Reading the tea leaves of the Putin-Merkel
meeting
During this past Saturday, 18 August, Russian President Vladimir
Putin made a brief visit to Austria to attend the wedding of the country’s
Minister of Foreign Affairs Karin Kneissl. Per the Kremlin, this stop of
several hours in the Styrian wine country not far from the border with Slovenia
was a “purely private” side excursion “on the road to Germany” for the state
visit with Chancellor Angela Merkel starting later in the day at the Meseberg
Palace, the federal guest house 60 km north of Berlin.
Journalists were admitted to film the wedding party, including
Putin’s dance with the 53 year old bride. No questions were taken and no
statements were issued by the President’s Press Secretary, who also was
present. We know only that on the return journey to Graz airport, Putin was
accompanied by Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. Presumably they had some
issues to discuss that may be characterized as official talks.
Prior to their meeting both Putin and Angela Merkel made
statements to the press listing the topics they intended to discuss. We
may assume that these lists were not exhaustive. Comparing their lists, we find
that the respective priorities of the parties were in inverted order, with
economic cooperation at the head of Putin’s list while regulating the Donbass
crisis in Ukraine was the top concern of Merkel. Moreover, the content of
issues bearing the same heading was very different. Both sides spoke of
Syria, but whereas for Putin the issue for discussion is the humanitarian
crisis of refugees, ensuring their return to their homes from camps in Lebanon,
Jordan and Turkey by raising funds to repair and replace fundamental
infrastructure destroyed in the war. For Merkel, the number one issue in Syria
is to prevent the Russian-backed Syrian armed forces from creating a new
humanitarian disaster by their ongoing campaign to retake Idlib province from
the militants opposed to Bashar Assad.
Meanwhile, what is surely the single most urgent issue for both
sides was not mentioned at all in their opening statements: namely how to
respond to US President Donald Trump’s new sanctions on Russia and on
participants in the Nord Stream II gas pipeline project that both countries
support.
As was explained at the outset, there was to be no press
conference or joint statement issued at the conclusion of the talks. The
only information we have is that Merkel and Putin conferred for more than three
hours, which is in itself quite extraordinary and suggests that some
understandings may have been achieved.
In a word, the potentially very important diplomatic
developments of Saturday remain, for once, a state secret of the parties, with
no leaks for the press to parse. And yet there is material here worthy of
our consideration. I have in mind the interpretations of what might transpire
before, during and after the events of Saturday in the news and commentary
reportage of various countries having greater or lesser interest in Russian
affairs. Indeed, my perusal of French, Belgian, German, British, American and
Russian news media shows great diversity of opinion and some penetrating and
highly pertinent remarks based on different information bases. This material is
all essential if we are to make sense of the behavior of the parties on the
international stage in the coming weeks.
In this essay, I will set out what I have found per country ,
starting with the least attentive to detail – the United States – and ending
with those who offered the best informed and most interested reportage, Germany
and Russia. I will conclude with my own reading of the tea leaves.
* * * *
Let us take The
Washington Post and The
New York Times as our markers for how US mainstream media
reported on Putin’s meetings this past Saturday.
On the 18th, The
Washington Post carried in its online edition two articles
dealing with the Putin diplomatic doings. “At Austrian foreign minister’s
wedding, Putin brings the music, the flowers and the controversy” was written
by the newspaper’s bureau chief in Berlin, Griff Witte. It is accompanied by
video clips of Vladimir Putin dancing with the bride and speaking, in German,
to the wedding party seated at their banquet table. The journalist
touches very briefly on the main political dimensions of Putin’s visit to
Austria, including the party relations between United Russia and the far right
Freedom Party in Austria’s ruling coalition which nominated Kneissl for her
post, the criticism of Putin’s participation in the wedding coming from the Opposition
parties in Austria who see it as a violation of the government’s own ambition
to be a neutral bridge between East and West, and the issue of Putin’s sowing
division on the continent. The only criticism one might offer is that the
article is superficial, that each of the issues raised deserves in-depth
analysis separately.
The newspaper’s second article online, which spread its net more
broadly and covered the meeting with Merkel in Germany as well as the visit in
Austria, came from an Associated Press reporter, not its own staff. Here again,
the problem is that issues surrounding the meetings are not more than bullet
points, and the reader is given no basis for reaching an independent finding on
what has happened..
