Germany's Great Game: The Perpetual Search for a Patron
The Al-Monitor piece highlights German politician Friedrich Merz's latest pilgrimage to the Gulf, painted as a pragmatic search for energy independence from both the US and China. How novel. One might wonder why, after decades of grand strategic pronouncements, Germany finds itself in this perpetually 'seeking alternatives' loop. FIRST INSTANCE: The Ostpolitik Gambit (1970s) Rewind to the 1970s.
West Germany's Ostpolitik , championed by Chancellor Willy Brandt, was all about rapprochement with the Soviet bloc. The rationale? Peace through trade, and crucially, reliable energy from the East. The 1970 German-Soviet gas pipeline deal, signed in 1970, cemented this strategy, tying West Germany to Soviet natural gas. The narrative then, as now, was diversification, avoiding over-reliance on
any single power – though in practice, it meant deepening reliance on the Soviet Union for cheap energy (Deutsche Welle, 2022). REPETITIONS: Nord Stream's Siren Song (2000s-2020s) The playbook was dusted off for the 21st century with the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines. Despite warnings from various US administrations (beginning with Bush Jr., intensified under Obama and Trump) about Russia
weaponizing energy, German leaders, notably former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, pushed ahead, claiming it was purely an economic, not political, decision. Schröder even joined Gazprom's board post-chancellorship, a move that exposed the cozy relationship (Transparency International, 2017). This effectively doubled down on Russian gas, making Germany the very definition of energy dependent, despite