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Angela Merkel: mother of German decline She was wrong about everything — except Russia

Putin's unlikely ally? Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Putin's unlikely ally? Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images


November 30, 2024   11 mins

“Merkel-Nostalgie” has swept a Germany grappling with war, a tanking economy and a collapsed government. The former German chancellor’s autobiography sold 35,000 copies on the day of publication, and Berliners queued for hours to have her sign their copies. As Angela Merkel said herself: you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. Especially if your successor is Olaf Scholz — one of the weakest and least popular chancellors in the history of the Federal Republic, who has presided over Germany’s dramatic fall in economic and international standing. Thus, it’s perhaps not surprising that Germany has unexpectedly found itself longing for the stability and leadership symbolised during her 16 years in power, drawing voters back to her old party, the centre-right CDU. But is this nostalgia really justified?

The reality is that, in many respects, Merkel paved the way to today’s crisis. Her advocacy for stringent austerity measures, implemented both across Europe and within Germany after the 2008 financial crisis, ushered in over a decade of stagnation and underinvestment. Her policies left Germany’s infrastructure — bridges, roads and railways — to crumble; her doubling down on Germany’s neo-mercantilist, export-driven economic model, especially during the euro crisis, stifled internal demand by compressing wages and encouraging precarious employment, while leaving the economy overly dependent on exports.

By pursuing an industrial policy that emphasised traditional manufacturing sectors — automobiles, heavy industry and mechanical parts — she left Germany lagging in the high-tech revolution. By phasing out nuclear energy, she deprived the country of a clean and cost-effective energy source. By opening the door to over a million asylum seekers, she created serious challenges in social cohesion and public safety. By embracing a paternalistic and TINA-driven approach to politics, exemplified in her concept of “market-conforming democracy”, she starved the German democratic discourse.

Yet, despite these shortcomings, Merkel remained one of the world’s most popular politicians upon her retirement in 2021 — both at home and abroad. Following Donald Trump’s 2016 election, Merkel was often hailed by the Western liberal establishment as the torchbearer of the global liberal order and even as the “leader of the free world”.

Then came Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Since then, Merkel’s legacy has come under increased scrutiny. She has been heavily criticised for maintaining good relations with Russia and allegedly fostering “an irresponsible dependency on Russian gas”. “No German is more responsible for the crisis in Ukraine than Merkel”, Politico bluntly declared.

Her mammoth memoir, Freedom, is an attempt to salvage that reputation, the title encapsulating her opinion of herself as a defender of the liberal world order. Merkel uses its 720 pages to staunchly defend her record across issues such as austerity, nuclear energy, migration and Russia. On most topics, however, she deploys moral and psychological arguments, leaving the reader wanting for a deeper analysis of the broader economic and structural dynamics at play. Hence her management of the euro crisis was purely aimed at saving the blessed European project, with no mention of the way in which it benefited German banks. Similarly, her open-door immigration policy is justified on humanitarian grounds, with no acknowledgment of how it expanded Germany’s pool of low-wage labour to the benefit of domestic capital.

Merkel’s account of the Ukraine crisis, however, is the exception — probably because Merkel herself admits that, on this issue, her approach had little to do with morality and idealism, but was rather guided by hard-nosed realism, or realpolitik, as she puts it.

More than a decade ago, it was already clear to Merkel that the global balance of power was shifting away from the West towards the then-emerging Brics bloc, and that the “the United States struggled with relinquishing power”, blocking demands for the reform of international institutions such as the IMF and the WTO. Merkel favoured a more pragmatic approach, advocating for cooperation based on mutual interests, even as she acknowledged the profound ideological differences between Germany and non-Western countries like China.

The same logic applied to Russia. Merkel recalls how many Central and Eastern Europeans “seemed to wish that their gigantic neighbor would disappear from the map, simply cease to exist”. While she understood this sentiment, she also recognised a fundamental geopolitical reality: “Russia did exist and it was armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons. There was no wishing it away geopolitically, and there still isn’t.” One might not have liked Putin, but “that didn’t make Russia disappear from the map”.

Merkel recalls delivering an opening speech, at the 2007 Munich Security Conference, less than two years into her tenure as chancellor in which she highlighted the need to “seek dialogue with Russia despite our many differences of opinion”. Following her remarks, Putin delivered his now-famous speech, in which he vehemently criticised the inequities of the US-led unipolar order. Alluding to the Iraq War, he spoke of “an almost uncontained, hyper use of power”; he also vehemently condemned the missile defence system that the US planned to install in Europe. Unsurprisingly, he also criticised Nato’s eastward expansion.

While acknowledging that Putin’s speech was self-serving, Merkel admits that there were points that weren’t “completely absurd”: America’s invasion of Iraq, for example, and the failure to reach an agreement on updating the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe. Her grasp of the risks involved in ignoring Russia’s security concerns became a defining factor in her decision to block George W. Bush’s proposal to offer Ukraine and Georgia a formal pathway to Nato during the 2008 Bucharest summit. She understood that Russia viewed Nato membership for Ukraine, in particular, as an absolute red line — also due to the presence of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Crimea — and that Putin would have responded aggressively to such a move. Indeed, she argues in the book that, if Nato membership had been offered to Ukraine, war would have broken out even earlier at a greater military disadvantage for Ukraine. In light of subsequent events, this is hard to dispute.

But Merkel also makes another important point, noting that Nato should also be concerned about its own security risks when drawing countries into the alliance — whether formally or de facto. On this point, the risk of nuclear war that looms over the continent today has also proved Merkel right. In the end, she blocked the official pathway, but found herself with little alternative but to agree to the final communiqué, which declared that “these countries will become members of Nato”. Viewing this as a necessary compromise, she also recognised that the damage had already been done. By merely opening the door to the possibility, the alliance had fundamentally altered Russia’s military-strategic calculus. This effectively invited Putin to take pre-emptive measures to prevent what he now perceived as an inevitable outcome. As he warned Merkel: “You won’t be chancellor forever, and then [Ukraine and Georgia] will become NATO members. And I’m going to prevent that.”

“On this point, the risk of nuclear war that looms over the continent today has also proved Merkel right.”

