Excerpt
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): It’s been a week now since Russian forces occupied Crimea, an area that’s been part of Ukraine for the last 60 years. Publicly, at least, neither side seems to be giving ground. Russia may be on the verge of annexing the region and the West is imposing sanctions. One country might be uniquely positioned to help resolve the dispute — that country is Germany. For more about this we’re joined from Washington by Steve Szabo, he’s the Executive Director of the Transatlantic Academy and has written extensively about German foreign and security policy for many years. So Steve, why is Germany uniquely positioned here? How could they break this log jam?
STEVE SZABO, Transatlantic Academy: Well, they are by far the most important player in Europe on Russia and Russia policy. You really can’t have a European position without Germany on Russia and of course the European position is central to the American strategy because we can’t have a really effective strategy if the Europeans are not on board. Secondly, the Germans are a huge economic player in Russia, by far the largest foreign player. So they have a lot of impact on Russia, the Russians listen to them because of this close economic relationship and so the Germans can, I think, speak to Putin with a little bit more confidence, let’s say. He would have more confidence in them then talking to, let’s say, to Obama or to somebody from other countries. So they’re increasingly important interlocutor between the West and Russia.
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