The New
York Times’ feature article “Merkel and Putin Sound Pragmatic
Notes After Years of Tension,” also published on the 18th and datelined
Berlin was cited by Russian television news for a seemingly positive valuation
of the talks in Meseberg Palace. However, the content of the article by reporter
Melissa Eddy is more cautious, highlighting the pattern of “conflicts and
reconciliations” that have marked German-Russian relations over the centuries
and seeing the present stage not as a warming of relations but instead as
reaching for compromises “on Syria, energy and other key issues while
maintaining their differences over Russia’s role in the conflict in
Ukraine.” She sees the Syrian issue as one where German and Russian
interests may be closest given that refugees from the Middle East are now a
German preoccupation with political weight. The reporter cites several
experts attached to well-known institutes in Germany that are generally
skeptical about Russia’s intentions. But the end result is better informed than
most NYT reporting
on Russia even if it leaves us wondering what will result from the Saturday
diplomacy.
In both mainstream papers there is no attempt to find a link
between Putin’s two visits on Saturday.
I close out this little survey of English-speaking media by
pointing to an article in The
Guardian from the 18th entitled “Putin urges Europe to
help rebuild Syria so refugees can return.” This piece comes from the Agence
France-Presse in Berlin. It is not much more than a recitation of the lists of
topics for discussion that Putin and Merkel issued before their talks. But the
reporter has made his choice for the most important of them, Syria and
refugees.
The French-language press does not seem to have been very
interested in Putin’s “private” trip to the wedding of the Austrian foreign
minister, but was definitely keen to discuss Putin’s trip to Berlin. On the day
preceding the Putin-Merkel meeting, the French press offered a clear concept of
where things were headed. We read in Figaro, “Merkel receives Putin Saturday to renew a
difficult dialogue.” A caption in bold just below is more eye-catching:
“While the German Chancellor has become the main opponent to the Russian
President within the EU, the policy of sanctions conducted by Washington has
led to a rapprochement between Berlin and Moscow with regard to numerous
issues.”
The reporter notes that following the Russian annexation of
Crimea in 2014, relations between the two heads of state had become quite bad
and in four years they met only when obliged to do so during international
summits.
“But starting three months ago, their diplomatic exchanges have
intensified: in May Angela Merkel met the chief of the Kremlin in Sochi,
Russia. In July, she met the head of the Russian diplomatic corps, Sergei
Lavrov, in Berlin. By inviting Vladimir Putin this time, the German Chancellor
has promised ‘in-depth discussions.’ “She is pursuing a pragmatic attempt at
normalization of German-Russian relations, because the international realities
have changed,’ explains Stefan Meister, director of the Robert Bosch Center for
Russia.”
And how has the calculus of international relations changed?
Both Merkel and Putin are now facing the same challenge: US foreign
policy has become unpredictable, both for its allies and for rivals like
Moscow. Notwithstanding the warm discussions Donald Trump had with Vladimir
Putin in Helsinki, the American administration has just announced a new wave of
sanctions on Russia relating to the Skripal affair.
“The American policy represents a danger for the Russian economy
and a threat to German interests.”
A spokesperson from Merkel’s CDU party responsible for foreign
policy is quoted on the possible dangers of secondary sanctions being directed
at Germany through the application of US extraterritoriality against those failing
to respect the new sanctions on Russia.
The article explains the issues surrounding the Nord Steam 2
pipeline, and in particular Trump’s hostility to the project for its locking in
German dependence on Russian hydrocarbons.
And the author points to the common interests of Germany and
Russia over maintenance of the Iranian nuclear deal as a factor powering the
rapprochement of the two countries. Here again the common threat is Donald
Trump and American sanctions against those companies which continue to trade
with Iran.
The article concludes that divergent views of Russia and Germany
over Ukraine and Syria exclude any breakthrough at the meeting on Saturday. But
nonetheless the dialogue that was lacking these several past years is being
recreated.
In its weekend edition issued on 18 August, the Belgian
mainstream daily La
Libre Belgique was even more insistent on interpreting the
Merkel-Putin meeting as a consequence of the policies of Donald Trump. Their
editorial captures the sense very nicely in its tongue-in-cheek headline:
“Trump is the best ‘ally’ of Putin.”
