Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Why Angela Merkel is saying farewell to Ostpolitik

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/26/angela-merkel-farewell-ostpolitik-putin-threat-europe
 
 
Why Angela Merkel is saying farewell to Ostpolitik
 
The German chancellor’s well-founded belief that Putin is a threat to 
Europe is shifting power relations in the region
 
Natalie Nougayrède
The Guardian, Wednesday 26 November 2014
 
One thing we know for sure about Angela Merkel: she takes time to ponder 
her decisions and she weighs her words carefully. So the speech the 
German chancellor gave in Australia, a few days after Vladimir Putin 
stormed out of the G20, may go down as a major shift in European 
geopolitics.
 
In a nutshell: Germany seems to be closing down Ostpolitik, the policy 
that has driven much of its diplomacy for decades. This has potentially 
huge repercussions that may shift the power games in Europe. Putin’s 
strong network of “Russland Versteher”, people who “understand” and side 
with Russia in Germany, will now be severely put to the test. Other 
European countries will be paying close attention to how this change in 
German-Russian relations unfolds. It is also a testimony to the 
importance of the German-US relationship, which the Obama administration 
is clearly relying on in its dealings with Russia’s revisionism of the 
post-Cold war order.
 
It is worth listening to Merkel’s Sydney speech. In a few swift 
sentences, she cast the Putin regime not just as a nuisance in a nasty 
regional rivalry, but as a threat to the very heart of European wellbeing.
 
First, she contemplated how European powers had stumbled into war in 
1914, through “no readiness to accept compromises” and “an arrogant 
belief in military superiority”. It sounded like a description of 
Putin’s tactics in Ukraine. Then she referred to how the European 
project was built in the aftermath of the 20th century’s conflicts, 
leading to a union that has put its “faith in the cohesive effect of 
shared values”. But she warned: “There are still forces that believe in 
the supposed law of the strong and disregard the strength of the law.” 
Russia “regards one of its neighbours, Ukraine, as part of its sphere of 
influence,” said Merkel. All this “after the horrors of two World Wars”. 
She was indignant. The EU “will make every effort to reach a diplomatic 
solution” with sanctions against Russia “on the necessary scale and for 
as long as needed”.
 
So farewell, Ostpolitik? In 1969 the Social Democrat chancellor of 
Germany, Willy Brandt, had embarked on this course of dialogue with the 
Soviet Union and the East German Republic (DDR), in an attempt to break 
out of the legacy of the 1945 Yalta conference, which carved up Europe. 
This was Ostpolitik aimed at Wandel durch Annäherung (change through 
rapprochement); change in the east through diplomatic and economic 
contact. As a former major of Berlin, Brandt felt strongly about this. 
It is well known that Merkel’s youth in East Germany has given her an 
acute awareness of the KGB world that Putin comes from. She strongly 
dislikes the Russian president but this has never been about just 
personalities. She became chancellor in 2005 in the wake of Gerhard 
Schröder’s cosying up to Putin over the Iraq war and issues around 
Russian gas. Schröder, who went on to head one of Gazprom’s companies in 
Europe, celebrated his 70th birthday this year by inviting Putin to the 
party and giving him a big public hug shortly after Crimea was annexed. 
The Schröder years had brought Ostpolitik to a cynical climax.
 
Merkel is navigating a German-Russian relationship in which business 
weighs heavily. This is why her role in promoting sanctions has been 
essential in swaying Europe toward a more unified reaction to the 
Ukrainian crisis. Germany is Russia’s number one economic partner in 
Europe. Many expect Putin to describe any measure taken against Russia 
as submission to what he calls US “diktats”, well aware that the Snowden 
revelations have reignited anti-US sentiment in Germany. But if NSA 
surveillance does touch a sensitive chord in German psychology, due to 
the memory of the Stasi and of the Nazi State, so do – for the same 
historical reasons – the outright lies of state propaganda, as 
demonstrated by Russia over Ukraine and the downing of the MH17 plane. 
According to polls, more than 80% of Germans feel that Russia can’t be 
trusted. Putin’s recent comments expressing an understanding for the 
Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939 didn’t go down too well either.
 
Germany’s turn against Putin’s Russia will come as a source of 
satisfaction in Poland and the Baltic states, as well as in Georgia, 
where fears of more Russian adventurism run high. A few years ago, Radek 
Sikorsky, then Poland’s foreign minister, gave a seminal speech in 
Berlin calling for more, not less, German engagement in Europe’s 
policies. The German president, Joachim Gauck, a former East German 
dissident, has made similar statements, pointing to Germany’s moral 
responsibility to take more than an economic approach to world problems.
 
But people close to Gauck anticipate that Merkel’s new course will run 
into domestic obstacles – the Russland Versteher crowd being powerful. 
Equally, Italy’s industrial lobbies will be hard to convince. The 
central European countries are divided, with Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and 
even some Czech officials playing to Putin’s tune. As for France, much 
will depend on how François Hollande manages the embarrassing Mistral 
warship sale to Russia.
 
Europe is faced with having to redefine its strategic approach to a 
large eastern neighbour that is economically fragile and swarming with 
militaristic nationalism. This is no meagre task. It will require 
finding a solution to Putin’s intention of dividing eastern Europe 
between the west and Russia. Merkel predicted in her speech that Putin’s 
strategy “will not prevail” but she warned “the road may be long, 
arduous and with many setbacks”.
-- 
Namib
.....
There's a blaze of light in every word (Leonard Cohen)

 
E' un ottima notizia perche' l'Ostpolitik era proprio cio' su cui faceva leva Putin per scindere EU e USA. Cinicamente si potrebbe dire che ormai la Russia ha perso la meta' del potere d'acquisto.
Tuttavia il MdE tedesco ha chiesto trecento incontri al suo omologo russo senza mai cavare un ragno dal buco, quindi non e' che M. non le abbia provate tutte.
Sono curioso pero' di vedere come si comportera' se P. invade una parte del Baltico. l'Esercito Tedesco, molto pacifista, sara' in grado di combattere? 
Perche' il Putin ferito potrebbe essere ancora piu' pericoloso.

 E' un ottima notizia perche' l'Ostpolitik era proprio cio' 
 
su cui si è fondata la crescita economica tedesca dell'ultimo ventennio. Vorrà dire che la Merkel vuole fare la fine del suo ex leader Honecker

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Ne dubito. Piuttosto avra' fatto un'analisi rischi-beneficio vedendo che l'Ostpolitik era finita economicamente, mentre il rischio politico-militare era fortemente aumentato. Un vero Leader, con il suo elettorato dietro.
 

 Ne dubito. Piuttosto avra' fatto un'analisi rischi-beneficio vedendo che l'Ostpolitik era finita economicamente
 
stai dicendo che la "liberazione" dal giogo sovietico non ha portato gioia benessere e prosperità agli stati a est della Germania?


Ma di che cianci? Tutti i paesi ad Est, compresa la Russia, si sono autoliberati con le proprie rivoluzioni , per altro cogliendo di sorpresa i paesi occidentali come poi documentato dalla reazioni di Mitterand, Tatcher e altri, molto diverse tra loro.
 
Tu NON conosci neppure la storia recente, ne' la vuoi conoscere.

 Ma di che cianci? Tutti i paesi ad Est, compresa la Russia, si sono autoliberati con le proprie rivoluzioni
 
eh eh eh, revolutje! Adesso giovani ungheresi e polacche libere di battere sui marciapiedi di puorci borghesi italiani, bella libertà capitalista!