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Putin-bashing at the G20

OSTENSIBLY the G20 summit in Brisbane, Australia, was about the economy. And indeed, the leaders decided on about 800 different measures to boost the global economy.

If these are all acted upon, one reads in the final communique, global economic growth will increase by 2.1% in 2018.

But anyone who has been watching summits like these for some time will know that such decisions are simply a lot of hot air. Each government will do what it takes to stay in power, whether this is good for their economies in the long run or not.

So, let us leave the G20’s economic scene and concentrate on the real issue concentrating everyone’s mind in Brisbane: Russia and its policy towards the Ukraine. After all, politics often have huge economic implications.

The obligatory family photograph taken at the summit speaks more than a thousand words. At the extreme right of the group – left on the photo – a lonely little figure stands rather folornly: President Vladimir Putin.

Indeed, he was almost totally isolated in Brisbane, even though several Western leaders were not exactly a shining example in their brusque behaviour towards him.

His host, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, boasted that he was going to “shirtfront” the Russian – a term in Aussie rugby meaning that you charge your opponent and hit him hard in the chest with your shoulder. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper apparently told Putin: “I guess I will have to shake your hand, but actually I have only one thing to say to you: ‘Get out of the Ukraine’.”

Even British Prime Minister David Cameron compared Russia’s actions in the Ukraine to those of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Apart from the truth or otherwise of his statement, this is about the biggest insult possible to a true-blooded Russian. This is not the way to influence Russian people, who lost millions of lives in the war against Hitler, and make friends among them, to paraphrase Dale Carnegie.

No wonder Putin left as soon as he decently could, even before the final communique was issued. His excuse, that he needed to sleep on the way home for his next day at work, did not sound credible.

Merkel tries to make her mark

There was one Western leader, however, who did not participate in the blind Putin-bashing. That was German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Merkel’s actions in Australia illustrate her two-pronged policy towards Russia.

On the one hand, she engaged Putin in an interview which lasted more than four hours. Afterwards, Merkel refused to say anything substantial about the meeting, but she and Putin both agreed that their opinions did not converge.

This is not the only time Merkel has engaged Putin. According to reports in the German press, it was the 37th conversation between the two. A few weeks ago, they also spoke for a full five hours in Milan, Italy.

She is following this up with a mission by her foreign secretary, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, to Kiev and Moscow this week to save the ceasefire in the eastern Ukraine.

This makes her just about the only Western leader still persevering in speaking to the Russian leader. The others have apparently written him off, which is dangerous.

Merkel also activated the second prong of her strategy: talking to Putin does not mean that she does not speak her mind. And so, she held a speech in Sydney in which she did not mince her words.

Regarding Russia’s policy in its own backyard, she spoke of the political elite a century ago (at the outbreak of World War I) who remained “without speech” and gave up on diplomacy and the political will to save the peace. This must not happen again.

“We know that regional conflicts can spread very quickly into a wildfire,” she said. Military intervention could lead to another general war, so that is ruled out. But on the other hand, the world should not get into the subservient position East Germany (where she grew up) once found itself.

But where will he stop?

And then she said something which made the whole world sit up: “And it is not just about Ukraine. It is about Moldavia, it is about Georgia, when it goes on like this … one should ask Serbia, one should ask the western Balkan states.”

What Merkel is warning about here, is the possibility that Putin will not be satisfied with the Crimea and the eastern Ukraine. And she did not simply suck it out of her thumb; according to the mostly well informed news magazine Der Spiegel, her warning was based on information unearthed by the German intelligence service.

All in all, the Brisbane summit did not bring the world closer to a political solution regarding the growing confrontation between Russia and the West. On the contrary, it was a confirmation of the fact that the two parties are reasoning on completely different levels: the West largely looks through an international legal perspective, while Putin is an old-fashioned Russian nationalist, influenced by 19th-century Russian philosophers who saw Russian culture as pure and that of the West as debased and corrupt.

Restoring the borders of the Soviet Union (remember, Putin once called the disintegration of the USSR “the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century”) is to him a holy undertaking.

The world is clearly not moving towards more peace and stability. And if this movement is not turned around, it is bound to have a negative influence on the world economy. Fasten your seatbelts, people, we may be in for a bumpy ride.

* Leopold Scholtz is an independent political analyst who lives in Europe. Views expressed are his own.
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