Until February 24th Jessica Berlin was one of many experts on security and defense policy in the Berlin think tank sphere. But shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, Berlin put her work on hold to devote herself entirely to helping Ukraine. She vigorously promotes massive support for Kyiv. In an interview with Berliner Zeitung, she calls for an international commission to investigate corruption by German politicians in the energy sector. She talks about Angela Merkel's fear of Russia and our inability to understand the logic of dictators.
Ms. Berlin, you first came to the attention of the wider German public when Russia invaded Ukraine. You’ve had a very clear position from the beginning. What makes you certain your assessment is correct?
Primarily my experience in dictatorships around the world. I’ve lived and worked in four dictatorships, spent time in dozens of others, and have seen and experienced what life and power structures in dictatorships are like with my own eyes. This lived experience combined with my background as a security and foreign policy expert form the basis of my assessments. We are living in very dangerous times right now. And the German government has made many serious mistakes over the last 20 years.
What do the dictatorships that you experienced have in common? What do people who live in democracies need to understand about these systems?
Dictatorships run on fear: Their power is built on the population's fear of violence. At the same time, however, dictators themselves live in permanent fear - of threats from without and within. It’s also important to understand that the planning horizons of dictatorships are much, much longer than those of democracies. In a democracy, we have a reactive political culture, public opinion means something. Our governments usually don't plan for the next generation, they plan for the next election cycle. But in dictatorships, where one party or even one person stays in power for decades, governments can plan their geopolitical strategy or also plot against domestic opponents over the course of generations. The Chinese Communist Party has been doing this since the People's Republic of China came into existence. The Kremlin has been doing it for generations as well.
Do you think our upcoming elections lead us to underestimate the danger that Russia poses?
Yes, it's this quick-win mentality. If Russia or China offers us something of value that seems to solve a short-term problem for us, we tend to take them up on it – even if that can end up hurting us in the long run. Our short-term thinking is a weapon that dictatorships use against us.
Let's look at German decisions in the past. Angela Merkel recently stated that she never believed in change through trade (“Wandel durch Handel”), but nevertheless increased Germany's dependence on Russian gas. Was a different policy simply not feasible in our context?
One thing is certain: it could have and should have been recognized much sooner that Vladimir Putin runs a mafia state and not a reliable partner country for Germany. But instead of recognizing this and acting accordingly, we traded human rights and democratic values for cheap gas. When Merkel and Scholz claim today they didn't know what was going on in Russia, it's simply not true. We were specifically and directly warned by the Eastern Europeans and the United States. We made a conscious decision to ignore these warnings and are now living with the consequences.
You call for much more substantial German support for Ukraine. Asked about the risk of a nuclear strike, you argue that it is tactically unwise for Putin to use nuclear weapons. But by our standards there is already a degree of irrationality in his decision to launch a war of aggression itself. Couldn't further „irrational“ steps follow?
No one can be one hundred percent certain what Putin will do. But as I said: dictators rule by fear. The Russian military is – if you will pardon the expression – screwed and doesn't scare anyone anymore. So Putin is playing the only trump card he has left: nuclear weapons. He hopes to frighten people in Europe into pressuring their governments to reduce support of Ukraine. This is how he’s trying to delay defeat.
You don't take his threats seriously?
Yes, I do, and we should. But we also should see them for what they are: threats, not foregone conclusions. Look at his track record: Vladimir Putin only responds to strength. If you back down and negotiate, he’ll just see it as weakness and feel vindicated. He’s a classic bully and knows how to exploit our fears. Yet for some reason we still don't dare to leverage his fears against him as well. This admittedly brutal-sounding reality seems dangerous and incomprehensible to most Germans, but that’s the only way to confront such regimes. Germany needs to learn how to deal with situations like this. We shouldn’t show the bully our fear, we should make the bully fear us.
Perhaps most of the population doesn’t understand how to deal with dictatorships. But seasoned politicians like Scholz and Merkel should be geopolitically savvy. Do you think Scholz is supplying fewer weapons because he believes he would otherwise upset the electorate?
I honestly don't think Scholz is particularly geopolitically savvy. He has no significant foreign experience beyond going on delegation trips and gets it wrong again and again, yet still apparently considers himself a strategist. With Merkel it was different. She is highly intelligent and knew Russia better. But something from growing up in the Soviet world of power stuck with her (Merkel was 35 when the Berlin Wall fell) – something that makes Russian relevance and power seem self-evident and inevitable to her. This kind of automatic reverence for Russia often crops up in the SPD as well and has had a damaging effect on decades of German foreign policy.
