What really happened at the Biden-Scholz and Putin-Macron summits?

Two summits, two continents, two solutions to what has become the Ukrainian problem. The most dramatic moment on a day filled with drama in Washington and Moscow came when President Biden,

standing next to a subdued, almost chastened Chancellor Scholz, issued his edict on the vexed question of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany: “If Russia invades, that

means tanks and troops crossing the border of Ukraine again, then there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

By “we”, did Biden mean NATO, with Germany and the United States acting in concert? Or did he mean the US, acting on its own authority and, if necessary, using force majeure to overrule its

ally? This question was left hanging in the air, because Scholz avoided even mentioning Nord Stream. It looked rather as though Biden had in effect told his guest to put up and Scholz had

decided instead to shut up. An entente cordiale it was not.

The point that has perhaps not been sufficiently grasped, either in Berlin or Washington, is that the original rationale for Nord Stream 2 was to bypass Ukraine altogether by laying the

pipeline under the Baltic Sea. (Note to the Foreign Office: this is not the same as the Black Sea.) If Putin, one way or another, can replace the present government in Kyiv, led by the

defiantly pro-Western President Volodymyr Zelensky, with a more compliant regime, then the strategic importance of Nord Stream 2 is greatly diminished. Hence Biden’s threat carries little

weight unless Putin can be induced to desist from armed aggression.

Meanwhile in Moscow, Vladimir Vladimirovich was welcoming “dear Emmanuel” Macron, his latest guest to the Kremlin — if “welcome” is the right word for a man who demands that anyone he meets

should first spend a fortnight in quarantine, then sit at the other end of a 20-foot table in order to converse. Given the Russian autocrat’s toxic predilections, however, it might be just

as well for those who accept his invitations to keep their distance. In Wagner’s Die Walküre, the warlord Hunding solemnly promises to observe the rules of hospitality overnight, but will

hunt down his guest in the morning. Putin is precisely that kind of host.

Macron knows this, of course, which makes the motives behind his whistlestop tour of Moscow and Kyiv this week all the more dubious. With France currently holding the rotating presidency of

the EU Council of Ministers, he is prosecuting a unilateral diplomatic offensive to promote what he sees as a new European security order, with structures outside NATO. To this end, he has

been playing tunes designed to seduce Putin into striking a deal: more of a pas de deux from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker than his 1812 Overture.

Macron’s affirmation that “the geopolitical objective of Russia is clearly not Ukraine” must have even music to Putin’s ears. The latter, for his part, expressed satisfaction that France

shared with Russia “a common concern about what is happening in the security sphere in Europe”. In other words: the two leaders agree that the main problem is not Russian threats to

Ukrainian sovereignty, but Western threats to Russian security. In addition, Macron has let it be known that he hopes to head off the emerging Sino-Russian axis (about which I wrote here) by

interposing the EU as a partner.

Is Macron playing to the Gaullist gallery at home? The General liked to flirt with the Kremlin even at the height of the Cold War in order to demonstrate his independence from the

Anglo-Saxons who, much to his chagrin, had liberated France in 1944. He cold-shouldered NATO, distanced himself from the US and in 1966 flew to Moscow to sign an agreement with the Soviet

Union in remarkably similar language to that used by Macron today: “Europe’s problems must be considered in a European framework”. What a “European security order” means, now as then, is the

exclusion of America and the marginalisation of Britain. But Stalin’s old question about the Pope applies just as much to Brussels: how many divisions has the EU?

Meanwhile, as Russian forces continue to surround Ukraine in ever greater numbers, the tension in Kyiv is building. The US intelligence assessment that at least 50,000 civilians would die

there in the event of an invasion, even if tactical nuclear weapons were not deployed, is aimed at NATO allies. Yet Ukrainians are bound to wonder why their lives are apparently so cheap and

why the West is not abiding by the 1994 Budapest Memorandum that guaranteed their sovereignty. The temptation is there to take matters into their own hands. And so with every day that

passes, the likelihood increases of some incident taking place that could serve as a casus belli. It only needs one Ukrainian to take pre-emptive action for Putin to have the provocation he

requires. And if nobody obliges, he has plenty of goons to manufacture their own “false flag” incident.

For Putin, the threat is always more powerful than the execution. Having extracted all that he can from the French, next week he will turn his attention to the Germans. Chancellor Scholz

looked unsure of himself in Biden’s White House. How confident will he be inside Putin’s Kremlin? When Helmut Kohl went to Moscow in 1988, he brought with him the head of Deutsche Bank,

Alfred Herrhausen, who could guarantee the soft loans that Mikhail Gorbachev knew the bankrupt Soviet economy needed. Hard currency gave Kohl the whip hand.

When Angela Merkel visited Putin on several occasions, she spoke fluent Russian. Yet her short-sighted energy policy during her 16 years in office allowed the balance of power to shift

decisively towards Russia. Scholz must play the hand she has dealt him — and it has few trumps. Seeking peace at any price makes war more, not less, likely. Yesterday the German Chancellor

told the White House press corps that he stood with Joe Biden: “We will act together. We are absolutely united.” That sounds good, but his resolve will be tested almost immediately. Whatever

Scholz may feel personally, he knows that German public opinion turned sharply against Trump’s America and it has yet to be wooed back by Biden.

The next few weeks will determine whether Europe is given a breathing space to recover from the pandemic and to reinforce NATO. Boris Johnson, who has been otherwise engaged but is now

focused on Ukraine, could start by inviting Putin to a security summit, as mooted by Sir Richard Dearlove here, and holding it in London, as I suggested here. There is still time to avert

war, but Europe, the UK and the US will have to do much more to persuade the Kremlin to stand down its forces. Last spring there was a similar show of force to intimidate Ukraine; then the

troops returned to barracks. This time the Russian tanks — like Western diplomacy — seem to be going nowhere.

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