For decades, German foreign policy toward the Soviet Union, and then the Russian Federation, has been based on the Ostpolitik concept of “Wandel durch Handel” or “Change through Trade.” Reinvigorated in the early 2000s by the then German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, this concept states that by increasing trade relations with authoritarian regimes like Putin’s Russia, Western regulatory norms and rule of law would naturally flow upstream, slowly transforming kleptocracies into liberal democratic states.
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