A few months after the summit, Russian forces invaded Georgian territory. This followed an assault by the Georgian military — funded, armed and trained by the United States — on South Ossetia, which borders Russia. Although relations between the West and Russia grew increasingly strained from this point onward, Germany continued to deepen its economic ties with Moscow. In 2011, the 1,200-kilometre Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline was inaugurated, linking the Russian coast near Saint Petersburg to northeastern Germany. The agreement had been signed in 2005 by Putin and then-German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, just before the elections that brought Merkel to power.

Merkel defends the deal on straightforward economics: gas transported via pipelines was significantly cheaper than liquefied natural gas (LNG). Furthermore, the route eliminated additional transit fees associated with pipelines running through countries such as Ukraine and Poland. She also highlights that, as early as 2006, both the European Commission and the European Parliament had officially designated the project as “a project of European interest”, emphasising its role in promoting the sustainability and security of Europe’s energy supply.

From Merkel’s perspective, strengthening economic ties with Russia was not just an economic necessity but also a geopolitical imperative, as Europe had a vested interest in minimising the risk of conflict. In this context, economic interdependence was seen as a form of peace diplomacy. However, such an approach required other European countries — and, most crucially, the United States — to address Russia’s legitimate security concerns as well. As events in Ukraine would later demonstrate, however, the US had other plans.

Interestingly, Merkel offers little commentary on the critical period between the 2008 Bucharest summit and the 2014 Western-backed coup in Ukraine — or even on the coup itself. Germany, she insists, alongside other countries, had been working on a plan to defuse the increasingly violent protests. However, the protesters rejected the proposed agreement, ultimately forcing the democratically elected president to flee the country. Reflecting on the turn of events, Merkel admits: “I had trouble understanding what had happened in the previous eighteen months”.

This is surely disingenuous. While it is plausible that she was not directly involved in the regime change, she openly acknowledges her role in bringing Ukraine closer to the European Union. This, however, proved equally destabilising for Ukraine, as it compelled the country to make a zero-sum geopolitical — and even “civilisational” — choice between the West and Russia. This heightened the political divisions in the country, which ultimately resulted in the Euromaidan events following president Yanukovich’s decision to reject the proposed EU-Ukraine agreement and instead choose Russia as his country’s most important partner.

The eight years between the 2014 regime change in Kyiv and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 remain a subject of intense speculation. It is widely known that Germany and France played pivotal roles in brokering the Minsk agreements in 2014-2015, which were intended to bring an end to the civil war in eastern Ukraine. Among other things, they proposed constitutional reforms in Ukraine, including provisions for greater self-government in certain areas of the Donbas region.

However, the Minsk agreements were never fully implemented, and this failure ultimately contributed to the escalation of tensions that culminated in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Throughout the conflict, each side has blamed the other for the collapse of the negotiations. Russia has consistently argued that Ukraine was never genuinely committed to implementing the terms of the agreements. But what about the Western powers, particularly France and Germany, who acted as the brokers?

In 2022, Merkel gave an interview that seemed to lend some credence to Russia’s interpretation of events. Speaking to Die Zeit, she stated that the Minsk agreements were “an attempt to give Ukraine time” and that Ukraine “used this time to get stronger, as you can see today”. Many interpreted this as an admission that the Western parties involved in the negotiations — including Merkel herself — were never genuinely invested in securing a peaceful resolution. Instead, they saw the agreements as a ploy to buy Ukraine time to prepare for a military solution to the conflict. I am not convinced.

I have always read Merkel’s comments as an attempt to retroactively justify what critics perceive as her irresponsible appeasement of Russia. The US might have had a vested interest in escalating the situation in Ukraine — in part precisely as a means of driving a wedge between Germany and Russia, a longstanding US geostrategic imperative. But what conceivable interest would Merkel have had in passively enabling a full-scale conflict between Ukraine and Russia, especially when such an outcome would inevitably dismantle the German-Russian economic ties that she had spent over a decade cultivating?

It was no surprise, then, to find that in her book Merkel strongly defends her efforts to secure peace — or at the very least a ceasefire — in Ukraine. Her approach was grounded in the belief that “a military solution to the conflict, that is to say a Ukrainian military victory over the Russian troops, was an illusion”. She advised Ukraine’s new government that a resolution would not be possible without dialogue and diplomacy. This, she emphasised, did not mean “that Ukraine must not defend itself when its territory is invaded, but ultimately — and incidentally, this is not the only part of the world where this is true — diplomatic solutions must be found… I could even go so far as to say: there will be no military solution.”

However, it quickly became evident that the US had a different agenda. When President Obama informed her of plans to supply Ukraine with at least defensive weapons, Merkel voiced her “concern that any delivery of weapons would strengthen the forces within the Ukrainian government who hoped only for a military solution, even if that offered no prospect of success”. In her view, such actions risked emboldening extremist and ultranationalist factions within Ukraine — a development that, arguably, aligned with US strategic interests.

Her account also reveals that Putin was resolute in his desire to reach a diplomatic solution. However, it became increasingly clear that “the Minsk agreement wasn’t worth the paper it was written on”. Powerful forces — within Ukraine, the US and even Europe, particularly hawkish nations like Poland — were advocating for a military resolution to the conflict. Over time, these voices only grew louder.

Merkel, however, continued to go against the grain by further deepening Germany’s ties with Russia through the construction of a second gas pipeline, Nord Stream 2. Despite repeated efforts by the Trump administration to halt the project, Merkel remained steadfast. Ever since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, she has faced relentless criticism for allegedly creating “an irresponsible dependency on Russian gas”. Yet, in her book, she contends that US opposition to Nord Stream 2 was not driven by concerns for Germany’s security interests but rather by American economic ambitions.

“In truth, I felt that the United States was mobilizing its formidable economic and financial resources to prevent the business ventures of other countries, even their allies”, she writes. “The United States was chiefly interested in its own economic interests, as it wanted to export to Europe LNG obtained through fracking.” This sheds further light on what the Americans’ motivations may have been in escalating tensions in Ukraine: did they view it as a way of bringing the pipeline project to an end?

