The Moscow-Berlin Line

Dugin, Plötner and Russo-German relations

In the history of modern great power relations, the central role played by Russo-German relations has been obscured by daydreams about dashing young Anglo-Saxons defeating Nazi forces in a heroic midcentury struggle. It’s not just that it was the Red Army that crushed both the Wehrmacht and the Kwantung Army, the entire geopolitical history of the twentieth century needs to be reconceived. In order to appreciate the secret history of the past century, instead of putting US primacy at the center of the frame, we need to center Russo-German relations.

In this frame, the cycles of war and peace over the past century, at least, are governed less by the passing of the baton between the Anglo-Saxon sea powers, than by the relations of the land powers in the western half of what Mackinder called the “world island.” Mackinder delivered his lecture on “The Geographical Pivot of History” at the Royal Geographical Society in 1904. His central insight was that the geopolitical position of the power that occupied the central position in Eurasia may permit the control of the entire supercontinent; and with it would come world control; simply because Eurasia contains more power potential than the rest of the world combined. Mackinder’s genius allowed him to predict the emergence of the Soviet Union as a superpower. As a British policymaker, he tried to destroy the monster in the crib by arming the Whites in the Russian civil war.

American strategists have long understood that there are three potential seats of world power: on the north American continent and on the eastern and western extremities of Eurasia. As a corollary, it is recognized by classical and modern geopolitical analysts that control of Eurasia is tantamount to ‘world control’. Of course, Russia is the only power in the system that could possibly bring both extremities of Eurasia under the command of a single center of authority.

The Anglo-Saxon geopolitical position is based on what Barry Posen called ‘command of the global commons’ — a modern version of sea power envisioned by Mahan as the key to world power. But not only. The Anglo-Saxon world position is also based on the geopolitical orientation of Europe and Japan. The difference between American hegemony, and the mere fact of American maritime primacy, is the orientation of Europe and Japan — otherwise, it would be ‘dominance without hegemony’, as threatened to obtain in the mid-2000s and again under Trump. The US has tried to and will continue to prevent either extremity of Eurasia from falling under the control of a single power. The exception may be a unified Europe “led from behind” by Germany. An independent line by Europe, especially in a future Trumpist administration, cannot easily be thwarted by the Americans.

In thinking about this problem, it pays to be clear-eyed. Dugina’s murder has shed light on a man who has been called “Putin’s whisperer.” I believe that title by rights belongs to Surkov. For Dugin is a charlatan; not a geopolitician. His discourse is a weird mix of “legitimate” geopolitical thought together with occultism, organicism, traditionalism and Manichean anti-globalism (with pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic quips thrown in for good measure).

What is interesting about Dugin is his pro-German line. In his vision of world order, the Moscow-Berlin axis would organize the military relations of western Eurasia. Specifically, according to the vision spelled out in Foundations of Geopolitics (1997), Europe is not to be subdued by “Russia-Eurasia.” Instead, he wants European politico-military unification under German leadership and a Russo-German co-hegemony in western Eurasia; ie, what he’s proposing is a conspiracy by Moscow and Berlin against the global mastery of the Anglo-Saxon powers.

President Putin is likely to be served by dozens of geopolitical analysts more informed than Dugin. But it is a question of some importance whether Putin is sympathetic to the Moscow-Berlin line.

The anti-American, Russo-German line can be traced back at least to German sponsorship of the Bolsheviks, who paid back their German sponsors immediately in spades; in the shape of vast territorial concessions in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918); and cooperated secretly on military questions under the Treaty of Rapallo (1922). The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (1939) was Stalin returning to an older German policy of the Soviet reich. Stalin’s Note (1953) too laid out a pro-German line with this vision of a neutral, unified Germany that would be friends of the Soviet Union. Later, Russo-German relations would be at the heart of the nuclear crises over Berlin (1958-1962) and the geopolitics of detente from 1963 to the episode in the early-1980s called ‘the second cold war’. Later still, in the late-1980s, Gorbachev would pursue a foreign policy designed to get the Germans to welcome the Russians back into the European fold. That was the logic of the Soviet capitulation (1986-1991). Russian hopes of Soviet-German romance at the expense of the Americans were soon dashed as Russia imploded in the 1990s.

In the early-2000s, Putin reestablished the authority of the Kremlin in Russia — beginning with Chechnya — and resurrected the Russian army. Adam Tooze is correct to emphasize the significance of the speech at the Munich Conference in 2007. Recall that Putin is speaking in the immediate aftermath of the catastrophe in Iraq and before the banking panic. Washington’s authority had already eroded by half as much before he opened his mouth. What came out of his mouth? The gist of it is better summarized by what he later told Oliver Stone:

What does it mean? a unipolar world? It means that there will be one center of authority; one center of power. We don’t accept this proposal.

President Putin to Oliver Stone in the Putin Tapes.

In other words, Russia was going to pursue an independent foreign policy. Putin spelled out what this more forceful policy would look like in 2008 in Georgia. Other small wars replayed the same template. So, Russia would not refrain from limited police actions. The Russian intervention in Syria saved the West the embarrassment of openly supporting Assad in the Syrian war after the Salafi jihadists took over the rebellion in 2012. Even after Putin annexed Crimea in 2014, Russo-German relations remained stable.

