Tuesday, February 9th, 2016 German-EU-Russian Relations: Dissolution of the "Strategic" and "Modernization" Partnerships - Causes and Consequences

Description

Hannes Adomeit is at present Bosch Public Policy Fellow at the Transatlantic Academy in Washington, D.C. He was Professor for Russian and European Studies at the Warsaw campus of the College of Europe until 2013. Prior to that, he served as Senior Research Associate and head of the research section on Russia and Eurasia at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) in Berlin, as a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and in other teaching and research roles. He was a DAAD-AICGS fellow at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies in Washington in 2014. Adomeit is the author of Imperial Overstretch: Germany in Soviet Policy from Stalin to Gorbachev (1998; 2nd rev. ed. 2016). He studied at the Freie Universität Berlin and received his PhD “with distinction” from Columbia University.

Until Moscow’s annexation of the Crimea and its military intervention in eastern Ukraine, the relationship between Berlin and Moscow was officially labeled “strategic partnership”—a classification that originated in 1999. About a decade later, the “strategic” partnership was “supplemented” by a “partnership for modernization.” It can be shown, however, that a strategic relationship in the strict sense of the term never existed and that a modernization partnership was never constructed. Instead, both German-Russian relations and EU-Russian relations de facto have been characterized by competition and conflict. Chancellor Merkel has taken the lead in Europe to impose and stick to sanctions on Russia. But how sustainable is that approach – in Germany and in Europe? Will German and European-Russian relations turn to “business as usual”? Or are we witnessing the beginning of prolonged phase of alienation between Germany and Russia with serious consequences for the trans-Atlantic relationship?