How much corruption do you think was involved in the deals?
That must now be clarified. We urgently need to investigate and get to the bottom of it. At which points and when were our country’s Russia policy marred by actual corruption, when by mere incompetence, and when by short-term or cynical self-interest? We need to understand how it came to this. We have done business over the last twenty years that allowed us to be infiltrated by Russia and China and become dependent on them. It certainly wasn't only corruption, but we need to determine where corruption took place. It’s no secret in international intelligence circles that German corruption and incompetence have played a role in our being infiltrated like this. Look at the Nordstream pipelines alone: a former East German security operative (Mathias Warnig, editor's note) shapes German energy policy with a Russian state-owned corporation. It’s inconceivable.
So far, there is only a single parliamentary inquiry in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (where the Nord stream pipelines end) looking into the work of the Climate Foundation that was used to cover for Russian meddling. At the federal level, however, we hear nothing more than apologies from the Social Democrats. But there has never been any talk of parliamentary investigative committees?
That's because the parties would have to investigate themselves. We would need an international, independent commission with investigative journalists, anti-corruption researchers and cyber security analysts. Not just for Germany, by the way. This is a NATO-wide problem. Remember Trump, who came to power with the help of Russian interference, or the active role Russian money played in the Brexit referendum.
Do you think the U.S. might still have a score to settle with Moscow given Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election which influences support for Ukraine?
I would say rather that the US has realized Russia still has a score to settle with them from the Cold War, and that this grudge is a now major threat to US national security. Germany needs to wake up and act now as well; we don't have time for whiny self-preoccupation.
You mean there is no time for debate?
No, we should still discuss and debate. But we need a debate that focuses on solutions: we must focus on *how* to stop the Russians, not whether or not we should stop them. Instead, many German politicians and media commentators are still redefining and relitigating the issue at hand, pretending it's unclear who the enemy or what the problem is. When some Germans still argue it's the Americans, not the Russians, who are to blame for this war, I'm at a loss for words. The same goes for their demands that Ukraine make concessions to Russia.
What is your solution? After all the West is already supplying weapons. Should Ukraine become a NATO member?
Yes. Of course that can’t be done overnight, there’s a process. Ukraine formally applied for NATO membership in September. NATO should grant Ukraine candidate status and set boundaries for Putin. So far, Putin's tactic is to keep ten steps ahead of the West. Even when we respond to his moves and he has to take five steps back, he’s still moved five steps forward. That's how he has operated ever since taking office. Remember Chechnya, Georgia, and Syria. Then Crimea and Donbas. Each time he pushes forward as far as he can, and then only has to pull back a little. This has to end. We must become strategically proactive ourselves instead of always reacting to him. We could, for example, set a timeline after which Ukraine would receive NATO security guarantees – with the equivalent of full Article 5 protection. In doing so we’d send a clear message: „You have until this deadline to withdraw your troops from Ukrainian soil.“
Quite a collision course. The Russian Constitution prohibits him from giving back the annexed territories. What do we do if Putin doesn't withdraw his troops? After all, he doesn't want to look like a loser. Many believe that in order to prevent that, he will escalate further.
Russian constitutional law is not the problem here. Putin has built this illegal war on lies and deception. He can make up more lies to end the war. He already is the loser – his planned 3-day „Special Military Operation“ is now nine months old...! It’s useless to try to interpret his behavior and mindset from our „logical“ Western perspective; he follows a different logic, the logic of violence and power. And it’s even more pointless to try to base our decisions on the needs of a murderous dictator’s ego. He threatens military escalation to intimidate NATO member states into reducing aid to Ukraine. We must meet his threats with composure and increased support for Ukraine. Tactically, Russia cannot win this war. The sooner we help Ukraine drive the Russian invaders off Ukrainian soil, the sooner the killing will stop.
Let’s make sure we understand what you’re saying: in order to avoid a collision, we need to risk that very collision?
If German security policy were a football team, we would be Greece in the 2004 European Championship. The Greek side basically just stood around in front of the goal and defended. We saw then: with luck, you can sometimes somehow get through. But luck is not a strategy for security policy. If the football example is not for you, imagine a boxing match. Can you win a fight by just standing in the corner of the ring with your guard up, never fighting back, and hoping your opponent doesn't hit you too hard? No. Your opponent must also be afraid of getting hit if you want to have any chance at all. And you have to be ready to fight back.