In 2019, Zelensky was elected on a platform promising to bring peace to Ukraine, largely by implementing the Minsk agreements. And it’s clear from Merkel’s account that she believes Zelensky took his mandate seriously, at first at least. However, he soon came under intense pressure from ultranationalists in Ukraine not to implement what was deemed a “capitulation”. At the Paris summit, later that year, Macron, Zelensky Putin and Merkel collectively committed in writing to the full implementation of the Minsk agreements — but in the end Zelensky refused to accept the agreed text.

“It’s clear from Merkel’s account that she believes Zelensky took his mandate seriously, at first at least.”

The pandemic, she writes, was “the last nail in the coffin of the Minsk agreement”. The absence of in-person meetings made it virtually impossible to resolve the lingering differences. And, by 2021, the agreements were dead. Nevertheless, shortly before leaving office, Merkel made one final attempt to broker peace by proposing a summit between the European Council and Putin. While Macron supported the initiative, Poland, Estonia and Lithuania opposed it, and the meeting never materialised. Merkel paid one last farewell visit to Moscow in August 2021, just months before the conclusion of her tenure.

Two decades of mutual encounters lay behind them — “an era during which Putin and, with him, Russia, had changed from a position of initial openness to the West to one of alienation from us”. And though Merkel does not state it explicitly, she evidently attributes at least part of the responsibility for how events unfolded to the attitude of Nato countries, particularly the United States. Her account makes it equally clear that she was steadfast in her commitment to avoiding war — and, frankly, there is little reason to doubt her sincerity.

This stance aligns not only with Germany’s economic and strategic interests, evident in her efforts to advance Nord Stream 2, but also with her understanding of the catastrophic consequences of a military conflict between Nato and Russia — “one of the world’s two leading nuclear powers along with the United States, and a geographical neighbor of the European Union”. This is a scenario that should be avoided at all costs, she writes. For her, along with that older generation of European politicians, this was not merely a matter of strategic calculation but basic common sense — two things that appear to be largely absent in the post-Merkel era.

A striking example of this shift can be seen in her successor. After the Ukraine invasion, Olaf Scholz drastically reversed Merkel’s Russia policy, announcing plans to wean Germany off Russian gas entirely. Scholz not only immediately halted the launch of Nord Stream 2; his government was also allegedly informed about a Ukrainian plot to blow up the pipeline and chose to remain silent. The dramatic economic consequences of this decoupling are currently playing out painfully. This approach would have been more logical if it had at least been accompanied by diplomatic efforts to de-escalate tensions in Ukraine. But this was not the case; indeed, Scholz waited over a year — several months after the outbreak of the war — before initiating any direct communication with Putin.

Would events have unfolded differently if Merkel had remained in power? Probably not; the forces she was up against were formidable and entrenched. But it’s difficult to imagine that she would have allowed Germany’s interests to be trampled over so blatantly, especially by its supposed American ally. Indeed, her entire tenure appears to have been guided by a persistent effort to balance Germany’s strategic interests with its transatlantic ties. If anything, her greatest shortcoming was failing to recognise that these goals had become fundamentally incompatible. Yet, it is emblematic of the paradoxical times we live in that, despite the many questionable decisions Merkel made during her chancellorship, the one aspect of her legacy that is most criticised in official Western discourse is the one thing she was unquestionably right about: trying to avoid war with Russia.


Thomas Fazi is an UnHerd columnist and translator. His latest book is The Covid Consensus, co-authored with Toby Green.

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Caradog Wiliams
Caradog Wiliams
9 days ago

Every day we see these politicians who know what is best for ‘people’. They are everywhere, under every stone, in all parliaments.. They are never, ever ‘the people’ themselves because they are special. Miliband comes to mind as non-people.
Merkel was non-people for many years. She got the votes because she was Mutti and Mutti always does best for the ‘people’, doesn’t she?

Santiago Excilio
Santiago Excilio
9 days ago

I’m convinced she’s a KGB/FSB sleeper agent.

Caradog Wiliams
Caradog Wiliams
9 days ago

She always looks quite sleepy, so you must be right.

El Uro
El Uro
9 days ago

By the way, if you add a mustache to her full-face portrait, Mutti Merkel will look very much like Papi Adolf.

Last edited 9 days ago by El Uro
Graham Stull
Graham Stull
7 days ago
Reply to  El Uro

‘Vati’ or ‘Papa’. Also ‘moustache’. ‘Mustache’ is American.

Gayle Buhler
Gayle Buhler
9 days ago

Me too!

Josef Švejk
Josef Švejk
9 days ago

She would have to be FSB. Nobody else but a Russian mole could have crippled Germany as successfully as her.

LindaMB
LindaMB
8 days ago

Her family did move TO East Germany, the Soviet satellite, when she was a child.

c donnellan
c donnellan
8 days ago

That’s a dumb take.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
9 days ago

Yep, that’s the problem with the Blairite idea that government should be left to The People Who Know Best: there’s no such thing; they don’t exist.

Tony Price
Tony Price
8 days ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

However a lot of commentators on this site think that government should be left to strong and authoritative leaders, ie dictators, elected by a self-serving sector of the population (the huddled masses will be disenfranchised) and then able to entrench their position permanently (or presumably until a revolution knocks them off). These are, presumably, the new ‘people who know best’ – how is that a better solution?

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
8 days ago
Reply to  Tony Price

Straw man, I’m afraid. So far as I’ve been able to tell, the only authoritarians on this site are the socialist trolls. Describing your opponents as ‘fascists’ or fans of dictatorship doesn’t make them so. As we’ve seen in the UK in recent months the only real threat of dictatorship comes from the left and, especially their religious fundamentalist allies.

Tony Price
Tony Price
8 days ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

Describing your opponents as ‘trolls’ doesn’t make them so, but it is a useful way to ignore other points of view.

Deb Grant
Deb Grant
7 days ago
Reply to  Tony Price

Seriously, no.

Stephanie Surface
Stephanie Surface
8 days ago

She only stayed so long in government, because she formed coalitions with other parties, which lost their spine. She sucked out the essence of her coalition partners, therefore her nickname: black spider. She is responsible for not only wrecking Germany, but also by wielding such power in the EU’s bureaucracy, that she also ruined many other European countries. The whole benign “Mutti” image hid a deeply Machiavellian politician.