La Libre sees Vladimir Putin’s latest
diplomatic initiatives as directly resulting from the way his host at the White
House has annoyed everyone. Moreover, his outreach is welcomed:
“Germany is not the only ‘Western’ nation to return to the
Kremlin. Putin is taking full advantage of the boomerang effect caused by the
policies of Donald Trump, who, by hammering away at his customary allies is
pushing them to other interlocutors. By looking for confrontations, imposing
taxes and sanctions while thinking that this rampant isolationism will make the
United States ‘great again,’ Trump is helping to build a wall that he no doubt
did not imagine, that of the anti-Trump people.”
The editors point to Turkish President Erdogan’s clear signal
that he is now looking for other allies. He has done his calculations and has
said he has more to gain with Moscow than with Washington.’
The editorial concludes that a summit on reconstruction of Syria
might even take place at the start of September between Moscow, Ankara, Paris
and Berlin. The conclusion? “Putin has taken center stage on the
chessboard. Thank you, Mr. Trump.”
The article filed by La
Libre’s correspondent in Berlin, Sebastien Millard, bears a heading
that matches the editorial view of the newspaper: “Merkel and Putin –
allies of convenience facing Trump.” The author credits Donald Trump with
being the catalyst for the resumption of dialogue between Germany and Russia;
they are telling Washington that they do not accept its blackmail. He notes
that we should not expect any reversal of alliances. There are too many
differences of view between Berlin and Moscow on a variety of issues.
* * * *
The German press paid a good deal of attention to Vladimir Putin’s
visit to Austria for the wedding of Foreign Minister Karin Kreissl.
In an article posted on the 16th entitled “Suspicion that
Austria is a Trojan horse,” Die
Welt highlighted the negatives of Putin’s presence. Quoting an
“expert from the University of Innsbruck” this does not cast a good light on
the country. They anticipate political fall-out. This will impair
Austria’s ability as chair of the European Council to play a role of
intermediary in the Ukraine conflict. The only beneficiary of the visit
will be the the Russia-friendly be the Russia-friendly Freedom
Party. For Putin, being a guest provides him with the opportunity to
demonstrate that he is not isolated but is instead highly welcome in society of
an EU country.
As for the coming meeting with Merkel on Saturday evening, Die Welt in a
related article of the same day lists the issues for discussion. Without taking
a position, it cites experts for and against the Nord Stream II pipeline and
other issues on the list.
Welt’s report from the wedding party on the 18th was
gossipy and unfriendly, comparing it to a wedding of some European royal family
because of the extraordinary guest list that included the country’s chancellor,
vice chancellor, and defense minister as well as the head of OPEC and…Vladimir
Putin. With typical German petty financial accounting, they reckon
that the 500 police and other security measures needed for the safety of the
highly placed guests cost the Austrian tax payers 250,000 euros.
A separate article in Die
Welt deals with Putin’s meeting with Merkel at the Meseberg
Palace. The emphasis here is on Merkel’s remarks during the Statement prior to
the talks that cooperation with Russia is “vital” to deal with many conflicts
globally and that both sides bear responsibility to find solutions.
The article quotes from the opening statements of the leaders on
all the issues in their list for discussion – Syria, Ukraine, Nord Stream
II. We are given bare facts without any analysis to speak of.
The other major mainstream daily Frankfurter Allgemeine in
its Saturday, 18 August edition offered separate articles on Putin’s visits to
Austria and Germany.
The article on Karin Kneissl’s wedding heads off in a very
different direction from the reporting in other media that I have summarized
above. FAZ notes
that Kneissl is rarely in the headlines and it asks: who is she?
They answer the question with some curious details. We learn that Kneissl
was once active in competitive sports and even now swims a kilometer every day.
For many years she has lived on a small farmstead with a couple of boxers, two
ponies, hens and cats. Each morning her chauffeur takes her and the dogs to her
office in Vienna, to return in the evening. Regrettably, FAZ does not
take this curious biographical sketch further. No connection is drawn between her
personality and the Russian President’s acceptance of her invitation to her
wedding.
