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

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.”

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.

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.

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