Last edited 8 days ago by Stephanie Surface
Tyler Durden
Tyler Durden
8 days ago

The most mature thread I’ve read so far on Unherd – well done for starting it and finding some many enlightened friends there.

Andrew Boughton
Andrew Boughton
8 days ago

Spot-on And in actual fact, they view themselves much like Greek gods in Olympus. The competition up there is between the Intelligence and popular Political gods.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
9 days ago

Putting a communist aparatchik in charge of a strong free country was historically dumber than a sack of hammers. Even if she thought had liberated herself she was still a communist aparatchik albeit in a nice pantsuit.

Maverick Melonsmith
Maverick Melonsmith
9 days ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

I disagree! The pantsuit wasn’t that nice!

Jonathan Story
Jonathan Story
9 days ago

There is and has been only one policy for the Ukraine, and that is neutrality. It didn’t work in the past; but war doesn’t work now. The Ukrainians don’t want neutrality; they seem to want EU and NATO membership. That is clearly not in the European interest. Also it is not in the Russian interest. Nor is it in the German interest.

Martin Johnson
Martin Johnson
9 days ago
Reply to  Jonathan Story

Neutrality worked for Finland and Austria throughout the Cold War, it could have worked for Ukraine in the post-Cold War.

Michael Cazaly
Michael Cazaly
9 days ago
Reply to  Martin Johnson

Its rulers were paid for it not to…

Maverick Melonsmith
Maverick Melonsmith
9 days ago
Reply to  Martin Johnson

Finland has now realized the error of its ways though.

Tony Price
Tony Price
8 days ago
Reply to  Martin Johnson

Well it didn’t work for them in and around 1940 now did it!

Deb Grant
Deb Grant
7 days ago
Reply to  Martin Johnson

Those days are long over.

Tony Price
Tony Price
8 days ago
Reply to  Jonathan Story

Damn those pesky Ukrainians for wanting to decide their own future – how very dare they! Having millions killed by Russia in living memory probably has something to do with their position.

Deb Grant
Deb Grant
7 days ago
Reply to  Jonathan Story

It’s the right of the Ukrainian people to chose. And morally, that’s all that counts.

There’s a madman running Russia, willing to shoot himself in the foot and all the feet of Russian people.

No peoples want war nowadays, they don’t see the benefit. It’s only a bunch of backwards factions who see violence as any kind of solution.

Colin Haller
Colin Haller
7 days ago
Reply to  Jonathan Story

So very much this. Bismarck understood only too well the imperative for Germany to stay onside with Russia, which was the essence of his diplomacy leading to the League of Three Emperors. A callow and foolish Kaiser Wilhelm II allowed that treat to lapse, leading Bismarck to resign in frustration and disgust. The Germans have been paying for this error ever since …

Tony Taylor
Tony Taylor
10 days ago

Are we sure Mutti was not (still is?) an East German sleeper agent dedicated to wrecking Germany’s capitalist industry heartland? (The Lives of Mothers, ho ho.)

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
9 days ago
Reply to  Tony Taylor

As a member of the Stasi, she contributed to the economic collapse of Germany in the interests of Russia. And her migration policy (Mutti Merkel) caused irrecoverable damage (remember the terrible events of 2014 in Cologne and many more such cases , which official propaganda diligently hides and whitewashes
).

El Uro
El Uro
9 days ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

I fear that the entire European continent has suffered from her migration policies.

Gayle Buhler
Gayle Buhler
9 days ago
Reply to  El Uro

And I believe that was her aim all along.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
9 days ago

Somehow I think she is disingenuous at best and lying at worst. If what she says is true then why did she willfully wreck and underfund the Bundeswehr? Her political decisions have all but detroyed German society and social cohesion. She cannot read people and was never able to think on her feet. She destroyed German conservatism and is single-handedly responsible for the emergence of the AfD. Altogether a disaster for Germany.

El Uro
El Uro
9 days ago

This followed an assault by the Georgian military — funded, armed and trained by the United States — on South Ossetia, which borders Russia” – Fazi, sorry, the war was started after South Ossetian forces started shelling Georgian villages. I don’t understand why I should correct you on so well-known issue.

Last edited 9 days ago by El Uro
Roger Inkpen
Roger Inkpen
8 days ago
Reply to  El Uro

More to the point, South Ossetia is part of Georgia. Considering how Putin ‘diplomatically’ destroyed Chechnya it would be hypocritical of him to argue Georgia – or Ukraine for that matter – have no right to defend their own territory.

Tony Price
Tony Price
8 days ago
Reply to  El Uro

What? Russia started it? Surely not?

Mike DeMarco
Mike DeMarco
9 days ago

Been saying for years that she is very lucky there was a silly mustached man who once ran Germany or she would be in the running for worst leader in German history

Maverick Melonsmith
Maverick Melonsmith
9 days ago
Reply to  Mike DeMarco

The silly mustached man did a lot of really bad things, but at least he didn’t make the mistake of trusting the Russians.

Tony Price
Tony Price
8 days ago

They made the mistake of trusting him!

Maverick Melonsmith
Maverick Melonsmith
7 days ago
Reply to  Tony Price

Sure. I am not talking him up, I am talking them down.

Alan Lambert
Alan Lambert
6 days ago
Reply to  Tony Price

LOL

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
9 days ago

Lord Robertson in a recent interview said that when he was Secretary General of NATO he met Putin nine times and on none of these occasions did Putin object to Ukraine joining NATO. He did however object to it joining the EU. That would have made it part of a supranational entity.
Merkel’s defence of her record does not stack up. Nor does Fazi’s anti-American review. Putin sees Ukraine as basically Russian with no right to exist as a separate state. Germany under Schroeder, Merkel and Schulz knew this but appeased him nonetheless for vested economic interests. Democracy in Europe has never been able to depend on the Germans. They always tend to extremes and since 1945 have basically been pacifists. But their leaders tend to obfuscate their true position. The legacy of Streseman lives on. Merkel’s self-serving memoirs prove this.
Alan Sked.

