[Skybird]

From the Neue Zürcher Zeitung:


"Putin will not be satisfied with non-alignment. His goal is to bring Ukraine 'home to the empire'."

Leading German politicians have still not understood the extent of Russian revanchism, says Ralf Fücks. If Olaf Scholz gets his way with his hesitant stance, Kiev would have to accept a Russian dictatorial peace, believes the founder of the Berlin-based think tank Zentrum Liberale Moderne.

Mr. Fücks, you told me in the run-up to this interview that you had stumbled across an interview with Berlin political scientist Herfried Münkler that appeared in this newspaper. In it, Münkler called for a neutral Ukraine with European security guarantees. Is he a realist, while you are an idealist?

I think that is a false juxtaposition. At the beginning of the war, he was not a realist, but a defeatist: At that time, he predicted a rapid collapse of Ukraine because, like many supposed military experts, he underestimated its fighting power and overestimated the strength of the Russian army. But Münkler is also not a realist with regard to Russia's war aims: Vladimir Putin will not be satisfied with a non-aligned Ukraine. His goal is to bring Ukraine "home to the empire." What's more, he wants to revise NATO's eastward expansion and demands the withdrawal of American nuclear weapons from Europe. In fact, this would lead to Russian military dominance over Europe. Last but not least, Münkler reduces international politics to pure power politics without any normative dimension. But it is in our very own interest to defend a normative peace order in Europe and beyond.

Münkler also argues on the basis of geography: Ukraine is situated between Western Europe and Russia and therefore has only limited alliance potential.

This is an unhistorical view, since such spaces are constantly shifting. The Baltic states, as former Soviet republics, are now in NATO. The Russian attack triggered a new geopolitical dynamic: That Sweden and Finland would join the Western alliance seemed almost inconceivable a year ago; now it could happen at the speed of light. A similar acceleration could occur in the case of Ukraine, which, after all, has been on its way to the West at least since the Maidan protests of 2014. The idea that such a nation could be locked up in no-man's land against its will, which in reality would mean handing it over to Russian influence, is completely unrealistic.

Voices can also be heard, especially in Washington, saying that now is the opportunity to eliminate Russia as a major power and thus as a source of unrest for the foreseeable future. Is there a danger that Ukraine will be instrumentalized?

But Ukraine is the subject of this conflict! The decision to fight came from Ukraine, not from Washington and certainly not from the EU. Nobody has seriously in mind to attack Russia on its own territory. If Russia retreated today to the lines of February 23, the war would probably be over tomorrow. I doubt whether the West would then be willing to support a continuation of the war, especially since President Selensky has so far not formulated any offensive war aims. But more and more people in Ukraine are saying, "Now we're going to take back all of Donbass and Crimea, too." As far as I can see, however, that is not Selenski's position. He knows that the price in human lives would be very high for that.

What could be the outcome of the war?

I think two scenarios are the most likely: if the West throws its full weight behind it, Ukraine might succeed in pushing the Russians back to the February 23 line and perhaps a bit further toward the border. Then a cease-fire could be concluded, leading to negotiations. The second variant is that Russia does manage to conquer more territory in the south and east and cut Ukraine off from the sea. That would be the worst-case scenario. Whether it happens also depends on us. German politicians have not yet realized that modern wars are material battles in which weapons and ammunition have to be continuously replaced. If Olaf Scholz gets his way with his restrictive policy, we will force Ukraine into a ceasefire for lack of weapons. Then Kiev would have to accept that dictatorial peace on Russian terms, which Scholz says he does not want.

At the end of February, Scholz announced a turnaround, combined with significantly higher spending on the German military. Do you think he will stick to his announcements?

That is the big question. At the very least, major players in German politics have not yet understood the full extent of Russian revanchism. Ultimately, the illusion is still being nurtured that one could return to some form of cooperative arrangement. It has not yet dawned on everyone that we must pursue a strict policy of deterrence and containment toward this regime. Instead, we still see a lot of sympathy for the imperial reflex of Russia, which supposedly cannot be anything other than an empire that dominates other nations. Münkler, after all, also argues this way. But there can be no stable peace order in Europe until Russia takes the step that Germany, France, Britain and others have also had to take: from empire to modern nation-state.

If the war lasts longer, voices calling for a softer line toward Russia could again gain the upper hand in Germany.

That is also my fear: that then those will become louder who say that Ukraine should not make such a fuss and make the famous painful concessions. Henry Kissinger just said this in Davos. The concessions that would then be demanded from Ukraine would not only be of a territorial nature. The Kremlin has reverted to the old Brezhnev doctrine, which provides only limited sovereignty for states it counts as part of its sphere of influence. If we accept that, we will fall back into the division of Europe and the law of the strongest.

After the outbreak of the war, you said you still thought Putin was a coldly calculating power politician. Can there be peace with him, or do we first need regime change in Moscow?

In any case, it is not in our power to topple Putin; the Russians must do that themselves. But we must prevent Russia from starting new wars. And that will only succeed if this war ends with a Russian defeat. We must keep up the offer to Russia to return to the international community. But this is only possible if Moscow abides by the rules of international law and the European peace order.

