“We need a new Eastern Policy”
Germany, between Nato and the Warsaw Pact. A border
during the Cold War and a place where agents were exchanged.
(Photo Karen Mardahl, wikipedia)
Matthias Platzeck's courageous attitude
by Marita Brune-Koch
(18 June 2021) “We need a new Eastern Policy” - this is the title of Matthias Platzeck's new book1 and this was also the title of the author reading he gave at an online conference on 6 May this year. But you can't really call the event a “reading”. Platzeck, who tirelessly campaigns for good relations with Russia, spoke freely on the topic. The conference was organised by the “German-Russian Forum”.
Matthias Platzeck began his speech by quoting Wolfgang Ischinger, saying that relations with Russia are more problematic today than they were during the Cold War.2 Anyone who experienced the Cold War era, when the two superpowers, Nato and the Warsaw Pact, were armed to the teeth and always ready for war, can guess what that means. At the end of the Cold War, says Platzeck, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union, he and his generation had great hopes for a peaceful future. This hope was utterly dashed, he said, and the world had changed completely.
Growing up in Potsdam
The well-known Russia expert talks about his personal background and explains why he became interested in this topic and what initiated his commitment. He grew up in Potsdam, near the Glienicke Bridge. During the division of Germany, the border between the GDR and West Berlin ran across the middle of this bridge. Agents were exchanged here between East and West. The bridge gained worldwide notoriety through the third and final exchange of agents, spectacularly staged on 11 February 1986. A childhood in such an environment leaves its mark. But the good fortune, as Platzeck emphasises, of having had a good teacher who introduced him to the Russian language, culture, literature and music also influenced this. It is perhaps important to know that Russian was a compulsory subject in the GDR, just as English was in West Germany. And just as the West Germans had contact with Americans, the GIs, after the war, the East Germans lived together with the Russian soldiers in one country in close proximity of the Soviet Union. All this creates closeness and, no doubt, a certain familiarity.
Bahr's principles of détente
Later on, he found personalities in Egon Bahr, architect of the German policy of détente and confidant of Willy Brandt, and in Manfred Stolpe3, who greatly encouraged him to cultivate relations with Russia.
Platzeck recalls the three principles of Bahr's Eastern Policy:
1. There is no peace without or against Russia.
2. Russia is unalterably our neighbour.
3. The driving force of policies is the pursuit of interests.
According to Platzeck, today these principles are no longer taken to heart. In a speech in Moscow two years ago, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier warned of an alienation between Germany and Russia ” and he demanded: “we must not allow that”.
Platzeck then addresses the accusation that he is too uncritical of Russia. He does not deny this, but says that criticism of Russia is not in short supply, but understanding is lacking, and he is filling a gap in the market. No two peoples have been so interwoven over centuries as the Germans and the Russians; our cultures would not exist as they do without mutual inspiration. But relations had also gone through terrible lows and yet again, they had always found their way to get back together.
Russia is different, Germany too
With these words, Platzeck advocates a view of Russia that sought understanding. He warns against judging Russia by our standards and condemning it. He recommends that one must always ask oneself two questions when assessing events in Russia:
1. What happened in Russia?
2. What happened between us?
To answer these questions, he explains that Russia has gone through an arduous process since the 1990s. The currency system collapsed, people lost all their savings. The economic situation was completely desolate. It was so hopeless that many people considered sending their children to Germany because they no longer saw a future in Russia. How grave must be the situation for parents to consider such serious steps? Putin had led the country out of this disaster and stabilised conditions again, which is why he had such high popularity ratings for so long.