Terry M
Terry M
9 days ago

Bush and Biden should NOT have pushed for, or supported NATO membership for Ukraine. Russia is a paranoid country with an inferiority complex, not unjustifiably so. Biden should have signaled that Ukraine was not going to be offered NATO membership any time soon. The bloodshed might have been avoided.

Maverick Melonsmith
Maverick Melonsmith
9 days ago
Reply to  Terry M

Yes. Giving in to paranoid countries with inferiority complexes is sound policy.

Roger Inkpen
Roger Inkpen
8 days ago
Reply to  Terry M

Nonsense. The Baltic states have successfully joined Nato, despite neighbouring Russia (and like Ukraine being former Soviet colonies). They were fortunate to join while Russia was still weak. If Ukraine had joined then, they would have been safe from Russian attack.
And just like the Baltic states, Ukraine would have been zero threat to Russia.

Graeme Cant
Graeme Cant
7 days ago
Reply to  Roger Inkpen

The problem is not whether Ukraine is a threat (real or imagined) to Russia. The problem is that Ukraine’s simple existence as a separate country is a standing reminder of Russia’s weakness and loss of status. More especially when its government is antagonistic to Russia and rejects it and its culture. That’s why the Donbas and Crimea weren’t happily part of a Western-leaning Ukraine.

Maverick Melonsmith
Maverick Melonsmith
6 days ago
Reply to  Graeme Cant

Well, hopefully when the war is over, Ukraine will purge whatever remains of “Russian culture” within its borders.

Johannes van Vliet
Johannes van Vliet
9 days ago

You cannot avoid war with Russia by appeasing Putin. As was constantly done by Germany. Avoiding war would have been well served by recognising this.

Maverick Melonsmith
Maverick Melonsmith
8 days ago

Exactly. No more so than you could avoid war with Germany by appeasing Hitler.

Anders Borg Sundgren
Anders Borg Sundgren
9 days ago

There are so many omissions of generally acceptable facts in this article that it reads like a propaganda piece.

Germany’s policy of “Wandel durch Handel” meant that they exported key technology and know-how to the Russian war machine for decades, which made German industrialists rich and ensured that Russia could modernize its military industry. And the self-manufactured dependency on Russian oil meant that they were stuck in a situation where conflict with Russia would mean de-industrialization of Germany, which is currently taking place.

Without the leverage in Russia, Putin would never have dared to invade Ukraine.

And beyond this, it is just a fact that Russia engaged in year after year of political destabilization with the sole purpose of making Ukraine into another Belarus – a corrupt autocracy with Moscow as puppet master. The attempts to correct this attempted takeover were not a coup, but an attempt to ensure proper governance.

Putin has made it very clear that his sole goal as leader (beyond stealing enough from the Russian people to become the richest man in the world) is to rebuild the Russian Empire, which is nothing else than the authoritarian domination by Moscow of all peoples in Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. And that Ukraine was and is the most significant threat to this vision, given that it is a country with tens of millions of Eastern Slavs who do not want to be subjugated (again). Hence the death lists for Ukraine speakers that the invasion forces carried. They want to eradicate the strongest threat to total Moscow hegemony.

Moscow is an imperial project of the worst kind. And the mortal sin of Merkel, Schroeder and the Germans was to cozy put to them to enrich themselves.

Andrew Boughton
Andrew Boughton
8 days ago

Keep the hatred burning bright, there, Anders. But you stop far too short. We haven’t punished Germany, Japan and Italy properly for World war II – you agree? Instead, we rewarded them. Versailles should have been our model in 1945, and is the model for Russia now, for the just cause of crushing our hated enemy. Happily for all of us, we managed with luck and profound skill to avoid re-integrating Russia into Europe after 1991. I mean, can you imagine how all that peace and mutual prosperity might have ruined Europe, while equally enriching Russia?

Last edited 8 days ago by Andrew Boughton
Anders Borg Sundgren
Anders Borg Sundgren
7 days ago

No need for hate, what’s needed is some realpolitik.

The proper comparison is not Russia in 2022, or 2014, with Nazi Germany in 1945 or Germany in 1918. It is Russia and the Soviet Union in 1991. And if there is blame to share on actions from “the West”, it should be directed at functionally stupid ideologues like Jeffrey Sachs and their “shock therapy”. That laid the foundation for the ressentment-fueled rise to power of the Siloviki and the takeover of Russia by their Deep State. And after that, there is no possibility of peaceful coexistence with Moscow, peace is won through strength.

Germany has attempted the opposite path for the last 30 years, and have won nothing from it. And they have dragged down the rest of Europe and NATO with them.

Russia is not Moscow, but Moscow calls the shots and their driving force is empire. All other analyses are wishful thinking.

Andrew Boughton
Andrew Boughton
1 day ago

Agree completely about Shock Therapy. I helped bring in a project for the Americans to re-design Sberbank in 1992, and argued strongly against Shock Therapy, with a side story that has never been told. At least Jeffrey has redeemed himself latterly.

Maverick Melonsmith
Maverick Melonsmith
7 days ago

Germany, Japan and Italy did go through some stages where they were “the enemy” of the Anglosphere, but those stages were relatively short in duration. Russia has however always been “the enemy” (even through some periods of uneasy alliance).

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
9 days ago

In 2015, Merkel started the destruction of Western Europe with a thoroughness that the Wehrmacht could have only dreamt of. Si momumentum requiris, circumspice.

El Uro
El Uro
9 days ago

Powerful forces — within Ukraine, the US and even Europe, particularly hawkish nations like Poland — were advocating for a military resolution to the conflict. Over time, these voices only grew louder
…When President Obama informed her of plans to supply Ukraine with at least defensive weapons…
.
As far as I remember, during Trump’s presidency, Ospreys flew over the Dnieper in Kyiv, and military actions on the contact line between Ukrainian and “separatist” forces practically ceased. And it was not Obama or Biden who first gave weapons to Ukraine, but the Bad Orange Man. There was no talk of any military solution to the conflict then.
It seems that at that time, Fazi and I were living in non-intersecting realities.

