Germany has just announced its first monthly trade deficit in three decades and the chairman of the German Trade Union Federation warned that the country's key industries could collapse permanently due to high energy prices and shortages. The golden era of economic locomotives in the European Union (EU) has ended.
Over the past three decades, the competitiveness of German industries has been enhanced by cheap imports of Russian energy, while Europe's largest country has also become an important export market for German technology and goods. In previous centuries, the main theme of European politics was Germany's productive power and Russia's vast resources that could create a pillar of main power on the European continent.
The relationship between Germany and Russia has since always been in a dilemma: The partnership between the two giants will create challenges for rival powers such as the UK and the US, while the German-Russian conflict has previously turned Central and Eastern Europe into what British geologist James Fairgrieve calls the " zone of destruction".
The current NATO-Russia proxy war in Ukraine proves that this 19th and 20th century dilemma is still appropriate, although the 21st century war has a big difference: the world no longer has Europe as the center.
Moscow's goal for the Russia-Germany partnership is to build an inclusive Europe, although the initiative has now been replaced by a Russia-China partnership to build a Greater Europe-a. Russia's energy exports and other natural resources are being shifted to the East, while Russia is also increasingly importing important technologies and industrial products from the region.
A typical study on self-harm
RT quoted Professor Glenn Diesen, Eastern and Southern Norwegian University (USN), editor of Russia magazine on global issues, as saying that the economic crisis in Germany is a typical case of self-harm. After Moscow supported German reunification in the early 1990s, there was no response because Bonn, and then Berlin, abandoned agreements with Moscow on a European-wide security architecture based on soviet equality and inseparable security. Instead, Germany supports NATO's expansionism to create an inter-European system.
As a result, the centuries-long historical competition for influence in Central and Eastern Europe has been revived between Germany/ NATO and Russia over where the new dividing lines of Europe will be drawn. After the 2014 coup in Kiev, Ukraine has become a less reliable transit corridor for Russian energy. However, Germany has self-destroyed its energy security by opposing a number of Russian initiatives to diversify transport routes. Berlin has repeatedly threatened to reduce its dependence on Russian energy and therefore encouraged Russia to seek export markets in the East.
When Russia recognized the independence of the two countries in Donbass and deployed troops to Ukraine on February 24, Germany lifted the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, gained control of Gazprom's subsidiaries in its territory and imposed sanctions on Russian energy. There has been speculation for years that Russia will use energy weapons by cutting off energy supplies to Germany, although in the end, Russia did not need to do so because Germany caused this economic pain to itself - according to Professor Glenn Diesen
Escalating control in the multipolar era
In the post- literary era, when there was only one center of power, the West was largely given an advantage of escalation because it could increase pressure until opponents were forced to surrender.
However, in a multipolar world, it is impossible to base Europe's security on the principle of expanding a hostile military bloc towards the Russian border and then expect Moscow to adapt to these new realities.
In the emerging world order, sanctions on Russia only mean giving a huge market share to countries like China and India, in contrast to forcing Moscow to submit. While Germany is trying to seek expensive energy sources to replace cheap Russian fuel, Moscow is currently selling oil and gas at discounted prices to China and India as the country transitiones from Greater Europe to Greater Asia. As a result, Germany's industries will lose their competitiveness compared to Asian partners.
Double failure
The West is facing an economic crisis, due to unsustainable debt, rising inflation, declining competitiveness, and now there is an energy crisis. With the escalation causing more damage to Germany than Russia, it would be logical that Germany could pursue a reduction in the escalation by reviewing the decision to abandon the inter-European security agreements that were implemented in the early stages of the monopoly era.
But instead, Germany did not do so, and therefore doubled its failed policies.
