Germany has awakened from its European hegemony, always concealed by the weight of its troubled history, to find that it is a giant with feet of clay in the face of a changed world in which it has to navigate with new radars. The war in Ukraine has forced Chancellor Scholz to increase his defense budgets and urgently seek alternatives to the energy supply that still comes from Russia.
Putin was an associate with whom Angela Merkel spoke Russian and with whom former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder became an employee upon leaving office in Berlin. It was the great revolving door of history. Putin was a comfortable energetic ally and today he is his worst enemy. Long-term errors are the most dangerous because they take a long time to correct.
There is the sad paradox that what is still paid to Russia for the gas it administers to Germany and other European countries, Spain among them, is used to finance Putin's war of conquest, which, unilaterally, wants to recover a lost empire. Germany has changed course and has stopped being pacifist since Scholz's speech in the Bundestag three days after the invasion of Ukraine. Europe, mainly the one that was subjected to the directives of the Kremlin after Yalta, has no choice but to follow in its footsteps. The parameters of the economy and security are being changed. The energy can also come from the south and Scholz will have to convince Macron to speed up the procedures for the gas pipeline, which is stranded for about five hundred kilometers on both sides of the Pyrenean border.
What an obsession the French have, historically, with the Pyrenees continuing to be a difficult wall to cross instead of a natural and beneficial crossing point, especially since we are part of the EU and despite the millions of French who visit our country, of trade and the great influence of French culture in the most cultivated environments in Catalonia and Spain.
The truth is that Scholz has to give a change of direction, stop depending on Putin and lead a bewildered, convulsed Europe, with far-reaching political changes on the horizon. The movements of sympathy or understanding towards Putin are relevant in parties of the extreme right and of the radical left in France, Italy, Spain and Hungary.
Both Scholz and Macron know that Russia exists, is very powerful and has the ability to alter the international order. Russia has shaped world politics ever since Napoleon came up with the triumphant military excursion across the Russian steppes in the winter of 1812 that Tchaikovsky immortalized in his famous overture and Tolstoy described in the great novel War and Peace. The participation of Stalin's Russia in the defeat of Hitler was decisive.
Russia is governed by the parameters of a very weak State and a Machiavellian instinct of all the leaders who have governed that immense country since the time of Peter the Great. And Putin is no exception. The Soviet empire crumbled under Gorbachev's perestroika, but the Russians' expansionist obsession lives on.
The relations of Germany and Europe with Russia do not rest only on energy and trade, but on alliances and wars that have conditioned mutual history in the last thousand years.
Germany will not face the challenge alone. It needs France and the rest of Europe, also Great Britain. Putin can conquer part or all of Ukraine with as many Russian and Ukrainian dead as it takes. But the patriotic feeling of the Ukrainians and their independence from the Kremlin are sealed for future generations.
In this global board there are two fundamental and decisive pieces. China is the second world power and its interests extend to all continents. Its military might is being openly displayed in the Taiwan Strait.
The great unknown is whether the next president of the United States will maintain Atlantic ties and make common cause with Europe in defense of democracy, freedoms and open trade. Joe Biden tries to do it despite the fact that there are not a few who criticize Europe's dependence on Washington. The alternative seems to me much worse and riskier. The history of the 20th century speaks for itself.
