India and Germany are not only friends but enjoy a "values partnership". The two-day trip to India for German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock began on this warm note. On the agenda was the war in Ukraine, China, Afghanistan and India.
The visit comes at a time when there is a chink in the united stand of the West against Russia and it's beginning to show. The German position has not wavered. The foreign minister Annalena Baerbock chose to make that clear, as referred to the war in Ukraine to be “brutal’’ and “illegal.” But, French President Emmanuel Macron’s statement where he said an “essential point’’ for a peace dialogue with Russia is to provide security “guarantees’’ for Russia when it returns to the negotiating table has exposed that the toll of the war is beginning to show. The long winter has begun.
“We need to prepare what we are ready to do, how we protect our allies and member states, and how to give guarantees to Russia on the day it returns to the negotiating table,” Macron was quoted as saying in the New York Times.
“One of the essential points we must address — as President Putin has always said — is the fear that NATO comes right up to its doors, and the deployment of weapons that could threaten Russia,” he said.
These remarks were made to a television channel TF1 after Macron’s visit to America. His remarks obviously drew a strong reaction from Ukraine. “Someone wants to provide security guarantees to a terrorist and killer state?” Oleksiy Danilov, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s national security chief, said in a Twitter post. The US is still to make a statement.
However, Macron’s statement signals that the European consensus is not ironclad, especially over energy. As minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar pointed out in the interaction. “From February to November, the European Union has imported more fossil fuel from Russia than the next 10 countries combined,” he said. “Europe makes choices that prioritize its energy needs [but] ask India to do something else.”
Baerbock’s first visit also comes a month after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's visit to China. The visit became a cause for heated debates. Criticised at home—amongst his coalition partners—as well as European countries. The Chancellor who has come under fire for the trip has allowed China a partial stake in the Hamburg port. But more than economic, his visit is seen through the prism of the war. With a harsh winter ahead, it was an attempt to use China’s leverage on Russia. He has been quoted as telling reporters that it was important for China to “exert influence’’ over Russia.
Despite the signal that the visit sent, Baerbock made it clear where she stands on the China divide. China was, as she said, a rival and a competitor in many ways. “We now know what happens when a country becomes too dependent on another that doesn’t share the same values,” she said.