor who is perceived as unstable abroad and as weak in leadership at home?
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