| The “Mamayev Kurgan Memorial” in Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad, symbolises the unforgotten victims of the Russian people in World War II. The commemoration is still living today. (Picture mk) |
No German unification without Russia
Platzeck reports that Russian interlocutors are repeatedly irritated by the fact that the Germans do not recognise Russia's contribution to the German unification. He recalls that the UK and France were not at all enthusiastic about the idea of a united Germany. Both feared a future dominance of Germany. On a visit to Moscow, Margaret Thatcher, bluntly admitted to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev: “I am firmly opposed to a united Germany.”4 Gorbachev’s view differed. On 10 February 1990, he made the fundamental concession to the German government that the Germans in East and West had to know for themselves which path they wanted to take. They had the right to strive for unity.5 Russia also drew consequences from the concession that the two German states would once again form a single entity: in 1991/92 Gorbachev withdrew all troops stationed in the GDR. 500,000 Russian soldiers left the country. That was the largest withdrawal event in history, according to Platzeck. This too was against the explicit will of Margret Thatcher, who appealed to Gorbachev to leave the Russian troops in East Germany for as long as possible: “perhaps we will still need them one day to keep a united Germany in check.”6 But above all, Platzeck continues, against the resistance of many Russian generals who were very sceptical about the withdrawal. They felt that Germany was a bridgehead that had been hard-won in World War II and that it should not be abandoned without further ado. Platzeck also mentions that Gorbachev only agreed to the reunification in exchange for the concession that Nato would not be allowed to expand towards Russia. It is well known that this promise was not kept. Now, with Ukraine, Nato is to be extended right to the Russian border.
Platzeck mentions a significant procedure: the Russian Foreign Minister Primakov learned about the bombing of Serbia during the Kosovo war in 1999, when he was on the plane on his way to the USA. Incensed, he had the plane turned around half way across the Atlantic and returned to his home country. He cancelled the state visit to the USA. Serbia was a brother state of Russia. The belligerent states had started the bombing without even informing Russia as a member of the UN Security Council. Thus, Nato's action was a further affront.
In spite of everything, Russia under Putin continued to extend its hand for cooperation. In 2001, Platzeck explains, Putin gave a speech in the German Bundestag where he formulated his offer of a common security architecture. He received a standing ovation from all parliamentary groups.7
Now one would have hoped for cooperation, but instead the Nato East enlargement was pressed ahead and in 2006 a missile defence system was set up in Poland, despite objections from Russia. Platzeck quotes George F. Kennan, one of the architects of US foreign policy, who said that Nato's eastward expansion was “the most fatal mistake of American policy in the post-Cold War era”.8
Sanctions
Platzeck then turns to the currently important issue of sanctions imposed against Russia. After six years, he says, both sides, the West and the East, have seen a clear deterioration in the economy and a growing alienation. He recounts a conversation with a former Russian fighter in World War II who told him, “we were half-starved and freezing, yet we won the battle. You won't bring us to our knees with sanctions.”
Platzeck raises the question of the goal of the sanctions and asks whether the disintegration of Russia is aimed at. He emphatically warns against this, because that would also be a big problem for us in Western Europe. Russia is a nuclear power, and without stability there is a danger that these weapons will fall into the wrong hands and get out of control.
Double standards
His interlocutors in Russia would often bring up the matter of our double standards, for example when we condemn Russia over the Crimea issue: “where is your indignation over Colin Powell's lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the war of aggression in that country, thus violating international law? About the hundreds of thousands of people who lost their lives as a result of the war and the destabilisation of the whole region? What about the 37 million people who had to flee their homes? What sanctions have you imposed on the USA for this? What about the attack on Kosovo, a war contrary to international law? Where are your accusations against the USA for the drone war, which has already cost 3700 lives? Where is your outcry against the torture prisons in Guantanamo and Kandahar?”
Platzeck also mentions the accusations against Russia because of its armament and puts it into perspective: the arms expenditure of the USA is 10 times, that of Nato even 20 times as high as that of Russia. His Russian interlocutors are well aware of this.
Novgorod. The picture shows more than folklore for
tourists. Traditions are alive, strangers are welcomed in
many places in a heartfelt way. (Picture mk
Commemorative policy
Russia is also aware that in the West, the American landing in Normandy and their intervention in World War II are seen as decisive for the war. However, the Red Army had borne the main burden of the war and had also made the decisive and greatest contribution to the defeat of National Socialism. There was a lack of recognition of this achievement and the great number of Russian victims. A Belarusian interlocutor refers to a memorial service in which German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former German President Joachim Gauck commemorated the victims of a Nazi massacre in a village in Normandy. “That was completely correct, we have nothing against that, he said. But in Belarus there are 629 places that the SS made level to the ground and where they massacred people. A German state visit had never been seen there.”
