The rise of the new (C)old War: Russian energy and German geopolitics
14 September 2009, PEEER Moscow
1) Introduction
This presentation explores how Russian energy became securitised in Germany via the geopolitical
script of the “new Cold War”. It suggests that this historical analogy, which has circulated widely
throughout the political landscape of a number of EU member states, functions in a twofold way.
Firstly, the new Cold War taps into a deeply sedimented and therefore familiar historical imagination.
Reading current events via the narrative of the early Cold War, an aggressive (neo-Soviet) Russia is
once again evoked as an existential threat to a yet lethargic Europe that needs to be awoken to a
new power struggle. Secondly, the analogy of the new Cold War has proven so influential because its
underpinnings are fundamentally geopolitical. It collapses the complexities of contemporary
European energy politics into a Manichean worldview of essentialised spatial identities and guides
practitioners towards a familiarly simple “tough agenda”.
Before discussing the content of the NCW narrative and its impact, let us briefly look at the context in
which it emerged.
2) Context: German energy security pre-2006
 It is perhaps surprising that German media representations of Russia would change so
dramatically in the aftermath of the 2006 Russo-Ukrainian energy crisis
o Russo-German energy partnership started after the 1970s oil crisis and in the cause
of ostpolitik (the German version of détente), experienced no major squabbles, no
shortages
 During the Kohl and especially Schroeder administration quasi-liberal narrative that saw
o Russia as an empty (essentially passive) space that needed to be
developed/modernised
o Russia as a budding liberal democracy that was “joining the West”, much like
Germany post-1945 - Putin as a “flawless democrat”
o Russia as a strategic partner, with shared interests and complementary capabilities
(Russia needed consumers and investors – Germany needed to consume and
German corporations had the necessary funds to modernise Russia)
3) The New Cold War

Structured around a number of deeply problematic yet powerful binaries: East/West,
aggression/defence, despotism/freedom, politics/economics, irrationality/rationality
– in which Russia is fundamentally different both from Germany and the EU – in a
“we are what they are not” logic. All of these binaries are not only simplistic
reductions of a complex reality, but also deeply familiar from the Cold War

Narrative proceeds in four steps:
1.
An age of pipeline politics
2.
Re-emergence of the villain
3.
The recovery of the lethargic dependent Self
4.
The political agenda
No time to go into detail, but this narrative structure is congruent with narratives of the
early Cold War that circulated in the US and West German governments.

Methodology: narrative analysis of newspaper articles, think tank publications,
geopolitical bestsellers, official documents, press releases: conducting elite interviews
at the moment
A) The setting: competition, polarity and power
a.
The NCW as a power struggle, ‘a global zero sum game’, a ‘“great game” for
pipelines’, a ‘geopolitical gamble’ – scepticism towards interdependence arguments
b.
The re-emergence of a European quasi-bipolarity. ‘In reality’, Alexander Rahr lets us
know, ‘the EU and Russia are increasingly becoming rivals, not only in the realm of
energy supply security but also in the securing of influence in the former Soviet
space’.
c.
Energy has become the new ‘power currency’ of international politics - ‘It used to be
tanks and missiles, now it is oil and gas’ (Himmelreich).
B) The threatening other
a.
The “Eastern” neo-Soviet empire is a threat to the “West”: Putin is presented in Der
Spiegel as a ‘ruthless promoter of Russian great power interests’, like the Soviet
Union ‘unscrupulous’ in ‘securing its loot and aggressively expanding its sphere of
influence’.
b.
Russia is despotic: Die Welt provocatively asks ‘what common values?’ and
summarises Russia’s contemporary development as ‘heading towards fascism’.
c.
Primacy of political over economic goals in Russian foreign and energy policy, which is
seen as a deviation from western European ‘normalcy’. Putin and his advisors are
seen as having demonstrated the will to use resources as a political weapon a
weapon perhaps more dangerous as a nuclear arsenal as Die Zeit suggests.
C) The recovery of the weak self
a.
The story is very simple so far: Germany takes the inverse position of Russia: it is
threatened and dependent on Russian gas for its welfare and ultimately for its
identity - BUT there is a crucial catch to the story: Germany and the European Union
are in a position to overcome the threat –
b.
The threatening other is rotten at core. The Russian economy is viewed as weak and
backward, hampered by rusty industries, thin infrastructure and corruption.
c.
Furthermore, the Western weakness is temporary, caused by its naivety and lethargy.
Many observers speak of a ‘sleeping beauty’ or ‘somnambulant’ Germany that is in
need of a ‘wake-up call’
4) The NCW’s imperatives and impact:
Practitioners have accepted the basic features of the NCW (though rejected the label): we
have entered an era of energy geopolitics, Russia is authortarian and threatening to
German interests, Germany is lethargic and needs to be awoken. Furthermore, they have
started adopting policies in line with the narrative’s policy recommendations - which are all
in some way related to the logic of the old Cold War
a.
Place energy on the security agenda - securitise! The MFA has claimed energy from
the ministries of environment and of economcs and technology – even the MOD’s
2006 whitepaper mentions energy security and Germany’s import dependence
b.
Deemphasise the Russo-German special partnership! In October 2006 Merkel had
already rejected a Russian offer to make Germany a ‘hub’ (Drehscheibe) for the
distribution of Russian gas into Europe, which would have signalised a
continuation of the Schröder-Putin special relationship
c.
Import diversification, alliance building: In 2007 Merkel proposed to alleviate
Russian pressure from Ukraine and Belarus by offering them the integration into
a European energy architecture - Steinmeier travelled to Azerbaijan, Georgia and
Armenia for talks on alternative pipeline routes. In late 2006 he had visited the
Central Asian republics on a similar mission.
d.
Return to nuclear energy, controversial in Germany because of nuclear phase-out
(which is of course THE Cold War energy source – Hiroshima, Cuban missile
crisis, Chernobyl): phase-out not yet reversed, but perhaps in the future
5) So what does all of this mean?
 In distinction from materialist approaches to energy, the point is that if we want to
understand why (Russian) energy was securitised in Germany after 2006 (and why there was
a policy change thereafter), it will never be enough just to point to the economic reasons
(growing import dependence), but we have to unpack the ideological context: why is it that
the Russo-Ukrainian gas war was interpreted specifically as the starting point of a new CW
and not as a legitimate move to raise Russia’s gas revenues (after all, a legitimate thing to do
in a world community that wants to get rid of “postimperial” preferential treatments)
 Why did the liberal narrative collapse? (Again, instead of looking at external material factors I
propose to look at the texts themselves and the context in which they are (re-)produced.)
1. Internal weaknesses of the liberal-Schroeder narrative on Russia
a. Russia constructed as a passive space that needed to be developed (investment,
liberalisation etc.) - that ultimately should have no meaningful non-Western
identity – but Russia became active after Putin
b. The “frontier” as a dominant liberal chronotope becomes delegitimsed in
Europe: at a time when the spatiotemporal expansion (both widening and
deepening), the constitutional project comes to a halt in 2005.
c. The (self-)delegitimisation of a politician and the formation of a period that was
to be overcome (the Schroeder years in Germany’s relationship with Russia)
2. The power of the historical analogy itself - works in a twofold manner:
a) Through familiarity: by telling us that something resembles something we already
know it taps into a sedimented historical imagination
b) Through simplicity: by folding the complexities of Russo-German energy relations
into
a
Manichean
logic:
East/West,
totalitarianism/democracy,
aggressive/peaceful