Why Austria leans toward Putin; China plans for AI warfare
Austria has slowly become Vladimir Putin’s “Alpine fortress,” said Matthew Karnitschnig in Politico.eu (Belgium), and it took the invasion of Ukraine for Europeans to notice. Austria has always done a “delicate balancing act” between the West and Russia. Partially occupied by the Soviets after World War II, it was forced to enshrine neutrality in its constitution to get its sovereignty back, so for decades it was able “to do business on both sides of the Iron Curtain.” Even after Russia invaded Ukraine last year, Vienna didn’t want to risk damaging such a long-standing—and “quite lucrative”—relationship with Moscow. Its chancellor, Karl Nehammer, is the only EU leader to have visited Moscow during the war, scurrying there more than six weeks after the invasion. He claimed he was going to “meet Putin manto-man,” selling the trip as “a mission of peace.” But it appears that what he actually got was a deal to keep Russian gas, which had been cut off to most of Europe, flowing to Austria. Now the “neutral arbiter schtick” is wearing thin. European leaders worry that Austria—coupled with its neighbor Hungary, whose leader, Viktor Orban, is an outright Putin apologist—is forming a “Russia-tolerant zone at the geographic heart of Europe.”
Austria may soon have an even more anti-American and pro-Russian leader, said Andrey Yashlansky in Moskovsky Komsomolets (Russia). The far-right Austrian Freedom Party has been at the top of national polls for months, and has “the best chance in years” to seize power outright in the next elections, due by late 2024. Its leader, Herbert Kickl, can’t stand immigrants— one of his first steps in a brief stint as interior minister was to “rename Austrian registry centers for asylum seekers ‘Departure Centers’”—but he does like Putin. He has vowed to use Austria’s veto power in the EU to lift what he calls “senseless sanctions” against Russia. Of course, even under Nehammer, Austria has been less supportive of Ukraine than almost any other EU country, said Der Standard (Austria) in an editorial. And don’t blame our constitution. Like Austria, Sweden and Finland were also nonaligned for decades, yet they didn’t hesitate to apply to join NATO in response to “Russian neo-imperialism.” Only our “small, smart-ass country” is trying to weasel out of doing its part by “invoking neutrality.”
That’s because we’re simply more comfortable straddling the middle, said Michael Laczynski in Die Presse (Austria). Vienna has never been “particularly Western-oriented.” Its “kindred spirits” are Sofia and Budapest, not Berlin and Paris. A recent survey found that Austrians were more likely to trust Putin— and distrust the U.S.—than any EU citizens besides Hungarians and Bulgarians. Yet Vienna is playing “a dangerous game,” said Joseph Gepp in Der Standard (Austria). Most EU members have responded to the invasion by weaning themselves off Russian gas and finding other energy sources, but Austria still gets two-thirds of its gas from Russia. “And as if that weren’t enough,” the gas “flows entirely through a war zone,” Ukraine. The contract to pipe Russian gas via Ukraine ends late next year, and Kyiv says it will not renew. What will Austria do then?