Last edited 9 days ago by El Uro
Billy Bob
Billy Bob
8 days ago

So Britain and the US feared (correctly as it turned out) that Russia was looking to invade Ukraine in the near future, so as signatories to the Budapest Memorandum spent a decade helping to train and equip Ukrainian forces to help them defend themselves from Russian aggression.
While this was going on their fellow NATO member Germany was making itself wholly dependent on gas from a possible future adversary in order to save a few Euros.
Where is the hard nosed German realpolitik in this?

El Uro
El Uro
9 days ago

However, the protesters rejected the proposed agreement, ultimately forcing the democratically elected president to flee the country” – After the shooting of more than a hundred people in Kyiv.

Michael Cazaly
Michael Cazaly
9 days ago
Reply to  El Uro

The question is…by whom?

El Uro
El Uro
9 days ago
Reply to  Michael Cazaly

By Ukrainian Nazis, you have no doubt

Michael Cazaly
Michael Cazaly
9 days ago
Reply to  El Uro

I have considerable doubt but I know the result. Look at cui bono is normally a good indicator…

El Uro
El Uro
9 days ago
Reply to  Michael Cazaly

QAnon?

Michael Cazaly
Michael Cazaly
9 days ago
Reply to  El Uro

Did it?

Maverick Melonsmith
Maverick Melonsmith
8 days ago
Reply to  Michael Cazaly

I don’t know, but whoever it was, I would buy them a beer.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
8 days ago

Rather than trying to prevent military conflict via pure dialogue, Merkel could have boosted Germany’s military defense expenditures to 2% of GDP. At the end of the day, her governing model was dependent on the United States paying for Germany’s defense (while the German economy and social safety net boomed), selling manufactured goods abroad (largely to China) using cheap Russian gas (using the United States’ nuclear umbrella to protect against Russia). Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but surely Merkel could have used common sense and seen that the United States would not pay for Germany forever? Would it have destroyed Germany to buy US LNG or boost Germany’s defense spending to 2% GDP? Now Germany’s playing “catch up”, German government and demographics appear to be declining, China is no longer purchasing German goods, Russia is making war, and the United States is demanding payment.. Merkel’s model depended on “borrowing” defense from the United States, “borrowing” cheap energy from Russia, and “borrowing” money from other nations used to purchase German goods to fund the German state. Eventually, all promissory notes become due.

Peter B
Peter B
9 days ago

Reality check for Mr Fazi: NATO is not at war with Russia.
There is no justification for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Period. Apologists like Mr. Fazi will keep banging on implying otherwise, but it won’t change the facts.
There is very little to be admired about Merkel. The best you might say is that the alternatives at the time may have been even worse. She allowed herself to be bullied by Putin during her time in office and did not (as Fazi implies) defend Germany’s actual and enduring interests.
Yet more fatuous guff from Fazi about this supposed BRICS alliance. It doesn’t exist. Russia, China and India have less in common with each other and fewer mutual interests than Germany does with the US.

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
9 days ago
Reply to  Peter B

The Minsk Agreements look better and better as time marches on.

Kirk Susong
Kirk Susong
9 days ago
Reply to  Peter B

Yes, the author makes lots of assertions — such as the supposed incompatibility of American and German interests — without providing any compelling support for the claims.

I blame the editors.

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
9 days ago
Reply to  Kirk Susong

Why? The whole point of Unherd is for writers to put a view forward- which may or may not appear in msm – which can then be critiqued.

If you have a problem with that, unsubscribe.

Tony Price
Tony Price
8 days ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

I disagree with most of what you say – but not this!

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
8 days ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

Quite likely I will.

If the editors had pointed out the holes in the article, after an update, the readers might have been better informed, and still subscribers.

Andrew Boughton
Andrew Boughton
8 days ago

Quite likely you won’t.

Andrew Boughton
Andrew Boughton
8 days ago
Reply to  Kirk Susong

How much did the DOJ fine VW for things akin to what American companies routinely do? How many Siemens executives did the DOJ prosecute and jail for a relatively minor kickback for travel cards in Argentina, versus how many IBM executives were tried and jailed for an infinitely worse bribery scandal involving the murder of the key state’s witness, and blackmail of the state’s prosecutor in a honey trap in that country? Ask Frederic Pierucci how things ended for the former crown jewel in his premier French engineering company. Ask the owners of Chinese companies lately being raped. There are libraries full of proof. The real wars are economic. I blame the arrogant ignorance of know-it-all readers who know nothing at all.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
9 days ago
Reply to  Peter B

‘Justification’ is not a word that has much traction in international relations and the liberal pretence that it does is the fundamental cause of most of the mayhem we’ve witnessed in the past thirty years.

Michael Cazaly
Michael Cazaly
9 days ago
Reply to  Peter B

What they have in common is the wish not to be dominated by the USA, and the recognition that those who don’t hang together will hang separately. It seems to be a powerful incentive.

Andrew Holmes
Andrew Holmes
9 days ago
Reply to  Michael Cazaly

Being “dominated” by the US seems to be a light burden, given Merkel’s history towards Russia contrary to US wishes and its comfort with resting under the US’s nuclear umbrella.

Michael Cazaly
Michael Cazaly
9 days ago
Reply to  Andrew Holmes

Not so light now though…in fact very expensive

Andrew Boughton
Andrew Boughton
8 days ago
Reply to  Andrew Holmes

By ‘umbrella’ you mean ‘umbrella cloud’.

Andrew Holmes
Andrew Holmes
9 days ago
Reply to  Peter B

Fazi argues that Putin’s Russia is only reacting to western threats and errors in judgment. He ignores Putin’s repeated statements of intent to reestablish in some form the USSR’s empire, at least with the subordination of as many of the adjacent countries as is possible. Taking the Crimea was one step, violating Russia’s commitment to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty. The second step was to invade when the Ukraine’s people displaced Russia’s toadie. Acknowledge that Putin has agency.

Michael Cazaly
Michael Cazaly
9 days ago
Reply to  Andrew Holmes

Russia’s toadie was the President elected in an election widely recognised as being valid, as in “free and fair”.
If the displacement of a duly elected President is “acceptable”, presumably other means of “changing policy” are equally valid…sauce, goose, gander etc.
If force is the preferred means, it is foolish to believe others won’t use it.
And yes, of course Putin has agency, just like the other “players”.

