Germany no longer believes that the market favors democracy – Pierre Haski

This week, the German foreign minister, environmentalist Annalena Baerbock, called into question one of the key principles of her country’s diplomacy: change through tradeor change through the market.

In other words, it is the idea that economic exchanges would favor democracy and peace. Two practical examples are Russia and China, countries with which Germany has very close economic ties and with which it is now at odds.

In a speech delivered before the German ambassadors gathered in Berlin, Baerbock declared that “economic interdependence carries several risks. Trade is not automatically followed by democratic changes ”.

Cold irony
It is a turning point that places Germany facing the challenge of redefining its role in the world and its international relations. Not an easy situation.

It is evidently Russian gas that provokes this awareness. February 24, the day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, was also the day of a painful awakening for Germany. Until the end, Berlin defended Nord stream 2, the Russian gas pipeline that will never come into operation. In the end, Moscow also closed the taps of the Nord stream 1. In a video published on social networks, the giant Gazprom made fun of a Europe that will be cold because of its opposition to Russia.

Germany, therefore, radically re-evaluates its international economic policy after having found itself dependent on Russia for energy and on China for its immense market. If the Chinese market were taken away from the big German car manufacturers or machine tool manufacturers, a major crisis would break out. For over two decades, German industry has been a key partner in China’s economic rise. The awakening, in this case, came with the Chinese attempt to smash the jewel of Kuka robotics, when the reverse would be impossible.

It is not easy to draw the conclusions of this awareness. The break with Russia takes place in the pain of the war in Ukraine and the need to find new sources of energy. Berlin had no choice left.

With China, the situation is more complex, because we are talking about billions of euros in investments and exchanges with a country increasingly considered by Germany and Europe as a “systemic rival”, to use a formula of the European Commission. China, above all, is politically committed to Russia’s side in the Ukrainian crisis.

Germany, like France, continues to cherish the hope of being able to deal with China and Russia separately. Last week Emmanuel Macron said he did not want to take sides in the Sino-American Cold War. Germany shares this choice: the future will tell us how realistic it is.

Certainly the illusion that trade should soften political mores has disappeared, and with it a certain idea of ​​globalization, killed by the covid, the invasion of Ukraine and the totalitarian turn of the regimes that we hoped could take the path of democracy. .

(Translation by Andrea Sparacino)