FAZ similarly has chosen to amuse rather than inform in its
coverage of the meeting in Berlin entitled “Sparkling wine in Austria,
sparkling water in Meseberg.” They comment on how Putin arrived half an
hour late, on how it is hard to see how the meeting could be characterized as a
success. They stress that we know nothing about the content of the
consultations. Then they tick off the opening positions of the sides as set out
in their statements before the talks.
Spiegel online risks more by giving more
interpretation and less bare facts. Its article entitled “Something of a new
start” suggests that a rapprochement is underway and that both Merkel and Putin
have a lot in play. Unlike the other German press we have mentioned, Spiegel
sees a direct link between Putin’s attending the wedding in Styria and his
visit to Merkel.
Putin is under economic pressure to find closer ties with
Europe. In Austria, which now chairs the European Council, he has allies in the
government, namely the extreme right populists of the Freedom Party which
installed Kneissl. But the way to Europe passes by way of Merkel and
Putin knows that.
Meanwhile, says Spiegel,
Germany also is interested in improving relations with Russia despite all the
controversy, namely due to the growing conflicts with US President Donald
Trump. We don’t know the exact content of the talks which were confidential,
but there is some movement now between Germany and Russia.
Spiegel remains cautious. Cordiality does not
enter into the relationship. The parties keep their distance. There is no
laughter to lighten the atmosphere. Yet, it concludes: “The talks have
prospects and we can see the wish to make progress through common positions,
and without being silent about contradictions. Diplomatic normality, as it
were. A step forward.”
* * * *
If the great bulk of commentary in the West about Putin’s
diplomatic weekend was reserved and stayed by the bare facts without speculation,
Russian television more than made up for dryness. I point in particular
to two political talk shows which invited a mixture of experts from different
backgrounds.
Let us begin with the show Vremya Pokazhet (Time will tell) on state television’s Pervy Kanal. Their
Friday, 17 August program focused on Putin’s forthcoming visit to the wedding
‘on the road to Berlin,’ which several panelists saw as a strong signal to
Germany that Russia had other channels to the EU if Germany refuses to be its
intercessor.
The visit was said to be breaking new ground in diplomatic
practice. According to panelist Andrei Baklanov, deputy chair of the
association of Russian diplomats, this kind of positive, human diplomacy is
Russia’s answer to the negative behavior in international affairs that has
occupied center stage in the recent past – sanctions, fake news,
etc. As another panelist interjected, this is the first time that a
Russian head of state attended a wedding abroad since Tsar Nicholas did so in
Germany in 1913.
Baklanov proceeded to provide details about the bride, however,
bringing out aspects of her career that are far more relevant to her attracting
the attention of Putin than the Frankfurter
Allgemeine produced. We learn that she grew up in Amman,
Jordan, that she speaks 8 languages: Arabic, Hebrew, Magyar, French, Spanish,
Italian, English as well as her native German. She studied Near Eastern
languages in Vienna University, in the Jewish University of Jerusalem, in the
University of Jordan and also graduated from the National School of
Administration in France. She holds a doctorate in law. She is a
non-party minister, which also attests to her generally recognized
professionalism. For all of these reasons, she is a good fit with Putin’s
determination to find supporters in Europe for investments to restore Syrian
infrastructure and enable the return of refugees.
The country’s most prestigious talk
show, “Sunday Evening with Vladimir Solovyov,” had a couple of
Duma members and a well-known politician from Liberal circles comment on the
diplomacy of the day before.
Sergey Mironov, leader of the socialist party Fair Russia said
that despite Merkel’s warning in advance not to expect breakthroughs it is
likely progress was made in agreeing how to deal with US sanctions. This would
be tested in the coming days.
As for the link between the visits to Austria and Germany, the representative
of a pro-business party Sergey Stankevich reminded viewers that Germany and
Austria are the market makers in Europe for Russian gas. Nord Stream II gas may
land in Germany but a large part of it will be pumped further to Austria’s hub
for distribution elsewhere in Europe. Whatever may have been said
publicly, Stankevich believes that Merkel and Putin did agree on many if not
all the subjects named before the start: Iran, Syria, Ukraine, Nord
Stream.
