Berlin did not do anything to caution Brussels and neighbouring capitals in Warsaw, Riga and Tallinn on the risks associated with such a policy—though for years, Moscow had made clear its opposition to the eastward expansion of both NATO and the EU. (Indeed, the Kremlin has always viewed NATO’s foreswearing eastward expansion as the quid pro quo for its consenting to Germany’s reunification.)

If anyone ought to have known how the Kremlin would react as the EU courted Ukraine, it was Berlin: no European country has as great an economic interest or political influence in Russia as Germany.

Like the rest of Europe, however, Germany protested in surprise when, at the Vilnius Summit last November, Yanukovych rejected the EU’s trade deal. But it took little to see that the political and economic reforms the deal imposed would undo the source of Yanukovych's power and wealth. From Berlin’s point of view, that was, after all, the point.

As many in fact warned, Yanukovych, was playing Brussels off of Moscow for the best deal—and it seems he found it in the $15 billion Russian loan that tilted his hand.

Curiously, however, while there’s been no lack of critics of Washington, both for pushing NATO into former Soviet territory in the early 2000s and for “dancing on Yanukovych's (political) grave” in Kiev last year, criticism of Berlin’s diplomacy in Ukraine has been rare.

Yet it was Berlin that tied the EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood Policy to a trade deal that was conditional on a known dictator’s releasing a despised rival, a policy that suggests the staff at Germany’s embassy in Kiev doesn’t get out much. Moreover, its insouciance about Russia’s possible reaction paints an image of Germany’s Moscow embassy as staffed by people with the historical memories of goldfish—and the geopolitical nous of Heidi.

A few questions spring to mind. As Berlin prepared to push democracy in Kiev, who in Moscow were German diplomats talking to? And what did they tell their political masters in Berlin about Russia’s likely reaction to Germany’s digging around in Russia’s backyard? How highly did German policy makers rate the risk of conflict and what measures did they put in place to prepare for it? In view of the paltry prize on offer, did anybody ever ask whether all this was worth it?

In short, Germany failed to consider the strategic risk its Ukraine policy presented for itself and its neighbors and allies.

Instead, it pursued a democracy-promoting trade deal in Ukraine, which domestic factors made unlikely to succeed, even as it antagonized Russia, one of its closest trading partners. Apart from occasioning the Russian annexation of Crimea, this then left Germany’s panicked neighbors from the Baltic to the Black Sea facing the not-implausible prospect of a Russian invasion and entangled its American ally, the world’s only superpower, in Europe’s most dangerous great-power confrontation since the war scare of 1983.

The world has seen this before. In 1991, Germany acted alone in encouraging Slovenian and Croatian independence, incautious of the risk of interethnic warfare or the burden it would place on NATO shoulders if Yugoslavia’s unraveling turned bloody, as it in fact did.

Dissecting Berlin’s role in Ukraine, Stefan Meister, Senior Researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin, has written that the Vilnius fiasco “did not serve the EU well”: Germany’s “misreading of Russian and eastern neighbourhood priorities caused it to make missteps that have had an impact on EU initiatives.”

“Germany is not the only EU member that assessed the situation incorrectly,” he goes on, “but it played a leading role in pursuing the association and trade agreements that set off the crisis in Ukraine.”

Clearly, that is to let Berlin off the hook far too easily.

Moreover, far from bringing out the best in Germany’s much-envied consensus-driven politics, the crisis has laid bare the weaknesses of its Grand Coalition—the CDU/SDP alliance that has run the country since last year.

Merkel, leader of the CDU, has vented her irritation with what she clearly sees as “anachronistic” Russian meddling in its neighbors’ affairs. Despite Germany’s powerful business lobby, she’s mainly stood with American president Barack Obama in keeping up at least the threat of further sanctions—even if she’s been reluctant to impose them.

As the summer has worn on, however, the so-called Russlandversteher have seemed increasingly in charge of Germany’s Ukraine policy.

Led by Foreign Minister Steinmeier, the traditionally more Russia-friendly SDP, inheritors of

Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik, favors cooperation rather than confrontation with the Kremlin.

Pages