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November 23, 2024 - 1:30pm
The title of Angela Merkel’s newly-published memoir consists of one word: Freedom. As it happens, “freedom” was also the name and central motif of Kamala Harris’s failed campaign for the US presidency — and the comparisons between the two female politicians don’t end there. In an interview this week for the German magazine Der Spiegel, Merkel laments Donald Trump’s recent election victory, while her overall tone is closer to that of a Left-leaning US Democrat than a European conservative.
Who, then, was the last conservative German chancellor? Certainly not Merkel. One would have to say, paradoxically, that it was Gerhard Schroeder. The Social Democratic leader, who left office in 2005, advanced labour and welfare reforms which saved the country from economic decline. Though his government began Germany’s nuclear phase-out, this mostly happened on paper and was planned as a long-term process. Installed capacity for nuclear power barely changed during his tenure, but declined precipitously under Merkel, his successor and the second-longest serving chancellor in German history.
While Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) took over from a coalition between the Social Democrats and the Greens, in hindsight her policies were largely borrowed from the Green playbook. It might even be fair to call her the first Green chancellor of Germany.
This might sound hyperbolic yet, more than any of her predecessors, Merkel pushed through the energy transition which was largely responsible for the ongoing collapse of German industry. When she came into office, there was a solid 20 GW of nuclear power; by the time she departed, this had dwindled to a little over 5 GW. While Schroeder was derided as “Gas-Gerd” for his links to Russian energy companies, it was his successor who sealed German dependence on Russian gas with Nord Stream 2 and a general ban on fracking in 2017.
All of this happened at a time when Russia’s intentions for Eastern Europe were entirely obvious. Wars in Georgia and the annexation of Crimea in 2014 sent a clear signal to the West that Moscow maintained its own vision of a post-Cold War order. Whatever one thinks of Russia’s motives, smart foreign policy would have prioritised a reduced dependency on Vladimir Putin, if only for Germany to hedge its bets. Instead, Merkel went all in, holding a permanently ambiguous position on Ukraine that neither allowed for Nato membership nor the necessary rearmaments in case of Russian aggression.
When asked about this in the new Der Spiegel interview, Merkel gives no sign of remorse. In her telling, she always knew how dangerous Putin was, but cannot explain why she then proceeded to provide him with an effective veto on German industrial policy.
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SubscribeIt is amazing how her behavior, down to the smallest detail, resembles the behavior of today’s US Democrats.
As E.O.Wilson said, “Great Idea. Wrong Species.”
We all are wrong species for these overeducated but fundamentally unteachable idiots.
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PS. It’s interesting to compare this excellent article with another one here: “Democrats refuse to change course on trans”. Apparently, the only way to be “progressive” is to deny reality. You must claim that everything in the world is subordinated to your desires, and the more idiotic your desires, the more aggressive your madness in realizing them.
Merkel is exactly like Harris, or Biden, or Starmer, or the last half dozen Tory leaders. Is it fair to say Merkel was the mother who first gave birth to the wave of radical progressive leaders across the west, who have all pursued destructive policies driven by luxury beliefs?
She became the German leader in 2005. We are fortunate in North America because Trudeau wasn’t elected until 2015, and Biden wasn’t elected until 2020.
Maybe she’s just an unreconstructed East German who never really subscribed to Western ideals. She came to maturity in the Cold War east. Did her heart ever leave?