What could come after Putin? Will chaos break out in Russia then?

Of course, this is possible, especially in the event of a devastating defeat of Russia. Already, some estimates speak of up to 25,000 Russian soldiers killed or wounded. If the economic crisis in Russia worsens, centrifugal tendencies cannot be ruled out: National minorities could insist on their right to self-determination. Another possible scenario is a military dictatorship. But it could also be that moderate forces take the helm at some point. Among the economic elite, a majority is likely to support an understanding with the West, if only out of self-interest. There is opposition potential, especially in the large cities. Hundreds of thousands have left the country since February 24. Ultimately, it will take a split among Russia's power elites to initiate change.

They are in favor of giving Ukraine EU candidate status; Chancellor Scholz is opposed. Given the current state of affairs in Ukraine, could such a step have any more than symbolic significance?

I think so. Among all the non-EU countries in Europe, Ukraine is the one with the strongest European will. There is a strong civil society that has driven many changes in recent years. The pro-European dynamic there is much greater than in Serbia, for example. Ukraine would not be a ballast for Europe, but an asset. There is enormous economic potential there: in digitalization, Ukraine is further ahead than Germany in many areas, and there are also great opportunities for close cooperation in renewable energies and agriculture. Agriculture also plays a role in the war: Russia is trying to get its hands on the breadbasket for the Middle East and use it as a strategic lever. Here, too, I think our policy is far too lax: Letting Moscow get away with blockading Ukrainian ports is exacerbating the hunger crisis in Africa and parts of Asia and may trigger new refugee movements that could destabilize Europe.

If the West did anything about the blockade of the ports, it would have to risk the direct conflict with Russia that many fear.

But what would Russia do if a coalition of states that could go beyond NATO sent a military convoy to secure grain ships? Would Putin really dare to start a war against this coalition? I don't think he could use any more military adversaries.

Do you understand that some in Germany are afraid of an escalation, at the end of which there could be a nuclear war in the worst case?

No one can rule out such a development with certainty. But Russia would risk its own destruction by doing so, and I don't believe that a gang of suicide bombers is sitting in the Kremlin. If we let fear of nuclear war dictate our policy, we give Putin a completely free hand to escalate the war. Then the Baltic States and Poland will also be in danger. Russian state television is already calling for a land bridge to Kaliningrad and the annexation of Moldova, Georgia and Kazakhstan.

There is now a lot of talk about the mistakes that Germany has made in its Russian policy in recent decades. Is it enough for German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, for example, to admit that he was wrong about Putin, or would a more in-depth reappraisal be necessary?

I'm not interested in pillorying anyone. But we do need to take a closer look at what went wrong in the past in order to avoid making the same mistakes in the future. Simply saying, "sorry, we were wrong about Putin," and leaving it at that, avoids the necessary break. We need to account for how it was possible that we made our energy supply visibly dependent on Russia. There was a network of politics and business that systematically worked in this direction, and not only among the Social Democrats. The CSU also liked to adorn itself with its good relations with the Kremlin.

How do you see the SPD's dealings with Gerhard Schröder, who is considered a personal friend of Putin's and has earned a lot of money through his work for Russian energy companies?

The SPD has swept this problem under the carpet for far too long. After all, it's not just Schröder alone. As recently as February 2021, the Minister President of Lower Saxony, Stephan Weil, said that we should not make ourselves dependent on Ukraine for our energy supply and that we therefore needed the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. So he fully grasped the geopolitical dimension of the project, and that is precisely why he supported it!

Your own party, the Greens, now stand in the public perception as the ones who did everything right. In fact, by rejecting nuclear energy, they have also contributed to Germany's energy dependence on Russia.

The growing dependence on Russian gas was the blind spot of the nuclear phase-out and also of the accelerated phase-out of coal power, which is to come by 2030. There is nothing to shake about the coal phase-out for climate policy reasons, but the sequence "first nuclear, then coal" dates from a different time. We have not sufficiently addressed the conflicting goals associated with this.

Should Germany now think about phasing out nuclear power?

For me, this is no longer a question of principle; I see it pragmatically: How much would have to be invested to bring the remaining power plants back up to the latest safety standards? Can the supply of fuel rods be secured? Do we still have enough engineers who are familiar with the technology? If this assessment is positive, there is a lot to be said for keeping the operational nuclear power plants on the grid for longer.

About the person
Ralf Fücks
The 70-year-old German is managing partner of the Center for Liberal Modernity, a Berlin-based think tank he founded in 2017 with his wife, Marieluise Beck. Beck and Fücks are both members of the Green Party, where they are categorized as belonging to the realpolitik wing. From 1991 to 1995, Fücks was a member of the Bremen state government as senator for urban development and environmental protection; from 1997 to 2017, he was a board member at the Heinrich Böll Foundation, which is close to his party. The declared goal of the Center for Liberal Modernity is to defend "the rule of law, personal freedom, political pluralism and cultural diversity.


Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)