Such disproportions, ignorance, not wanting to see and not appreciating, lead to a deep alienation and to a dangerous alienation of peoples and nations.
| Chancellor Willy Brandt and Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev sign the joint declaration following the GermanSoviet summit conference on 21 May 1973. Behind Brandt, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko speaks with Egon Bahr, the architect of the rapprochement. (Picture keystone) |
“Change through rapprochement” instead of rapprochement after change
Where is the starting point out of this vicious circle, Platzeck asks. In this context, he again recalls Bahr's motto: change through rapprochement. Today, he characterises, the opposite is true: first change, then rapprochement. We will only talk to Putin when human rights have been implemented as we see fit. Platzeck leaves no doubt that he considers this approach futile and dangerous. At this point he even quotes Angela Merkel, who has expressed that we could not solve any of the world's big problems such as climate change, poverty, etc. without or against Russia. Putin also says that if we do not achieve a security architecture with Russia, it will remain troubled and dangerous. Putin warns that there are also people in Russia whose “thoughts are not going in a good direction”.
Platzeck quoted Bahr again: he had divided problems into those that could be solved and those that could not be solved at the moment. One should start with the solvable ones and adjourn the currently unsolvable ones and tackle them later. In this sense, Platzeck recommends putting the Crimea issue ‘in a box’ for the time being, then it will be easier to find solutions in eastern Ukraine, but to tackle the following:
1. Roll back sanctions,
2. create a minimum of understanding,
3. organise a new Helsinki Conference.9
Platzeck outlines the global situation. The three poles of the world are:
- Asia, which has economically grown stronger,
- the USA with Canada.
- Europe would like to be the third pole, but we could not solve any of the big problems without Russia. Our plans to combat climate change, for example, cannot be implemented without raw materials, but Europe, unlike Russia, hardly has enough raw materials.
Town twinning is “gold dust”
At the end of his speech, the speaker spoke about the role of civil society. It is bearing the brunt of the current relations between Germany and Russia. The city partnerships are “gold dust”; without them and their work, the problems between Russia and Germany would already be much greater. He solicits participation for the 16th German-Russian Town Twinning Conference, which will take place from 28 to 31 June 2021 in Kaluga, Russia.10 He emphasises the enormous importance of youth exchanges. The greatest importance he attaches to the exchange of citizens between the countries. Civil society is also growing in Russia, and it does not only consist of “Navalny”. As an example of the developing democracy, he mentions an event in Moscow. The big city had wanted to dump its rubbish in a certain area in the north of the city. The people living there resisted and were successful in their protest. The city had considered another solution.
Preserving peace is the most important value
Finally, Platzeck returned to Egon Bahr quoting: Western values are essential and must be defended. But one value was the most important: the preservation of peace. That was his, Platzeck's, mainspring and is the reason why he would not cease being committed.
1 Matthias Platzeck is a German politician and Chairman of the German-Russian Forum.
2 State Secretary at the Federal Foreign Office and Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany in Washington, D.C. and London. He has chaired the Munich Security Conference since 2008.
3 Growing up in the GDR, Stolpe was a member of the GDR Protestant Church leadership. During his time as a church lawyer, he acted as a kind of church diplomat vis-à-vis various state agencies and officials in the GDR. Informal contacts between state and church ran through him; officially they did not exist.
4 Spiegel Geschichte, 9 April 2013
5 Wikipedia, German reunification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_reunification
6 Spiegel Geschichte, 9 April 2013
7 cf. https://www.bundestag.de/parlament/geschichte/gastredner/putin/putin-196934
8 cf. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_F._Kennan
9 “The CSCE [Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe] was opened in Helsinki in 1973 and concluded in 1975 with the signing of the Helsinki Final Act. During the East-West conflict, it served as a forum for consultations as well as for political rapprochement and confidence-building between the two blocs. Participants in the conference were 35 mainly European states as well as the USA, Canada and the Soviet Union. The so-called decalogue of the Final Act laid down the basic rules of relations between the participating states, such as the peaceful and non-violent settlement of disputes, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, the territorial integrity of all participating states, non-interference in the internal affairs of other states and the inviolability of existing borders.” In: https://www.bpb.de/nachschlagen/lexika/das-europalexikon/177089/konferenz-ueber-sicherheit-und-zusammenarbeit-in-europa-ksze
10 Cf. https://www.deutsch-russisches-forum.de/ueber-ns/taetigkeitsbereiche/staedtepartnerkonferenzen