Does he deliver? Doesn’t he deliver? Germany is staring at the Nord Stream pipeline in fear, whether Putin will deliver gas again or plunge us into an economic catastrophe. This gas scaremongering, promoted by politicians and business representatives, is exaggerated and makes Germany Putin’s pawn.
In the event of a fire, the first rule of conduct is always: keep calm! Especially when the danger is acute, it is important to keep a cool head and act in a considered manner to protect yourself and others. This not only helps when there is a fire in the hotel room. It also helps in political crisis situations.
The picture that the federal government and some business representatives have been giving for months in view of an impending gas stop is the opposite: How a panicked hotel guest runs screaming through the corridors and thus possibly towards the danger, they spread horror scenarios of the imminent collapse of the German economy, which are not just exaggerated but rather make the situation worse and play into the hands of the Russian ruler, Vladimir Putin.
Of course, warnings about the consequences of a possible gas shortage are basically correct. But trade unions, employers and numerous industry associations paint the darkest possible scenarios if they are allocated a little less energy than usual. That’s just lobbying. Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Economics Minister Robert Habeck apparently want to shake up private and commercial consumers with drastic warnings of poverty and mass unemployment so that they do not wait until the crisis has started to start saving energy.
So far, however, we have not had any gas shortages! In the past few months, despite severely curtailed deliveries from Russia, about as much gas has been imported across Europe as in the previous year. The gas storage facilities in the EU are much better filled than they were a year ago. Even with an immediate halt to deliveries, we are in a much better position with Russia than we would have expected just a few months ago.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that there won’t be significant problems in Germany next winter, for which we should prepare even better by taking further measures, such as saving energy and replacing gas with other energy sources wherever possible. That will be expensive. We are losing wealth. However, the federal government could react to this with aid measures similar to the Corona crisis.
What is by no means threatening is an uncontrollable catastrophe. Repeatedly conjuring up this has already caused damage: due to the fear of crisis and the talk that there is no alternative to Russian gas, the federal government has categorically ruled out an embargo and has repeatedly assured that the gas flow from Russia will be maintained at almost any price. Too many companies are now relying on this instead of making the necessary efforts to look for alternatives.
Above all, however, Germany’s gas panic is a central element in Putin’s strategy of taking Europe hostage, dividing the EU members and largely paralyzing them politically in the face of the Ukraine war. Thanks to the German leadership’s public fear of a delivery stop, the Russian President is getting us to relax and violate our own sanctions. For example, it dictates to European companies how exactly they have to pay their gas bills. The EU Commission and the federal government can only nod to the Kremlin’s corresponding guidelines. Germany is currently pulling out all the stops to have a gas turbine brought to Russia as quickly as possible, which is probably more a show of power by Putin towards Germany than to keep the gas flowing in the Nord Stream pipeline.
What is important for Putin’s blackmail strategy is not so much how much we actually need his gas, but above all that the Federal Chancellor in particular has been emphasizing this dependency again and again for months and has assured that under no circumstances will the imports be endangered or even stopped by the German side within the framework of an embargo to want. Even if one agrees that the dependency should be so great and that Russian gas really should be irreplaceable, one must not trumpet it publicly. In this power game, Putin can go all out without risk – the federal government itself has told him that it has a very bad hand.
The success we have enabled for Putin will encourage him to continue in the same vein in the coming months. To further stoke our fears, it will by no means provide enough gas to fill up our stores quickly, for example, just enough to keep us dependent and vulnerable to blackmail. At the same time he will set more and more far-reaching conditions. We urgently need to draw a red line and stop the gas scaremongering immediately.
