For Schröder and Putin, Linkup No Coincidence

[liberalpragmatist]

http://select.nytimes.com/iht/2006/01/03/international/IHT-03politicus.html

By JOHN VINOCUR
International Herald Tribune

... Less than a month after leaving office in November, he's taken a job as the chairman of a Gazprom subsidiary, at time when the Russia of Schröder's close friend Vladimir Putin is intent on turning the enormous energy reserves Gazprom controls into a foreign policy lever that would reinstate Moscow as a center of world influence.

This time, before he officially begins work as supervisory board chairman of the North European Gas Pipeline Company (held by Gazprom with two minority German shareholders, BASF and E.ON Ruhrgas), Schröder may seem to have made an irredeemable choice.

Through Gazprom, Russia is demanding that Ukraine pay dramatically higher prices for gas and has cut off its supply in retaliation for Ukraine's favorable orientation toward the European Union and NATO. Last week, Putin's economic adviser, Andrei Illarionov, quit a Kremlin team dominated by Putin's fellow KGB veterans, saying state corporations like Gazprom are "managed above all for their own personal interests." He called the pressure on Ukraine a move toward "a policy of imperialism."

<snip>

Talk of an accumulating sense of discomfort! Just days before the German elections in September that propelled him from power, Schröder signed the pipeline deal that will carry Russian gas under the Baltic Sea directly to Germany, bypassing American allies like Ukraine and Poland. Announcement of his new Gazprom job followed weeks later.

<snip>

All alone in the great, big-bucks world, Schröder is likely to find his marketability as an international go-between discredited. Eastern Europe frankly does not trust him. Western Europe, in its calculating way, could be described as more than a little disturbed by his new associates.

***

I don't have an opinion regarding German politics. Obviously, as a liberal I tend to favor the center-left and left in most of the world. But regardless of Shroeder's political affiliations, this appears ridiculous. I don't favor cozying up to oil companies and autocracies whether it's Cheney and Republican cronies in the U.S. Republicans or a centre-left leader of a foreign country.

[madeline_con]

1. DUH-bya's probably jumping up and down with his

little fists clenched!

Gazprom doing biz with Iran, Iran trading petroleum in Euros and taking Chinese bids, and now, Shroeder has bypassed our interests and gone under the Baltic!

Is Germany the next member of the "axis of evil"???

[liberalpragmatist]

2. Regardless, it looks like a slimy move

And it's gotten terrible press in Germany, too. In the U.S. we have political leaders manipulating foreign governments and profiting from U.S. oil companies. Germany seems to have a political leader who's sold himself to a foreign power and is profiting off of his own countrymen from a foreign oil company. I'm not condoning either one. All I'm saying is that we'd be sure to condemn any U.S. leader who did this. Shroeder shouldn't get a pass just b/c he's anti-Bush.