What Steinmeier did through these activities was to keep Russia constantly engaged. He used Germany's considerable weight in Moscow to try to calm emotions, to constantly exchange views and information, and to help prevent misperceptions from arising. Steinmeier kept the door open for the Kremlin to renormalize relations, making clear that the West would be ready to reengage with Russia if Moscow started to play a constructive role in Ukraine.
Steinmeier's "good cop" approach was not only useful in balancing Merkel's confrontational approach in relations with the Kremlin. It was also tactically important as it gave the chancellor the room for her "bad cop" role. Steinmeier demonstrated to the German public as well as to EU partners that Berlin was trying everything to change Russia's behavior through talks and offers of cooperation. By exhausting diplomatic means, he demonstrated that Russia, not Germany or the EU, was to blame for the lack of cooperation. This, in turn, made a shift to more robust measures such as sanctions appear inevitable.
Building Domestic Support for Sanctions
Germany's "good cop, bad cop" approach was not the result of a carefully drafted strategy. Rather, it was the upshot of two competing views in the current government on how Germany should deal with Russia.
Merkel, large parts of her conservative Christian Democratic Union party, and the foreign policy team in the Chancellery are in favor of a more robust stance. In their view, the partnership for modernization has failed to deliver. Russia has not modernized, despite the many incentives offered by the West in recent years. This camp sees no alternative to at least a selective confrontation with Moscow if vital German and Western interests, such as the European peace order enshrined in the UN Charter and numerous other international agreements, are violated.
The other camp is centered around Steinmeier, his center-left Social Democratic Party, and large parts of the German public. While they agree that the modernization path has failed, they think that the way forward is to try harder and to engage even more with the Kremlin, as they see no alternative to the attempt to bring Russia into an ever-closer relationship with the EU. In their view, Russia has legitimate grievances against the West, especially against the United States and its partial reliance on military means in the confrontation with Russia. Steinmeier and his supporters consider a more confrontational approach dangerous, as Russia might completely slip away from the West and move toward a more hostile position.
To keep up the threat of sanctions, Merkel had to convince her junior coalition partner, hesitant public opinion, and the business community of the necessity of a tougher stance toward Russia. In line with the behind-the-scenes approach that is typical of her policymaking, Merkel did not address the German public by laying out her views and policies. But she did have several meetings with business leaders that led to statements supporting her tougher course of action. And she gave Steinmeier the green light for his attempts to find a cooperative solution to the crisis. As a consequence, Merkel was able to build sufficient domestic support to be able to wield the big stick against the Kremlin, namely the threat of massive economic sanctions.
The Limits of German Leadership
The German approach to the Ukraine crisis has been partly successful. Together with its partners, Berlin has played a key role in forging a joint Western position built on the threat of massive sanctions in combination with constant diplomatic engagement. However, despite restricting Russia's room for maneuver to some extent, Germany's approach did not prevent the annexation of Crimea, and it has not deterred Russia from raising tensions in eastern Ukraine.
More limits of the German approach became visible during the crisis. On all issues related to hard power, Berlin has kept a low profile; the center of action on the military side of the West's response to the crisis has clearly been Washington, together with NATO's headquarters in Brussels. Attempts to reassure NATO allies in Central Europe were driven by the United States, while Germany did only the minimum. Germany did not support Poland's call for NATO to move its assets permanently to the East, despite the fact that Berlin and Warsaw have closely cooperated on nonmilitary aspects of the crisis.
The overwhelming view in Germany, broadly shared by both Merkel and Steinmeier, is that using military means in the confrontation with Russia only leads to an escalation and makes the relationship unnecessarily hostile. Placing NATO assets permanently in Poland and the Baltic states would anger and provoke Russia; it would therefore be counterproductive. A postmodern Germany remains wedded to the idea of itself as an overwhelmingly civilian power. That popular sentiment has developed over decades and has only been strengthened by negative Western experiences with military interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria.
While remaining limited to the civilian side of the response to the Ukraine crisis, Germany has nevertheless demonstrated leadership. Berlin has used various mechanisms of cooperation in the crisis: the Weimar Triangle of Poland, Germany, and France; the EU; the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe; and close coordination with Poland, the United States, and others. German leadership was reinforced by the fact that both Putin and Obama saw Merkel as their key interlocutor on the EU side. Ever since German reunification in 1990, Germany has played a hugely important role in the EU's relations with Central and Eastern Europe.
But in the past, Germany's role has been limited and overshadowed by U.S. leadership in Europe and by the fact that Germany and France have usually worked in tandem. In the confrontation with Russia, both of these factors have changed: The United States has played a substantial role, as it has done in the past, but it seems to have done so less as a European power than as an outside partner to an EU largely led by Germany. And Berlin has tried to keep Paris in the game, but France has shown little interest in being at the center of the action.
So far, Germany's approach to managing the Ukraine crisis has been fairly successful in limiting Russian meddling. But the confrontation between the West and Russia is far from over-in fact, it has just begun. The Ukraine crisis is going to continue, and new crises could erupt in Moldova and Georgia relatively soon.