Russian media coverage of the Saturday travels of their
President continued on Russian news programs into Monday, with video clips of
Putin dancing at the wedding and speaking alongside Merkel before entering into
their talks at Meseberg Palace.
* * * *
Looking back at the media coverage of Putin’s visits to Austria
and Germany on 18 August, and with all due respect to those who opinions are
different from mine, I find that the most helpful for our understanding of the
present day international situation were the report and editorial in Belgium’s Libre Belgique and
the unruly, risky but at times brilliant insights on Russian television.
What comes out of this is the understanding that the visits to a
wedding in Austria and to the federal Chancellor outside Berlin were directly
linked in Russian diplomatic strategy, that Russia is playing the Austrian
card during the country’s six months at the helm of the European Council in
Brussels, that Russia is pushing for a multi-party relief effort for Syria to
facilitate the return of refugees to their home and pacification of the
war-torn country. The web of common interests that Russia is pursuing has
at its core the fragility of the current world order and generalized anxiety of
leading countries due to America’s aggressive pursuit of narrow national interest
under Donald Trump as seen in his tariff wars and sanctions directed at friends
and foes alike.
Where I differ from the interpretations set out in the foregoing
press reports is in my understanding of what Trump is doing and why.
The nearly universal assumption of commentators is that Trump’s
policies known as “Make America Great” are ignorant and doomed to fail.
They are assumed to be isolationist, withdrawing America from the world
community.
However, Trump did not invent bullying of US allies. That was
going strong under George W. Bush, with his challenge “you are either with us
or against us” when he sought to align the West behind his invasion of Iraq in
2003 without authorization of the UN Security Council. His more urbane
successor Barack Obama was no kinder to U.S. allies, who were slapped with
crushing fines for violations of U.S. sanctions on Iran, just to mention one
way in which they were kept in line. And the U.S. Congress today is no
more reasonable and diplomatic than the President in the brutal unilateral
sanctions it has on its own initiative advocated against not just Russia but
also against Turkey and other states which are not snapping to attention with
respect to purchases of military materiel from Russia.
What made U.S. bullying tolerable before Trump was the
ideological smokescreen of “shared values,” namely democracy promotion, human
rights and rule of law, that all members of the alliances could swear to and
which set them apart from the still unenlightened parts of the globe where
autocrats hold sway.
In my view, Trump’s use of sanctions and tariffs here, there,
everywhere has a totally different logic from what is adduced in the writings
of my peers in the analyst community. He invokes them because 1. they are
within his sole power as Chief Executive and 2. they are in principle as
American as apple pie and do not require grand explanations in Congress or
before the public. As to why he invokes them, there you have to look at
Trump’s foreign policy from a 360 degree perspective and not merely as it
relates to Putin or to Erdogan or to any of the small slices we see discussed
in the news.
When viewed in the round, it is obvious that Trump is reshuffling
the deck. He is doing what he can to break up NATO and the other military
alliances around the world which are consuming more than half of the U.S.
defense budget and do not arguably provide greater security to the American
homeland than the country can do for itself without fixed alliances and
overseas bases.
The first two presidencies of this millennium undid the
country’s greatest geopolitical achievement of the second half of the
20th century: the informal alliance with China against Russia that put
Washington at the center of all global politics. Bush and Obama did that
by inattention and incomprehension of what was at stake. That inattention was
an expression of American hubris in the unipolar world which, it was assumed,
was the new normal, not a blip.
By contrast, what Trump is now doing is not a blunder or a bit of
bluster. Even if he is not conversant with the whole of the
Realist School of international relations, as surely he is not, he does grasp
the fundamentals, namely the centrality of the sovereign nation-state and of
the balance of power mechanism by which these states are constantly changing
alignments of these nation-states to ensure no one enjoys hegemony. We
see this understanding when he speaks about looking out for American interests
while the heads of state whom he meets are looking out for the interests of
theirs. In his tweets we find that our allies are ripping us off, that they are
unfair competitors. His most admiring remark about Russia is that it is a
strong competitor. The consistent element in Trump’s thinking is ignored
or willfully misunderstood in the press.
Accordingly, I insist that the possible rapprochement of Russia
and Germany will be in line with Trump’s reshuffling of the deck not in spite
of it.
Source: Gilbert Doctorow.
Reprinted from Russia Insider.