Tom's Thoughts and Ideas

In recent times, a semi-new and interesting reason for the war in Ukraine has been posited in mainstream foreign policy circles. The theory goes that the post-Soviet Ostpolitik of Western Europe, and primarily Germany, was fundamentally flawed in its dealings with Russia. The theory also contends that rather than deepen economic ties which could have integrated Russia into the European system, Ostpolitik sutured Western Europe to with Russia economically while leaving Eastern Europe (most clearly Ukraine) open to being attacked, at first economically, and invaded wholesale by Russia. I will be examining the history of Ostpolitik from its inception in West Germany into the modern day.

Ostpolitik is a political/economic theory that was born from Cold War West Germany. After the ruling CDU (Christian Democrats, the main centre-right party) government lost to the SPD (Social Democrats, the main centre-left party) in 1969, the SPD government created and utilized the theory of Ostpolitik as a new basis of relations with East Germany and other Eastern Bloc states.

Until that point, West Germany under the CDU had been very aggressive towards their Soviet counterpart. The SPD thought that ‘change through rapprochement’ would eventually undermine the East Germany system, (as well as the systems of other communist states) bringing them back to the West. In essence, Ostpolitik was an attempt on the part of a liberal democracy to pacify and eventually undermine an aggressive and totalitarian regime. The SPD aimed to accomplish this through means like: increased economic closeness, trade, and most importantly treaties and agreements which would move the policies of Eastern Bloc states towards ‘western values’.

Regarding the original use case of Ostpolitik between West and East Germany, I believe that Ostpolitik succeeded in moving the two states, and the Eastern Bloc as a whole, towards rapprochement.

Some of the successes of Ostpolitik were the Treaty of Moscow, the treaty of Warsaw, and the Basic Treaty. The Treaty of Moscow and the Treaty of Warsaw were primarily about West Germany recognizing the post WWII Eastern Bloc borders in Europe. The treaty of Warsaw is especially important as it saw West Germany officially recognize the Oder–Neisse line, the post WWII border between Poland and East Germany, which was a major sore spot for many Germans in the West. Beyond the practical benefits of normalizing relations this agreement was one step away from the Imperial Germany goals of Germanizing Poland.

The most controversial treaty, and the most important, was the Basic treaty between West and East Germany. This treaty officially established relations, and partial embassies, between the two. For West Germany this was a major change of policy as it went against the CDU’s doctrine of actively not recognizing East Germany in any way and being aggressive towards any state that did.

The controversy of the Basic Treaty was one of the reasons why in the 1972 election the SPD lost some seats to the CDU. (The scale of the political fallout from this treaty is a whole other topic in of itself, but suffice to say it was controversial). This shows that while Ostpolitik was certainly popular, the more aggressive tendencies of the CDU were still major forces in West Germany. This electoral loss also shows the fickle nature of pragmatic grand strategy as having a large scheme only works if one has the time for it to come to fruition.

These agreements make clear that while trade was a key part of SPD Ostpolitik, the end goal was not economic ties or trade. This policy was a significant reason why the detente of the 1970s was able to occur since creating relationships and diplomatic channels between West and East meant that crises could be resolved with greater speed and that the other side looked less mercurial.

While Ostpolitik was very successful prior to and during the years of detente in the 1970s, the beginnings of neoliberalism in the West, and the growing power of Andropov and the KGB in the Soviet Union, made continuing this policy harder and less politically convenient for both sides. Despite this eventual breakdown, the results and successes of Ostpolitik can not be forgotten or understated. It was so popular for a reason. 

After the CDU came back into power in the 1980s, on the same Neoliberal wave which elected leaders like Reagan, they were forced to continue Ostpolitik, at least in name, due to its popularity among the West German public. But, they added a neoliberal swing to the SPD’s policy.

Rather than focus on trade as an initial opening from which the West could sign treaties and agreements with the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc nations, the CDU chose to only pursue further trade and economic ties with the Soviet Union. Additionally, the further diplomacy and ideological goals stopped. This is because, for the CDU, the economic ties became positive ends unto themselves rather than a single method that could be used to move Eastern Block states towards liberal democracy and undermine communism. In their thinking the economic ties would break the command economy wholesale.

Another reason for this change was that, in the foreign policy world of the New Cold War, the West German government thought that having a direct line to the Soviet Union, majorly due to the invasion of Afghanistan, would be hugely beneficial. It turned out that they thought it was important enough to sacrifice other relationships. To this end they cut off contact with the Solidarity movement in Poland to placate the Soviet Union into maintaining more open relations.

The effectiveness of this policy as utilized in the 1980s is able to be argued because the state of relations between West and East during that time were tense at best. However, while one might be able to argue the value of this policy at that specific geopolitical moment, in the aftermath of the Cold War it became far more sinister and plainly counter productive as the basis for a Russia policy.

I believe it is worthwhile to separate this neoliberal trade fetish from the original Ostpolitik. This is because they are so fundamentally different in their goals that they ought to have different names. I will call this CDU version of Ostpolitik ‘Osthandel’ or Eastern Trade, since other scholars have used this same name when discussing this phenomenon. Much to my dismay, Osthandel continued through the CDU governments in the 1980s, even though a more liberal Soviet Union appeared under Gorbachev, which effectively ended the renewed Cold War standings of both nations. Osthandel is the policy I aim to critique most effusively since I believe, in the aftermath of the Cold War, it directly set the stage for the Russian invasions of Ukraine.  

