Bear-backers

THIS week Horst Seehofer, the premier of Bavaria and an unruly ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel, ruffled German diplomatic feathers by visiting Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president. Mr Seehofer’s trip carried no official weight. But hugging a leader whom Mrs Merkel treats warily further confused Germany’s muddled “eastern policy”, or Ostpolitik.

The term dates back to the rapprochement with the communist bloc begun in 1969 by Willy Brandt, West Germany’s first Social Democratic chancellor. It set in motion the normalisation of relations with East Germany and other Warsaw Pact nations, as well as easing tensions with the Soviet Union. Today Social Democrats still credit Ostpolitik for the eventual fall of the Berlin Wall. After German reunification, which required Soviet blessing, the conciliatory spirit spread to the centre-right Christian Democrats, led today by Mrs Merkel. It has also spawned the notion of Russlandversteher (“Russia-understanders”), Germans who mix sympathy for Russia with antipathy for America.

The chancellor suspended her belief in Ostpolitik’s underlying principle of “change through rapprochement” after Mr Putin seized Crimea and sent Russian troops to back separatists in Ukraine. She has orchestrated a firm European response that combines tough economic sanctions with dialogue to avoid further escalation.

But a ten-minute taxi ride away from Mrs Merkel’s office, in Germany’s foreign ministry, the old Ostpolitik lives on. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the foreign minister, is a Social Democrat. He was also chief of staff for Gerhard Schröder, the Social Democrats’ last chancellor. After losing to Mrs Merkel in 2005 Mr Schröder, a friend of Mr Putin, became chairman of the board of Nord Stream, a German-Russian pipeline that carries Russian gas under the Baltic Sea to Germany. Today Mr Steinmeier reliably plays dove to Mrs Merkel’s hawk.

Social Democratic fingerprints are all over plans for a second Baltic pipeline, Nord Stream 2, which is to be built even though the existing one is operating at only half capacity. A deal between Russia and Germany was announced in Moscow last autumn by Sigmar Gabriel, the economics minister and the Social Democrats’ boss.

Nord Stream 2 has few friends outside Russia and the Social Democrats. Poland, Slovakia and the Baltic countries are aghast at what they see as a sinister pact to boost German business at the expense of their energy security. Russia could junk its pipelines that run through Poland and Ukraine, leaving them gas-strapped and at the mercy of powerful (and historically unfriendly) neighbours. The European Commission sees it similarly. In 2014 it blocked another pipeline project, under which Russian gas was to run through the Black Sea and central Europe. America, worried that Nord Stream 2 would deprive Ukraine of transit fees, is also opposed.

So are many Germans. Norbert Röttgen, a Christian Democrat who leads parliament’s foreign-policy committee, finds the government’s line that Nord Stream 2 is a commercial, not a geopolitical, matter “indefensible”. No doubt this formulation has been forced on Mrs Merkel to keep the peace with her Social Democratic coalition partners. But Mr Röttgen says that Germany’s interests—be it energy independence from Russia or solidarity with the EU—would be better served by opposing Nord Stream 2. Germany’s relations with Poland and Hungary are already troubled by nationalist governments there. By clinging to an Ostpolitik focused on Russia, the Social Democrats are rendering relations with the wider east increasingly fraught.