During her 16 years as German chancellor, Angela Merkel was frequently praised for her leadership. Yet as John Ryan argues, many of the problems currently facing Germany have their origins in the decisions she made while in power.
Chancellor Angela Merkel was a successful politician with four consecutive election victories between 2005 and 2017. On a personal level she was serious and projected integrity. Over her long reign as Germany’s top political figure, she was often praised, but Merkel was throughout more of a manager than a visionary.
The rise of the AfD
Public discontent with the grand coalition of the traditional mainstream CDU and SPD parties showed itself in the 2017 election. The governing parties’ vote share dropped by 13.8 percentage points compared to 2013. And even though the grand coalition eventually returned to power, its power was severely diminished. While it had held 80% of seats in the Bundestag the previous term – an absolute supermajority – its share shrank to a narrow 56%.
As the grand coalition remained largely the same beast, so did Germany’s political and social problems. The coalition agreement took a tougher stance on refugees, mainly due to an attempt by Merkel’s Bavarian allies, the Christian Social Union (CSU), to placate voters who had migrated to the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. Yet, the agreement failed to provide a sustainable answer to the long-term challenges of immigration and integration.
Then Merkel won plaudits for her compassionate decision to throw open Germany’s borders to 1.5 million refugees fleeing the wars in Syria and Iraq in 2015. Again, there was almost no consultation with her party, with her coalition partners, or with the European Commission.
There was no big strategic plan put in place to register the refugees, to verify their papers, to house them, or to establish not only an integration programme but a way in which they could enter the labour market. But Merkel’s mantra on her refugee policy first used on 31 August 2015 – “Wir schaffen das” (We can do it) – aggravated sections of her own party and the German public. The AfD was catapulted into the Bundestag in the 2017 election because of its anti-immigrant, anti-Islam and anti-Europe stance.
Wandel durch Handel
Internationally, Merkel sought to square export interests with political pragmatism. By virtue of its size and geographical position at the centre of Europe, Germany will always be important for the US, if not as a true ally, at least as an erstwhile partner and staging ground for the US military. In Washington’s view, Germany might be a bad ally, but at least it is America’s bad ally. And no one understands the benefits of that status better than the Germans themselves.
Germany’s attempted Wandel durch Handel policy (“change through trade”) was a mistake. An entire generation of politicians is therefore now under the microscope – including Angela Merkel. In July 2021, Merkel was asked by a journalist whether she regretted her decision to withdraw from nuclear power. She insisted she had no regrets, but added that because of the move, Germany would need to rely on gas for the foreseeable future. Merkel later ignored protests from Central and Eastern Europe and clinched a landmark accord for a Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline under the Baltic that would strengthen the influence of Russia over Europe’s energy security.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a clear defeat and failure for Merkel’s chancellorship and her advisers, and for the SPD, who advocated Ostpolitik and Wandel durch Handel. Having been wrong about Russia and Vladimir Putin every step of the way, Germany’s policymakers resorted to shock, but Germany’s allies had been warning for years that it was underestimating Putin. All the while, the so-called Russlandversteher, Russian sympathisers who populate the country’s political establishment, rejected criticism of their course.
An honest reckoning
Germany will continue to have limited credibility within the transatlantic alliance, no matter how many billions it commits to spending on defence, until there is an honest reckoning with the history of the Merkel-Putin years. As Germany knows all too well, even if it is possible to hide from history for a time, there is no escaping it.
Angela Merkel’s former chief economic adviser, Lars-Hendrik Röller, has acknowledged that her policies left Germany overly dependent on Russian gas and that in hindsight the country should have done much more to diversify its energy supply. In a 2023 interview with the Financial Times, he stated, “if we’d known then what we know now, we would of course have acted differently”.
But he insisted that plentiful and cheap Russian energy exports had delivered a massive boost to the German economy, helping to ensure ten consecutive years of growth. These comments demonstrate the shallow policy advice available in Germany. The German government had all the evidence they needed going back to 2006, when Russia had first weaponised Russian gas against Ukraine and Poland. Russia had repeatedly invaded its neighbours, including Ukraine in 2014, and had also orchestrated a succession of high-profile assassinations of political opponents. The cyber-attack on Estonia took place in 2007. Russia attacked Georgia in 2008.
Germany saw it as necessary to engage positively with Russia and to try to integrate Russia into Europe, but what started as a reasonable policy with “win-win” potential was allowed to deteriorate into a dangerous dependency. Merkel demonstrated an inability to think through the consequences of her policy decisions and to understand how to balance concerns like business interests and national security. She has nevertheless stated that she does not blame herself and that she does not regret her actions. She continued right through to 2021 to say that Nord Stream 2 was “purely a business deal”, despite the obvious geopolitical implications.
Four key mistakes
Whether at home or abroad, Merkel’s main political strategy was to play for time. Merkel became so famous for this approach that German teens turned her name into a verb – merkeln – which became slang for chronic indecision and for saying or doing nothing on an issue.
In almost every crisis, Merkel kicked the can down the road – hesitating to take big decisions until the last possible moment and, even then, often agreeing to doing just the minimum necessary to keep things from falling apart. Far more troubling was the substance of many of her policies, which we can simply label “Merkantilism”, defined as the systematic prioritising of German commercial and geoeconomic interests over democratic and human rights values or intra-EU solidarity.
Merkel got it wrong on at least four big topics. First, reversing an election manifesto pledge to extend the maturity of the 17 German nuclear plants and instead pursuing an accelerated shut down post-Fukushima. The result was Europe’s highest electricity prices and increased dependency on Russian gas. A second mistake was winding down Germany’s armed forces, the Bundeswehr, including scrapping conscription, again ignoring the party’s election manifesto.
Third, after Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014, Merkel warned of Putin’s aggression but did nothing. Russia was able to buy critical gas storage infrastructure, no liquefied natural gas terminals were built, there was no reversal of the military wind down, no reversal of the nuclear exit and no development of alternative natural gas sources. Most of Merkel’s decisions were driven by the desire for short term tactical popularity at the expense of long term and strategic problems. The fact that some of those decisions were taken without parliamentary discussion and ratified only after the event is a long-lasting political burden for democracy.
The fourth mistake was Merkel’s simplistic “Wir schaffen das” approach on migration. CDU chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz summed it up recently when talking about current immigration numbers. With a reception of three million migrants within four years, he noted that “we can make as much effort as we want, we will not be able to do that.”
During her time as chancellor, Merkel also hollowed out German politics ideologically. Her style of borrowing policies from other parties became a key element of Merkelism. Yet Merkel’s lack of a coherent strategy has ultimately left Germany unprepared for many of the great challenges of the 21st century.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy or the London School of Economics. Featured image credit: European Union
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