Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany
By Paul Krugman
Opinion Columnist
Published : April.7.2022
Vladimir Putin’s war of
aggression runs on the money Russia gets by selling fossil fuels to Europe. And
while Ukraine has, incredibly, repelled Russia’s attempt to seize Kyiv, Putin
won’t be definitively stopped until Europe ends its energy dependence
Which means that Germany — whose
political and business leaders insist that they can’t do without Russian
natural gas, even though many of its own economists disagree — has in effect
become Putin’s prime enabler. This is shameful; it is also incredibly
hypocritical given recent German history
The background: Germany has been
warned for decades about the risks of becoming dependent on Russian gas. But
its leaders, focused on the short-run benefits of cheap energy, ignored those
warnings. On the eve of the Ukraine war, 55
percent of
German gas came from Russia
There’s no question that quickly
cutting off, or even greatly reducing, this gas flow would be painful. But
multiple economic analyses — from the Brussels-based Bruegel Institute,
the International
Energy Agency and ECONtribute, a
think tank sponsored by the Universities of Bonn and Cologne — have found that
the effects of drastically reducing gas imports from Russia would be far from
catastrophic to Germany
As one member of the German
Council of Economic Experts, which fills a role somewhat similar to that of the
U.S. Council of Economic Advisers, put it, an embargo on Russian gas would be
difficult but “feasible”
The ECONtribute analysis offers
a range
of estimates,
but their worst-case number is that an embargo on Russian gas would temporarily
reduce Germany’s real G.D.P. by 2.1 percent. I’ll put that number in context
shortly
Now, German industrialists refuse
to accept economists’ estimates, insisting that a gas embargo would indeed be
catastrophic. But they would say that, wouldn’t they? Industrial leaders
everywhere always claim that any proposed restriction on their activities would
be an economic disaster
For example, back in 1990 U.S.
industry groups issued dire
warnings against
policies to reduce acid rain, insisting that they would cost hundreds of
billions and even lead to “the potential destruction of the Midwest economy.”
None of that happened; in fact, the new rules produced large public health
benefits at modest financial cost
Unfortunately, Germany’s political
leaders, including Chancellor Olaf Scholz, have taken
the side of
the scaremongers. The revelations of Russian atrocities in Ukraine have led
to grudging acknowledgments that something
must be done, but still not much sense of urgency
What strikes me — a parallel that
for some reason I haven’t seen many people drawing — is the contrast between
Germany’s current reluctance to make moderate sacrifices, even in the face of
horrific war crimes, and the immense sacrifices Germany demanded of other
countries during the European debt crisis a decade ago
As some readers may remember,
early last decade much of southern Europe faced a crisis as lending dried up,
sending interest rates on government debt soaring. German officials were quick
to blame these countries for their own plight, insisting, with much moralizing,
that they were in trouble because they had been fiscally irresponsible and now
needed to pay the price
As it turns out, this diagnosis
was mostly wrong. Much of the surge in southern European interest rates
reflected a market
panic rather
than fundamentals; borrowing costs plunged, even for Greece, after the president of the
European Central Bank said three words — “whatever
it takes”
— suggesting that the bank would, if necessary, step in to buy the debt of
troubled economies
Yet Germany took the lead in
demanding that debtor nations impose extreme
austerity measures,
especially spending cuts, no matter how large the economic costs. And those
costs were immense: Between 2009 and 2013 the Greek
economy shrank
by 21 percent while the unemployment rate rose to 27 percent
But while Germany was willing to
impose economic and social catastrophe on countries it claimed had been
irresponsible in their borrowing, it has been unwilling to impose far smaller
costs on itself despite the undeniable irresponsibility of its past energy
policies
I’m not sure how to quantify
this, but my sense is that Germany received far more and clearer warning about
its feckless reliance on Russian gas than Greece ever did about its pre-crisis
borrowing. Yet it seems as if Germany’s famous eagerness to treat economic
policy as a morality play applies only to other countries
To be fair, Germany has moved on
from its initial unwillingness to help Ukraine at all; Ukraine’s ambassador to
Germany claims, although the Germans deny it,
that he was told there was no point in sending weapons because his government
would collapse in hours. And maybe, maybe, the realization that refusing to
shut off the flow of Russian gas makes Germany de facto complicit in mass
murder will finally be enough to induce real action
But until or unless this happens,
Germany will continue, shamefully, to be the weakest link in the democratic
world’s response to Russian aggression
حرب عدوان فلاديمير بوتين تقوم على
الأموال التي تحصل عليها روسيا من بيع الوقود الأحفوري إلى أوروبا. وبينما
صدت أوكرانيا ، بشكل لا يصدق ، محاولة روسيا للاستيلاء على كييف ، لن يتم إيقاف
بوتين بشكل نهائي حتى تنهي أوروبا اعتمادها في مجال الطاقة.
وهو ما يعني أن ألمانيا - التي يصر زعماءها السياسيون ورجال الأعمال على أنهم لا يستطيعون الاستغناء عن الغاز الطبيعي الروسي ، على الرغم من عدم موافقة العديد من الاقتصاديين الالمان علي هذا الراي - أصبحت في الواقع أداة التمكين الرئيسية لبوتين. هذا امر مخز.
نفاق بشكل لا يصدق بالنظر إلى
التاريخ الألماني الحديث.
ليس هناك شك في أن قطع تدفق هذا الغاز أو حتى تقليله بشكل كبير سيكون مؤلمًا. لكن العديد من التحليلات الاقتصادية - من معهد Bruegel ومقرها بروكسل ، ووكالة الطاقة الدوليو ECONtribute ، Bruegel Institute, the International Energy Agency and ECONtribute, وهي مؤسسة فكرية ترعاها جامعتا بون وكولونيا - وجدت أن آثار التخفيض الكبير لواردات الغاز من روسيا لن تكون كارثية على الإطلاق بالنسبة لألمانيا.
الآن ، يرفض الصناعيون الألمان قبول تقديرات الاقتصاديين ، ويصرون على أن حظر الغاز سيكون بالفعل كارثيًا. بالطبع سيقولون ذلك ، أليس كذلك؟ يدعي قادة الصناعة في كل مكان دائمًا أن أي تقييد مقترح لأنشطتهم سيكون بمثابة كارثة اقتصادية.
في الواقع ، أنتجت القواعد الجديدة
فوائد صحية عامة كبيرة بتكلفة مالية متواضعة.
سارع المسؤولون الألمان إلى إلقاء اللوم
على هذه البلدان في محنتهم الخاصة ، وأصروا ، مع الكثير من الوعظ الأخلاقي ، على
أنهم كانوا في ورطة لأنهم كانوا غير مسؤولين مالياً وعليهم الآن دفع الثمن.
كانت تلك التكاليف هائلة: بين عامي 2009
و 2013 تقلص الاقتصاد اليوناني Greek
economy بنسبة 21 في المائة بينما ارتفع معدل البطالة إلى 27 في المائة.
تاريخ النشر:7 أبريل .2022
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