While the original stated goal of Ostpolitik was to undermine communism, it is not reasonable to credit the eventual fall of communism, outside of East Germany, to Osthandel as practiced in the 1980s: or to Ostpolitik as practiced in the 1970s. This is because the Soviet Collapse was multicausal and German economic policy was not among the most important things with which the Soviet leadership were grappling at the time, by a wide berth. 

To return to the main question of the war in Ukraine, Ostpolitik as applied to Russia by Western Europe in the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s fundamentally failed, and even directly contributed towards circumstances through which Russia was able to invade Ukraine both in 2014 and in 2022. But, that opinion requires further explanation, so let’s start with the end of the Cold War, the end of History…

In the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s, in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, Osthandel became even more important to CDU governments. Osthandel was a major loadstone for all German policy dealing with Eastern Europe and Russia, even indirectly. There are a lot of talking heads who say that Ostpolitik (or rather Osthandel) failed to achieve its goals since the democratic transitions in places like Russia, Belarus, or Ukraine was not immediate, or did not take place at all. This ‘failure’ is being compared to the rather quick democratic transition in East Germany or Poland. I think that while the fact of the slow democratic transition in those states is accurate: claiming Ostpolitik was a failure shows one to be unaware of the true nature of Germany’s Russia policy and forgets the actual goals of Osthandel, as a trade fetish rather than a genuine method for liberalizing autocracies.

The most easily recognizable results of Osthandel, which show its true colors, are the Nord Stream pipelines which run from Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea. When built, they were meant to integrate Russia into Europe economically via the theory of Osthandel. The practical result of these pipelines is a total failure, due to Osthandel’s inescapable and inherent foolishness among other things.

This failure is because, previously to Nord Stream’s construction, the pipelines from East to West flowed overland through Poland and Ukraine. These overland pipelines gave Russia a valve through which they were able to pressure both Eastern and Western Europe economically. Russia often decided to throttle energy deliveries, via the pipelines, for the purpose of hurting Ukraine or the West, in either case the West’s energy sector was effected negatively.

Prior to Nord Stream, it was in the best interest of the West to work alongside Ukraine rather than against it. Working with Ukraine was advantageous for many reasons. The most important reason was that a strong and liberal Ukraine would curb Russian oil aggression since they would have more geopolitical leverage. Protecting Ukraine also meant that the West was protecting their domestic energy interests, since without Russian aggression, there would be no threat to the energy coming to the West. Additionally, allowing Ukraine to fall would be contra to the stated goals of the European Project. More pragmatically, was clear, as early as the 1990s, that Putin was not going to be a true ally to the mission of liberal democracy, therefore working with him against Ukraine would not help the West move towards their larger ideological and social goals. Ukraine is important beyond the West’s energy sector as well; Ukraine has been a longtime candidate for EU membership, which means the whole EU has an economic interest in a strong Ukraine as it would benefit their domestic economies. Finally, letting Russia puppet Ukraine would be a violation of agreements like the Helsinki Accords which have been a keystone of European foreign policy for decades.

Despite Russia being able to hurt western energy production, some minor goods came from this connection between Russia, Ukraine, and the West. One is that it gave Germany great reasons to consider both Russian affairs and Eastern European affairs to be important upstream facets of its domestic energy policy. The Nord Stream pipelines cut Eastern Europe out of Germany’s energy policy. The same was true for Germany’s Russia policy. This disconnect left Eastern Europe to their own devices against Russia, rather than being sutured into German domestic policy.

The disconnect between Eastern Europe and German domestic policy meant that Germany had no reason to protect Ukraine or try to curb Russian aggression generally when it occurred in 2014 and 2022. This is because the only real effect of said aggression on the West, in a macro sense, was the psychic inconvenience of there being a conflict in Europe.

While Chancellor Merkel did try and protect Ukraine to some degree; since Germany’s reliance on Russian energy was independent of the result of the war, due to the pipelines; only months later the ‘Russia Reset’ could take place with the support of the Germans. Even though Germany helped to negotiate Minsk II, a ceasefire agreement, they still had more to gain from close economic partnership with Russia than they had to lose by helping Ukraine. They played their role as the ‘Western Liberal Democracy’ while not actually taking real action to back up that goal since that was the more beneficial choice domestically.

Osthandel towards Russia only started to really come apart after the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine when Western governments had to wholeheartedly sanction Russia and support Ukraine directly, though many already had, in order to maintain electoral power and show their commitment to the European Project. At this point Russia had gone past the point where they had plausible deniability in the face of those hoping to be fooled.

The ‘realist’ response to this is that if Europe let Ukraine be absorbed into Russia then there would be no issues, as the flow of oil would be uninterrupted and there would be no war. This is foolish since it presupposes Russian colonial success in Ukraine, which as we have seen, would be far from likely. Abandoning Ukraine only serves Russian imperial interests and makes the West weaker. This is yet another reason why the pipelines were so catastrophic, they meant that Russia could engage in actual warfare against Ukraine without the threat of energy supplies to the West being a casualty of said war.

It appears to me that this theory of Osthandel, while not the ONE policy that caused the war, was certainly a significant factor. It is rather fashionable today to criticize the Russia policy of the West in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, but I think that this critique goes beyond this foreign policy zeitgeist and into a more base concern. This critique is applicable to the general way in which the West deals with authoritarian regimes across the world. Trade and economic development on their own do nothing but empower these states with more resources and legitimacy.

The original Ostpolitik showed the world what practical and productive foreign policy can look like. Osthandel was a neoliberal simulacra of Ostpolitik’s goals of human rights, rapprochement, and bringing states closer to western alignments. Due to this fatal flaw, Osthandel clearly helped lead to the largest war in Europe since World War II.