Maverick Melonsmith
Maverick Melonsmith
9 days ago
Reply to  Michael Cazaly

When the Ukrainian people elected the Russian toadie, did they know that is what he was? There is no doubt about it now. I mean, he lives in Russia.

Gorka Sillero
Gorka Sillero
8 days ago
Reply to  Michael Cazaly

Extremely disingenuous but not as much as “toadie” compulsive liar Fazi

Josef O
Josef O
8 days ago

She can write a autobiography of 1500 pages, it will not save her. She was a disaster for Germany, Europe and the Western world. What an irony the title of her book is Freedom.Fullstop.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
9 days ago

“No German is more responsible for the crisis in Ukraine than Merkel”, Politico bluntly declared.
Well, there were the Minsk Agreements and Ukraine being neutral where NATO was concerned, but those were just words on paper as it turned out. But somehow, I doubt her role in that is what Politico is talking about. Politico also leaves out Western meddling, US meddling, in Ukraine’s internal affairs, dictating who would and would not lead the country.

Tony Price
Tony Price
8 days ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

I thought that it was the electorate who determined who ran the country – silly me! Indeed ‘just words on paper’, like Russia’s guarantee of Ukrainian sovereignty when they took away their nuclear toys in 1992.

c donnellan
c donnellan
8 days ago

She was wrong on everything, especially Russia and mass immigration.

M L Hamilton Anderson
M L Hamilton Anderson
8 days ago

Another perspective to consider…..
As any good psychologist will tell you – over-empathisers have marshmallow boundaries.
Could Angela have indeed (through collective guilt from days past) over-empathised with the flood of migrants she let in to Germany, and consequently outed a Germany with weak boundaries (borders).
The consequences in a relationship, and the consequences for a country are the same: exploitation, disrespect, sacrificing wellbeing and constantly at the mercy of others.
Angela gave Germany’s power away.
Good policy should never be influenced by emotion.

Andrew Boughton
Andrew Boughton
1 day ago

Spot on.

james elliott
james elliott
8 days ago

“Wir schaffen das!” was the biggest, most catastrophic mistake made by any German Chancellor in 80-odd years.

Mark epperson
Mark epperson
8 days ago

Another Fossil politician who retired way beyond their sell-by date. Merkel was great for Germany, up to a point, and then used her power to stifle new ideas and different ways and means of accomplishing what was good for Germany that she didn’t agree with. This is the time to cut them loose as real damage to a nation occurs when “they know best”. However, the US and Germany seem to be stuck with these mummies seemingly forever. It is due to the parties procedurally locking out new folks who will take away their power and means to secure wealth for themselves. Out of the 435 seats in the US House, I believe there are only 30 to 40, maybe less, that can be flipped. This is absurd and I am sure it was the same in Germany until Scholz was elected and the bottom fell out. No leadership, just blind obedience to the party and we end up with morons leading us.
Their is a new Sherrif in Town in the USA and hopefully, we will be jettisoning not only these inept politicians of both parties but the senior bureaucrats in the Federal government who are mummified and inept as the folks who put them there.

Maverick Melonsmith
Maverick Melonsmith
7 days ago
Reply to  Mark epperson

I hope he can at least spell “Sheriff”.

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
8 days ago

“Wir Schaffen Das” – Angela Merkl
No, the Germans ultimately couldn’t….

Andrew Boughton
Andrew Boughton
8 days ago

Thomas is nuanced and brilliant. One passage resonates in particular with me from first-hand experience, and in light of Germany having been the US’s most formidable commercial competitor until now – and until 1991-2, her Axis ally, Japan, thereby ‘losing the peace’. “In truth, I felt that the United States was mobilizing its formidable economic and financial resources to prevent the business ventures of other countries, even their allies”, she writes. “The United States was chiefly interested in its own economic interests, as it wanted to export to Europe LNG obtained through fracking.” As Merkel knows but isn’t publicly admitting out of shame, and for personal safety, Siemens, VW, and other powerful German corporations have been relentlessly targeted by US intelligence, working effectively at times with the DOJ, to hobble them vis a vis US competitors. Her phone tapping served more than one agenda. But the British and French have had the same experience. Frenemies indeed, yet Scholtz weakly folded on German interests. Now Germany and Russia are safely ‘Japanized’ the world is almost, from a US perspective, to rights again. Onward with China. At which point the American strategists will prove to have been, as one of them put it threateningly to me in 1993, too clever for their own good. For there will be little to win, and everything to lose, in a played-out zero-sum ‘great game’. The business of the world is, after all, business and not politics. World peace does come, after all, through world trade, if not tripped up by our respective security services. Politics is the ultimate unreality game, that merely fulfils its own false prophecies.

Last edited 8 days ago by Andrew Boughton
charlie martell
charlie martell
7 days ago

Merkel was all ” Jam today, pay tomorrow”.

She used the German economic strength to bribe the people with all sorts of goodies. The cheques are coming in.

She relentlessly , recklessly, pursued and energy policy which was bound to have bad consequences.

This seems like another revisionist book by a politician, gone but can’t bear being gone

Last edited 7 days ago by charlie martell
Dan Bulla
Dan Bulla
6 days ago

You can always count on a revisionist book from a failed politician, finding others to blame for their failures, grossly exaggerating their successes (if there were any) or inventing successes (if there were none). But, mostly, to try to remain relevant and still get invited to cocktail parties of the perceived elites. Examples are endless, including Obama, both Bushes, Hillary and Bill, and on and on.

Stephen Webb
Stephen Webb
8 days ago

It’s true about her dubious practical achievements. But she was truly remarkable politician in terms of temperament, and particular her indifference to the 24/7 media – the way she outlasted and outwitted her opponents, mainly by giving them enough rope to hang themselves, was impressive
https://sfhwebb.substack.com/p/blair-merkel-and-the-feral-media?r=1cycu5

Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
8 days ago

The usual casuistry from Fazi about Ukraine. Almost a word for word similar”justification” could have been written (and was, by the National Socialists) for Hitler’s assault on Poland! There was no “coup” in Ukraine in 2014 in any honest use of the term. The pro- Russian president fled, despite having overwhelming military and police preponderance against the protestors (many of whom were shot in cold blood).

