If Vladimir Putin intends to destroy Ukraine, Olaf Scholz is the only person in Europe who could stop him without firing a shot. Both know that Russia and Germany need one another. But the new German Chancellor is a man of the Left who wants peace in our time – even at the price of appeasement. That enables Putin to blackmail him. Could Scholz be the German Neville Chamberlain?

Such a fate is not inevitable. The new German leader says he wants to reach out to Russia with a new Ostpolitik – the Cold-War-era policy of reconciliation with the Eastern bloc pursued by his great Social Democratic predecessor, Willy Brandt, in the 1970s. 

Right now, though, Putin does not seem disposed to grasp the proffered hand. The Russian Army has up to 100,000 heavily armed troops on the Ukrainian border, pointing a pistol at its neighbour’s head. Germany is handicapped by the fact that its own forces have probably never been weaker – and the fragile coalition that Scholz leads has no inclination to increase defence spending. 

As by far the biggest economy in the EU and Russia’s second largest trading partner, Germany should be playing the role of protector towards the smaller nations of Eastern Europe. Instead, under Angela Merkel, the Russians and their allies have been allowed to bully their neighbours, especially Ukraine. Scholz has said that the Russian annexation of Crimea and other unilateral changes to European borders are unacceptable. But the question is: what can he actually do about it?

In the years since Putin parked his tanks on Ukraine’s lawn in 2014, the EU has imposed sanctions and German exports to Russia have halved. But the two countries have also built the Nord Stream 2 Baltic gas pipeline, which bypasses Ukraine and now awaits regulatory approval in Berlin and Brussels. If the underwater gas supply goes ahead, it will not only reduce Kyiv’s political leverage but also increase Europe’s – and especially Germany’s – dependence on Russian energy.

Scholz has yet to show his hand on Nord Stream 2. But Putin’s show of strength has an ulterior motive. It puts pressure on the Germans to give the go-ahead to a lucrative piece of infrastructure that the Kremlin sees as a diplomatic master stroke. 

Ever since Germany’s last Social Democratic Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, left office in 2005, he has been the front-man for Gazprom’s project – and pushing at an open door. German business and consumers demand cleaner, more secure energy. The Greens, now part of the coalition, want coal to be phased out by 2030 in order to reach net zero. Why wouldn’t Scholz sign off a deal that would guarantee gas supplies for the foreseeable future?

Has the new German Chancellor yet grasped the implications of Putin’s strategy? Not only is the Russian leader on a mission to rebuild his country’s empire, but he hopes to undermine Nato and divide the EU in the process. 

Scholz sees Emmanuel Macron as a friend, Joe Biden only as a “partner”, and Boris Johnson merely as a nuisance. Yet in six months Macron may be gone, replaced by a pro-Putin populist such as Éric Zemmour. Meanwhile the Americans and the British are, as in the Cold War, the only reliable allies for those menaced by Russian power and influence. The Poles and Balts know this – which is why Royal Engineers are even now helping to secure Poland’s border with Belarus. 

As for Ukraine’s President Zelensky: he fears not only a Russian invasion or coup, but also betrayal by Scholz and Macron, just as pre-war Czechoslovakia was betrayed at Munich by Chamberlain and Daladier. The single most important move that Scholz could make when he takes office next week would be to invite Zelensky to Berlin. He has already promised to go to Paris – but he should add Washington and London to his itinerary. 

Russia and Germany have always had a love-hate relationship, at times culturally creative, at others violently destructive –  a past that still overshadows the present. When the Berlin Wall fell, half a million Russians were still living in East Germany; one of them was Vladimir Putin. He is still seeking revenge for that moment of humiliation, if necessary by force. 

Scholz sees himself as a peacemaker. But he does not speak Putin’s language in any sense – unlike Angela Merkel, who knows from experience how dangerous he can be. When asked by a teenage scribbler whether Putin was a murderer, Scholz dodged the question. The tranquillity of Europe now depends on whether the technocrat in Berlin can outwit the autocrat in Moscow. 

Daniel Johnson is editor of TheArticle.com