Germany: An ex-chancellor’s conflict of interest

Most Westerners were quick to blame Russia for the latest violence in the Caucasus: Russia was the aggressor and Georgia the victim. For former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, though, the reverse was true, said Germany’s Dresdner Neuesten Nachrichten in an editorial. “The instance that triggered the current armed hostilities,” Schröder told Der Spiegel, “was the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia.” In Schröder’s view, Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, was simply a “gambler” who lost his bet. Why would the ex-chancellor let Russia off the hook like that? That’s easy: The Russian gas company, Gazprom, employs Schröder as a highly paid consultant. With his appallingly biased comments, Schröder just “earned a hefty bonus from Gazprom.”

Even as Russian tanks were entering Georgia, Schröder was signing up another recruit to the Russian cause, said Germany’s Der Tagesspiegel. He persuaded Paavo Lipponen, a former Finnish prime minister, to join Nordstream, a new Russo-German gas pipeline network under Gazprom. Schröder and Lipponen had worked closely together when they led their respective countries. Now the two will work to create a new pipeline route to bring Russian gas to Germany’s Baltic Sea coast. Evidently they don’t care that “the Baltics, Poland, and Sweden oppose the project on the grounds that it would give Moscow too much influence in the Baltic region.”

“Maybe Schröder is not motivated solely by the money,” said Dario Valcarcel in Spain’s ABC. It’s certainly important to him to have Germany “at the center of the Russian-European energy market.” If Nordstream succeeds, it would ensure that Germany has a large stake in the transport of Russian gas to Europe. Right now, much of that gas goes through Ukraine instead.

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Even if his intentions are good, Schröder has become an embarrassment, said Egbert Niessler in Germany’s Hamburger Abendblatt. It is one thing to acknowledge “that Moscow has legitimate economic and security interests” in Georgia, as Chancellor Angela Merkel did, and quite another to give Russia carte blanche in the Caucasus, as Schröder would apparently have us do. A “tacit agreement” to let Russia flex its muscles “as long as business continues to run smoothly” is unworthy of Germany.