If a Parliamentary/ Presidential stand off represents a “coup”, then Yeltsin mounted one in 1993 and Putin’s subsequent elevation as his hand picked successor becomes illegitimate. Anyway, the cowardice (and kleptocratic) avarice of Yanukovych at least prevented a bloody civil war. James 2nd also fled, and we don’t usually think that undermines the entire post 1688 legitimacy of the government of Great Britain (although some truly oddball people on the far Right in fact do).

Of course, the Americans and more generally the West may have made errors of judgement in a very difficult situation, short of complete nihilistic cynicism. But a bigger factor might well have been Putin’s increasingly paranoic isolation and imbibing of extremely biased history during covid. Recall how he publicly and sinisterly browbeat all his senior ministers on his own decision to go to war, an extraordinary step in twenty first century Europe.

It is extraordinary (or maybe not) how Fazi doesn’t mention the Bucha atrocities (which is a suburb of Kiev by the way), which is what actually repelled Zelensky from any notion that the Russians were honourable and genuine interlocutors in reaching a peace settlement.

Last edited 8 days ago by Andrew Fisher
Laimantas Jonušys
Laimantas Jonušys
8 days ago

Ukraine’s NATO membership being a red line for Putin is rubbish. From the Russian perspective this looks quite flawed and misguided. No sane person could believe that the territory of Ukraine could be used by NATO as a terrain for a military invasion of Russia.
But even more misguided is the attempt of Putin to reiterate the global rivalry with the United States which was feasible during the Soviet era, but now is detrimental and senseless not only for the world peace but even for Russia itself. Russia has huge natural resources which could be used for the benefit of its people, instead of launching wars to grab even more territory, in a renewed imperialist drive.

 

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
7 days ago

 “Putin was resolute in his desire to reach a diplomatic solution”
Not that resolute, clearly.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
7 days ago

This is a classic piece of old school left-progressive anti-Americanism, in which everyone else is just a naif, blown about the machinations of Washington.
While the Russians are just misunderstood and yearning for a little love and sympathy.

Gordon Arta
Gordon Arta
7 days ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Talking about Putin ‘there were points that weren’t “completely absurd’. Not something you can say about Fazi.

Maverick Melonsmith
Maverick Melonsmith
9 days ago

One might not have liked Putin, but “that didn’t make Russia disappear from the map”. One can accept Russia’s being ‘on the map’ without falling into the idiocy of trading with it.

John Ramsden
John Ramsden
8 days ago

As the article explains, she reasoned that it was better to have Russia trading with the West and thus interdependent or, as Lyndon B Johnson would have put it, inside the tent pissing out, and not outside (with the Chinese for example) pissing in!
I remember Robin Cook crowing about a 30 year deal he had just finalised to trade Russian gas, and wondering what colour the sky was on his planet, to believe that could be geopolitically sustained for 30 years. But presumably he had the same idea.

Maverick Melonsmith
Maverick Melonsmith
8 days ago
Reply to  John Ramsden

Yes, I get what Merkel’s policy was. I just think it was idiotic. I don’t recall Lyndon Johnson outsourcing anything vital to the Russians.

Tyler Durden
Tyler Durden
8 days ago

Best piece I’ve read recently on the causes of the Ukraine war, highlighting the competition between European neoliberal and Anglo neoconservative elites (the UK as a subordinate to the US).
Another consideration is that the US sought export markets for their significant production of shale gas. They’ve found that European market in the last 2 years.

Andrew Boughton
Andrew Boughton
8 days ago
Reply to  Tyler Durden

Nice. Love your moniker.

Michael Lipkin
Michael Lipkin
9 days ago

Well you could buy the gas, provided all the extra income was spent on massive piles of weaponry.
There is no point in talking to Putin at all if one does not have a nuclear weapon in one’s handbag.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
8 days ago

What!? Her appeasement to Russia and increased dependency on Russia oil only empowered and enabled the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I can’t believe this article tries to exculpate Merkel. At best she’s another Chamberlin, at worst a commie subtour who cannablized her country.

Philip K
Philip K
2 days ago

I’ve always thought that the destruction of the gas pipelines was not in anyone’s interest in Europe or Russia, but was a big incentive for other energy providers, such as the US. Not only could energy be sold for profit, but also expensive energy would cripple European economies (domestic consumers would be collateral damage). I think the providers economic interests and well being (the US?) would trump other considerations.

Dash Riprock
Dash Riprock
8 days ago

The gas dependency on Russia was a disaster.
Ukraine was not on the way to joining NATO. It remained a distant possibility with many NATO members extremely cautious, including the US under Obama.
Fazi as usual slips in the ‘CIA-backed coup’ as if it’s an established fact, which it certainly is not.
Putin may not have liked the expansion of NATO but it’s kept those countries safe, which is a good thing.

Michael Clarke
Michael Clarke
9 days ago

Excellent piece. It was Joni Mitchell who said you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone! Merkel was right about getting rid of nuclear power. It is lethally dangerous, it is dirty with a waste legacy that will last 24,000 years (based on current technology) and it is very expensive. Merkel’s problem, Europe’s problem indeed, was that while she recognized the need to decouple Europe (by which I don’t just mean the EU) from US control she lacked the courage a real leader needs to take on that challenge. The European continent will need to find a leader(s) to take on that challenge when the Ukraine War ends.

Last edited 9 days ago by Michael Clarke
Robert Appleby
Robert Appleby
8 days ago
Reply to  Michael Clarke

“You do know what you’ve got till it’s gone..” – the dreaded ‘US hegemony’ was the rebuilding of Europe post WW2 to be the prosperous self determining democracies that have allowed EU to prosper on the buoyant free market economy that is USA. The US treasure spent to achieve this has weakened ‘US hegemony’ as Merkle would see it. Merkles’ behaviour, actions, decisions were those of a person programmed (by the Stasi and KGB) to destroy all that. Too late, it’s gone…

Steve Gwynne
Steve Gwynne
8 days ago
Reply to  Michael Clarke

I too thought it was a good piece, especially about the war in Ukraine. I think Fazi captures many nuances which treads a fine line of impartiality. He might not have all his facts right but the best appraisal I’ve read to date.