Why did Russo-Western relations break down in 2022? We do not know what precisely happened on the Ukrainian question. The most reasonable guess is that the US rejected Russian demands and Putin supposed felt compelled to deliver on his compellence threat. But Putin’s desiderata in the lead up to the Ukraine war haven’t been confirmed. It is possible that US policymakers rejected the question of Ukrainian neutrality out of hand. We just don’t know. What will future historians document about great power diplomacy in 2021-2022? It is very hard to tell. The reason it is very hard to tell is that the signal-to-noise ratio is very low in the discourse surrounding the Ukraine war. The story of the spooks misleading Putin into war, as the WashPost tells it, seems implausible. Frankly, the Kremlin should have access to top-notch intelligence analysis, especially if it perceives the geopolitical environment as threatening. The idea that Dugin or Eurasian ideology played any role in Putin’s escalation also seems implausible. After all, Putin has long been familiar with Dugin and Eurasianism; what happened in 2021-2022?

The Moscow-Berlin line has always existed in Germany and can still be found in the recent “triggering” comments by Jens Plötner, Olaf’s foreign policy advisor. He dared to say the obvious out aloud. The question for German foreign policy is not just how to help Ukraine win. But also, “what our relationship with Russia should be like in future.” This is a problem that indeed won’t go away. As a great nuclear power, Russia cannot be eliminated. The same of true of Germany, which, like Japan, is a latent great nuclear power with an expected breakout time in weeks, if indeed not days.

Ultimately, all cold wars between great nuclear powers must end in détente. It’s a corollary of the nuclear peace.

It is a mistake to reduce Russo-German relations to gas. Yes, gas is at the heart of the German codependence on Russia. One aspect of this codependence; one of Stalin’s "permanent operating factors” is the “oil security complex” showing the dominant patterns of the flow of fossil fuels. I made that schematic map a decade ago. It seems to have aged particularly well. Note that I omitted the deposits within the US and other importing poles. The 2012 map gave no suggestion of the revolution underway in US shale; which only became obvious after 2014.

While transitioning away from gas to nuclear and renewables is a good idea for survival reasons, it is not going to shield Germany from Russia and vice-versa — the two will remain coupled as poles of the great West Eurasian regional security complex. The secret history of the modern era is the history of Russo-German relations. They can either largely cooperate (which opens up the prospect of putting the Anglo-Saxon back in his place), or they must fear each other. And things don’t turn out well when Germany and Russia securitize each other. The significance of the Russo-German problem should not be underestimated.

Eurasianism’s vision of Moscow and Berlin being closer to each other than either is to Washington may be outlandish. But it tugs on an alternate vision of world order—an oligopoly, instead of a monopoly, of global power. This depolarized, “multipolar” world may look desirable to some on the left, but it doesn’t work without tying means to ends. More precisely, desire is not enough. Does Moscow have the wherewithal to see through a protracted confrontation with the West?

We’ve seen that economists’ predictions of the collapse of Russia’s economy have failed. Yes, Russia’s economy has contracted. But it has done so at levels that have usually been associated with the word recession rather than the word depression, as the economic warriors had predicted. Meanwhile, as I predicted on Unherd, the West is paying a stiff price.

The trouble is that the knockout blow has not materialised. Russia’s gdp will shrink by 6% in 2022, reckons [the IMF], much less than the 15% drop many expected in March, or the slump in Venezuela. Energy sales will generate a current-account surplus of $265bn this year, the world’s second-largest after China. After a crunch, Russia’s financial system has stabilised and the country is finding new suppliers for some imports, including China. Meanwhile in Europe, an energy crisis may trigger a recession. This week natural-gas prices rose by a further 20% as Russia squeezed supplies.

The Economist. August 25, 2022.

At the present conjuncture, the Russo-Western competition in pain tolerance remains illuminating as a reference frame.

The rise of mercantilism in America is especially concerning. It’s a projection; an evasion. By blaming foreigners, American actors project the responsibility for the destruction of the working class family on Mexico and China; at any rate, on foreign competition and away from themselves. In reality, the destruction of the working class family was caused more by the response function of the Fed and the Clinton capitulation than Chinese competition. The anti-globalist line may be seductive. But it leads to a policy cul-de-sac because national economic rearmament is not a solution to the vanishing of broad-based growth. Not only is it likely to reduce growth rates, re-shoring and friend-shoring, and “Buy American,” is likely to stoke inflation.

The other inflationary risk is continued deterioration in Russo-Western relations. Given the balance of forces, what is the way out of this mess? The way out is precisely the Berlin-Moscow axis. But not in the sense of the Eurasianist imaginary. Rather, the West needs to take the initiative. Germany and the Europeans need to propose a diplomatic resolution of the Ukraine war. Is the formula of Ukrainian neutrality really so incongruent with Western interests as to preclude a peaceful resolution of the Ukraine war? Or is it an elite discursive rigidity that prevents a Western peace policy from getting articulated?

Our geopolitical futures will perhaps be more informed by Russo-German relations than any other dyad — maybe even Sino-US relations due to demographic factors. It is in the US interest that Russia and Germany have good relations. The US should want them to be friends but not too close. And indeed, Germany is likely to remain closer to the US than Russia. But stabilizing Russo-German relations is the key to stability in Europe. You really, really do not want to reopen that can of worms. The Europeans are at the frontlines of the Russian lashes. It is not in the American interest to see Russia threaten Europe. But, at the same time, the Americans cannot control German policy. In other words, the Germans may be in a position to follow an independent line that they think would be appropriate. The US should let them. The Anglo-Saxons should congratulate themselves that neither Germany nor Russia poses a real threat to their world position.

Can Europe really pursue an independent line? It is certainly in the European interest to stabilize relations with Russia and the status of Ukraine. Even the Americans should rather like to pay attention to the Western Pacific instead of Europe. Who exactly will a protracted war serve? the Ukrainians? the Russians? the Germans? the Americans? Even for the last, a protracted war of attrition only makes sense if one assumes that Russia has been permanently moved into Chinese arms. Putin says that military conflict is also a form of communication. It is. But it is also a failure of diplomacy. Millions of Ukrainian lives can be saved by a Western peace policy.