But our government is obviously not prepared to do that. Why are Germans so reluctant to risk a collision? Is it the fear of being responsible for an escalation?
Germany’s role in World War II plays a role of course. We must remember this and weigh Germany's military responsibility carefully. But Germans must also remember: We only live in freedom and democracy today because other people liberated us from the Nazi fascists, because millions of others fought, sacrificed, and died for freedom. That's why this mentality in Germany frustrates me so much. Of all people, we really ought to know better.
Is this what drives you? The historical responsibility of the Germans?
Yes, among other things. My family history led me to be interested in international affairs at a pretty young age. I wanted to make sure there were no more wars. As a German, I feel a personal obligation to do everything I can to defend European peace. That drives me. I quit my normal work in April and have been volunteering full time to help Ukraine get more support since.
Please excuse the personal question, but how do you manage financially?
At first I lived off my savings, but that ran out. In August a friend talked me into setting up a crowdfunding buy-me-a-coffee account, and I’ve been living from those donations since. They just about cover living expenses. But whenever things get tough, I think about the people in Ukraine and how they’re giving up everything right now – even their lives. Anything we give up here is nothing compared to what they’re sacrificing. I also think of my grandparents. They survived war, hunger, and displacement and had to sacrifice so much. My difficulties are nothing compared to what my family went through or what my Ukrainian friends and many other friends elsewhere around the world have to go through.
Did you get personally involved like this before or only when the war in Ukraine started?
It actually started with Afghanistan. I lived and worked there from 2011-2012, and in the summer of 2021 I interrupted my normal work for 2-3 months to help evacuation efforts. That was an extremely stressful, sad time. Our government failed badly and left thousands of Afghans who worked with us to the Taliban.
We have talked a lot about Russia, but China is also increasingly recognized as a threat. This fall, the German chancellor allowed the Chinese state-owned company Cosco to become a shareholder of part of the port of Hamburg. Although all the German government's relevant ministries and security agencies opposed it, Scholz still waved the deal through.
At best, this decision was stupid. But Scholz is not a stupid man, and that's why I wonder how he came to even consider it. Maybe, as the former mayor of Hamburg, he wants to do his ex-colleagues in the Hamburg city government who supported this deal a favor. Or maybe he just didn't want to admit he was wrong by reversing his stance. We don't know for sure. In any case, this was a strategic own goal. It would be extremely dangerous to sell further critical European infrastructure to China now. Otherwise, we send a message to Beijing, Moscow, Riyadh and Tehran that Germany's ‚Zeitenwende‘ statements are meaningless talk: that short-term economic interests still count more to the German government than our long-term security and democratic values. If I were Scholz’s coalition partner, I would have tabled a vote of no confidence for his overriding and ignoring the government’s and the intelligence community’s concerns.
Could it not be that Scholz has no choice at all, that we are already so dependent on China that Scholz can be blackmailed? China could close factories of German carmakers and shut down many more. We are already 100 percent dependent on China for antibiotic drugs.
That’s just another reason why Germany shouldn’t become even more dependent. Our government needs to define strategic goals: Whom do we want to trade with? Where can we relocate production that currently takes place in China? How do we communicate with the German public about the shifts and challenges ahead? Because hard times are coming. But if we’re honest with ourselves and each other and stick together, we'll get through this.
So what are our options for reliable partners to work with in the future?
To name just one example: Africa. The pan-African market is up and coming; it will be massive and yet is massively underestimated by the EU. We have many more opportunities to do business with African partners than most companies and politicians in Germany realize. I lived in Rwanda 15 years ago and have worked and traveled in many African countries. It’s amazing how much the leading African markets have grown just in these past 10-15 years. If you don't invest in Africa now, you’ll regret it twenty years from now. These are young countries full of talented young people, and with ever-growing middle classes with rising consumer demand. That's where German exports and value chains can go. Countries like Namibia and Mauritania are also investing heavily in hydrogen production; they will be able to export clean energy to Europe. More African-European trade will be a win-win for both African and European economies and security.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in his book The Gulag Archipelago: „We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We deserved everything that happened afterward, pure and simple.“ Do Germans not love freedom enough, Ms. Berlin?