Did Merkel Pave the Way for the War in Ukraine?

[Matt Beasley]

Did Merkel Pave the Way for the War in Ukraine?
By Bojan Pancevski, May 26, 2023, WSJ

Joachim Gauck, who was president of Germany when Putin first invaded Ukraine in 2014, said Merkel’s decision to boost energy imports from Russia in the wake of Putin’s aggression was clearly a mistake. “Some people recognize their mistakes earlier, and some later,” he said.

That mistake had its roots in another decision by Merkel: Her move to greatly accelerate Germany’s planned phasing out of nuclear energy in 2011, in response to the Fukushima disaster in Japan. The gap in energy supply created by this dramatic shift meant that Germany had to import more energy, and it had to do so as cheaply as possible. This meant becoming dependent on Russian natural gas, said Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who served as defense minister under Merkel.

Kramp-Karrenbauer, once picked by Merkel as a possible successor, opposed Nord Stream 2 and tried in vain to rebuild Germany’s depleted armed forces. Her push to meet a NATO target of spending 2% of gross domestic product on defense, agreed upon after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, was blocked by the chancellery, Kramp-Karrenbauer said.

“We broke the promise to NATO, and I believe this was a big mistake,” Kramp-Karrenbauer said. “We abandoned the lessons of the Cold War. Diplomacy must be accompanied by military strength.”

Merkel’s role in shaping NATO policy toward Ukraine goes back to 2008, when she vetoed a push by the Bush administration to admit Ukraine and Georgia into the alliance, said Fiona Hill, a former National Security Council official and presidential adviser on Russia.

Merkel instead helped to broker NATO’s open but noncommittal invitation to Ukraine and Georgia, an outcome that Hill said was the “worst of all worlds” because it enraged Putin without giving the two countries any protection. Putin invaded Georgia in 2008 before marching into Ukraine.

After Putin first attacked Ukraine, Merkel led the effort to negotiate a quick settlement that disappointed Kyiv and imposed no substantial punishment on Russia for occupying its neighbor, Hill added. “No red lines were drawn for Putin,” she said. “Merkel took a calculated risk. It was a gambit, but ultimately it failed.”

Some observers believe that the failure to establish red lines and Germany’s continuing economic cooperation encouraged Putin to attempt a full-scale attack in 2022. “OK, so I could get away with that,” Putin concluded in 2014, according to Rasmussen. “So why not continue?”

Merkel still has supporters, and as Germany begins to grapple with her complicated legacy, many still hold a more nuanced view of her role in laying the groundwork for today’s crises.

Joe Kaeser, the former CEO of the German conglomerate Siemens, worked closely with Merkel and accompanied her and other senior government figures on official travels, including to Russia, where his company was one of the largest foreign investors.

Kaeser, who now chairs the supervisory board of Siemens Energy, a listed subsidiary, agrees that Germany’s dependence on Russian natural gas grew under Merkel, but he says that there was—and is—no alternative for powering Europe’s industrial engine at a viable price.

“We didn’t expect that there would be war in Europe with the methods of the 20th century. This never featured in our thinking,” said Kaeser, who himself met Putin several times. He believes that Merkel’s Russia policy was justified. Even Germany’s new government has not found a sustainable and affordable replacement for Russian energy exports, he said, which could lead to deindustrialization.

Many defenders of Merkel say that she merely articulated a consensus. Making her country dependent on Washington for security, on Moscow for energy and on Beijing for trade (China became Germany’s biggest trade partner under her chancellorship) was what all of Germany’s political parties wanted at the time, said Constanze Stelzenmüller of the Brookings Institution.

“Without backing from the U.S.A., which was very restrained at the time, any tougher German reaction to the annexation of Crimea could hardly have been possible,” said Jürgen Osterhammer, a historian whose work on globalization and China has been cited by Merkel as an influence on her thinking.

For her part, Merkel is determined not to rely on historians for the historical record of her tenure. While unwinding from her long years of public service, she told German media, she is working on a memoir under a major publishing contract.

In retirement, Merkel told the German news magazine Der Spiegel, she has watched “Munich,” a Netflix movie about Prime Minister Neville’s Chamberlain’s infamous negotiations with Hitler in the run-up to World War II. Though Chamberlain’s name has become synonymous with the delusions of appeasement, the film offers a more nuanced picture of the British leader as a realist statesman working to postpone the inevitable conflict. That reinterpretation appealed to Merkel, the magazine reported.

She has also made an effort to rejuvenate relations with another retired statesman, President Barack Obama, whom she visited in Washington, D.C., last June. The former leaders enjoyed a museum visit and dinner at his favorite Italian restaurant. After the trip, Merkel complained that the growing criticism she is facing at home betrayed a lack of respect for her role as leader. “It is part of democracy to endure criticism, but my impression is that an American president who’s left office is being treated with greater respect by the public than a German chancellor,” she told Der Spiegel.

In April, Merkel was again asked on stage at a book fair whether she would not reconsider her refusal to admit having made some mistakes. “Frankly,” she responded, “I don’t know whether there would be satisfaction if I were to say something that I simply don’t think merely for the sake of admitting error.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/did-merkel-pave-the-way-for-the-war-in-ukraine-4abef297