While the tea leaves in the American press are signifying that the Biden administration is about to give up on Ukraine, the plans continue on how to profit off whatever scraps are left of Ukraine once the war does eventually come to an end.
The potential windfall for western companies could be enormous as estimates range from $500 billion to over $1 trillion in reconstruction costs.
Ukraine’s Naftogaz is holding talks with Exxon Mobil Corp, Halliburton and Chevron about projects in the country, according to the Financial Times. Italy’s private sector is gearing up to join the reconstruction game. Paris and Kiev are already signing deals.
We’ve also known for months that BlackRock will be advising Ukraine “designing an investment framework with a goal of creating opportunities for both public and private investors to participate in the future reconstruction and recovery of the Ukrainian economy.”
Will Germany’s Blackrock connections help it get a slice of the pie? Friedrich Merz, currently the leader of the opposition Christian Democratic Union, previously headed the supervisory board of the German branch of BlackRock.
More importantly, the powerful chief economist in the Federal Ministry of Economics, Elga Bartsch, formerly headed economic and market research at the Blackrock Investment Institute.
Germany’s Economy Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) recently made a surprise visit to Kiev. And after the Greens Party’s central role in turning Germany into an enemy of Russia, Habeck returned to Berlin with gifts – chief among them is Ukraine as a source of “green” energy for Germany.
Habeck signed a joint statement of intent with Ukraine that will “expand the German-Ukrainian energy partnership with a focus on green recovery.” That includes expanding the use of wind, solar, biomass, hydropower, green hydrogen – and apparently nuclear power.
While Germany just shuttered its last nuclear power plants – primarily due to opposition from the Greens – whatever is left of Ukraine is looking to get more up and running. On April 21, Ukraine’s nuclear energy generating company signed an agreement with Jupiter, Florida-based Holtec International concluded an agreement to build 20 SMR-160 reactors in Ukraine.
According to Holtec, the power output from SMR-160 is enough to light up about 100,000 homes in the US and more than 300,000 homes in the developing world and “can easily be expanded with additional units to meet current and future demand.”
Back to the German Greens and Habeck who is selling most of this as support for Ukraine, but really it’s more of a giveaway to German big business. From WSWS:
In an interview with ZDF’s Heute Journal, Habeck announced that the German pharmaceutical and chemical giant Bayer will invest €60 million in Ukraine. In addition, the building materials company Fixit Group will “expand its capacities in building materials production in Ukraine, almost doubling it.” This is also urgently needed for the repair of roads, buildings and bridges.
In order to secure Berlin’s control over the reconstruction, Habeck promised the companies a substantial investment guarantee. “Should this factory building be destroyed, for example by missile attacks, the German state guarantees or is liable,” the economy minister promised. For war zones, “we usually don’t do that, but in this case we do.”
In order to raise the enormous sums that the reconstruction will cost – estimates range from about €400 billion to over €1 trillion – a “triad” is needed: Ukraine must “create good investment conditions,” there must “be guarantees from the public sector,” and then “private capital must want to go to Ukraine.”
“Good investment conditions” are a euphemism for the brutal exploitation of the working class.
And more German companies are seeking assurances that they will receive sweetheart deals as well. According to Reuters, the German pharmaceutical company Stada reached out to Habeck’s office requesting that he “please prevent the exclusion of international pharmaceutical companies from the Ukrainian market.”
The view from Russia remains one of shellshocked at how quickly Germany turned away from such a mutually beneficial relationship. Fyodor Lukyanov, the editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs writes:
In the past, in return for ceding all security rights and privileges to its senior partner, the US, Germany was allowed to operate its own commercial sphere of influence and it had permission to pursue economic expansion to the East. Now, in exchange for Washington’s promise to maintain the security umbrella, Berlin is prepared to abandon its previous understanding of pragmatism, radically change its economic system in a direction that suits the US, and take on a greater share of the military burden.
As a result, efforts to educate the German elite in the principles of unconditional Atlanticism, in which enormous effort has been invested for decades, are now paying off 200%. Add to this the fact that Berlin is becoming the main center of the Russian anti-Kremlin diaspora, for both objective and subjective reasons, and you have a perfect picture of a 180-degree turn. Or, to use the Greens Minister for Foreign Affairs Annalena Baerbock’s own terminology, 360 degrees.
Valdai Club Programme Director Timofey Bordachev echoes this sentiment and holds out out hope that if the Greens are shown the door, Germany will eventually return to its senses:
The general crisis of the world economy and the West’s retreat from its position of 500 years of unconditional global domination require it to restructure itself internally. Or, at the very least, force it to search for new formats. Whoever is at the helm of Germany should be well placed to do so, but Chancellor Scholz is a weak leader and his Social Democrats are in one of their worst states as a political force. The other two parties are the Greens and the Liberal Democrats.
According to respected Russian experts on German domestic affairs, the Greens are a collection of exalted moralists for whom the fight against Russia and friendship with the US is a matter of faith. Personally, I find this view difficult to accept. I think that the irresponsibility of Baerbock, for example, is nothing more than the product of pure careerism on the part of a politician who is not backed by any of the conservative groups with clear economic interests. But what the hell, maybe I am wrong, and there really is a place for pure ideology in German politics.
Even if the Greens are shown the door, they’ve accomplished their mission for now as the German media and other major political parties have even stronger views against Russia than the public. While the Greens were the key warmongering force within Germany, outside Poland has played the lead role in goading Berlin into amore hawkish stance.
Washington’s ultimatum to Berlin was seemingly that if you don’t lead central and eastern Europe against Russia, we’ll find someone who will. Warsaw was all too happy to answer the call and to lead the “new Europe” as Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki recently put it a trip to the US. As Moscow-based American political analyst Andrew Korybko writes:
Despite the ideological and influence factors that were already exerting sway over German policy at the onset of this conflict, they weren’t powerful enough on their own to get Germany to play an equal role on par with Poland’s. Policymakers might have wrongly thought that it would be over in just a few weeks or one month at most, thus wagering that it’s better to retain a comparatively more pragmatic policy towards Russia, notwithstanding their compliance with the US’ sanctions demands.
It was only after it became obvious that this would likely become a protracted conflict that they began deliberating whether to change their stance by playing some sort of military role in response to the immense pressure to compete with Poland for hearts and minds in [central and eastern Europe]. From the US’ perspective, it was beneficial to encourage these dynamics in order to avoid being too dependent on Poland as its top European partner after the conflict ends as well as to get Germany to ruin its ties with Russia.
It’s the best of both worlds for Washington. Germany’s Zeitenwende will have it increase its military budget in order to take more of a leading role against Russia. While Berlin has struggled to hit the two percent target in the past, the defense ministry announced a major overhaul this week that will cut red tape and speed up the acquisition process.
It’s a good thing Berlin is increasing its efforts to militarize, too, because Poland is upping its defense budget to four percent of GDP. Morawiecki just met with US defense industry representatives to discuss financing the billions of dollars of Warsaw’s planned purchases of F-35 fighter jets, Abrams tanks, HIMARS artillery systems and Patriot missile launching units.
While such defense spending will probably mean cuts to social programs in Germany (and Poland), it appears that the country’s elites will at least get to pick over the bones of what’s left of Ukraine after “the big guy” has his fill.