Berlin – How will we deal with “the Russians” in the future? This question appears to have arisen just after Russian President Vladimir Putin unleashed the almost unthinkable: a war of aggression against a sovereign state in the middle of Europe – and after sounds reminiscent of the darkest days of nuclear confrontation can be heard again.
The West is demonstratively moving closer together, supporting Ukraine, taking in refugees and imposing sanctions on the aggressor. Freedom has its price, they say, and we must be willing to pay it. But how far should one go and what is appropriate – also with a view to the future?
If you were to do a street poll in Moscow, Berlin, Paris and New York, it would certainly come out that nobody wants a new nuclear confrontation. Total isolation is also no longer up to date, because the world is facing an emergency that can only be overcome together. Climate change and its consequences alone are already threatening to humanity.
If you don’t talk to each other, you are fulfilling Putin’s expectations – and maybe even wishes. Because he is already painting a picture of a threatened Russian nation. It follows a system combat logic. His policy only works by sealing himself off from the West and against any contradiction. Critically active international organizations are being liquidated as “foreign agents”, as was recently done by Memorial.
One could get the idea of using outside pressure to shake the Putin regime. But that never worked, as the history of the Cold War shows. Pressure always only led to more inward hardening and outward aggressiveness. A new Cold War would further increase the dominance of the conservative, anti-liberal and anti-Western elite in Russia, Russian political scientist Tatyana Stanovaya recently warned.
If you don’t want a new ice age with a permanent nuclear threat, you have to look back at how the Cold War was finally overcome. This lasted more than four decades. Several times the world came close to nuclear war. He was only prevented because, in addition to deterring each other, they found ways to talk to each other.
There must be a two-pronged strategy: on the one hand, unity and the military strengthening of the West, which is being talked about so loudly at the moment. But just betting on it would be dangerous. The Federal Republic in particular pursued a different strategy during the Cold War, promoted by Eastern politicians such as Willy Brandt and Egon Bahr. It called itself “change through rapprochement”. Both together had an effect in the end.
Today you could perhaps say: change through communication. It is not known to what extent this is still possible with Putin, Lavrov and others. But in the rush of sanctions, you shouldn’t cut everything now. Contacts are needed right now with those peace-loving, cosmopolitan Russians, of whom there are certainly large numbers.
This is shown by the anti-war demonstrations in Russia, the open letters from teachers, doctors and scientists against Putin’s war. The latter complain that their state is isolating itself internationally through its aggression, becoming a pariah state. Science is “unthinkable without comprehensive cooperation with colleagues from other countries”.
When the top hardens, relationships at lower levels need to be intensified – to keep the conversation going, bring different perspectives, create facts together. The power of human encounters should not be underestimated. That’s why one wonders whether it is wise for universities to stop their academic exchanges, as Berlin universities do, for the German Academic Exchange Service to put its Russia scholarships on hold and for cities to put their partnerships on hold.
No, Putin’s ideas of the great confrontation must be deliberately undermined – at school, university, science, culture and community level. Fortunately, Berlin has decided not to freeze its twinning with Moscow, as Franziska Giffey explained on Tuesday, although there are such demands.
And you also have to beware of nationalistic reflexes, such as a restaurant somewhere in Germany that no longer wanted to serve people with Russian passports. Fortunately, this remains an exception. Any debate that sees “the Russians” as a collective threat would be disastrous. No, the biggest problem lies in the thinking of Putin and his ilk.