Critics see the invasion as proof of the failure of Germany’s policy of appeasement and dependence on Russia. Reprimands are especially aimed at Merkel, but also at other political figures. Commenting on the massacre of civilians in Bucha, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky blamed Russian troops, but also made serious accusations against former German Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel. He invited her to visit Bucha and see “the one who led Russia’s concession policy for 14 years,” Zelensky said.
14 years ago, at a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in Bucharest, Merkel and then French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in particular, acted to prevent Ukraine from receiving an invitation to join the Western military alliance. They tried to avoid provoking Russia. Today, Zelensky calls this a “miscalculation” which, he says, has caused Ukraine to now be experiencing “the worst conflict in Europe since the Second World War”.
Nord Stream 2 approved after annexation of Crimea
Merkel’s government also refused to hand over weapons to Ukraine after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. It even approved the Nord Stream 2 pipeline a short time later, bypassing Ukraine as a transit country for gas. “How else is Moscow supposed to understand this, other than as a tacit acceptance of a violent change of borders?” asks Henning Hoff of the German Council on Foreign Relations.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki also addressed Merkel directly: “Madam Chancellor, you have been silent since the beginning of the war. However, it is precisely the policy of Germany in the last 10, 15 years that has led to the strength of Russia today, based on the monopoly on the sale of raw materials.” And under Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Germany is blocking more decisive EU sanctions, Morawiecki accused.
Merkel and Scholz aren’t the only ones under fire right now. Andrij Melnyk, Ukraine’s ambassador to Berlin, accused German President and former Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier in the Tagesspiegel newspaper of still blindly viewing the relationship with Russia as “something fundamental, even sacred, no matter what. , not even the war of aggression plays an important role”. Probably never before in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany has a foreign ambassador been so harsh with a German head of state.
Berlin’s foreign policy was “great self-deception”
The criticism does not only affect individuals, but the entire German foreign, security and trade policy of the last 30 years. “There was too much dialogue and too little toughness towards the Kremlin,” Ambassador Melnyk said.
Political scientist Stephan Bierling of the University of Regensburg confirmed this assessment to DW: “All German governments since Putin took power have signaled that uncomplicated relations with Moscow are more important than Ukraine’s fate. This encouraged the Kremlin to launch its attack.”
Bierling had already called German foreign policy in recent years a “great self-deception” in the political magazine Cicero on March 24. Under constant US military protection, Germany would have “given in to pacifist illusions” and focused solely on its own business.
Naivety towards Beijing
Bierling also sees this pattern in China’s politics: “Pleasing to receive economic advantages, applying naive ideas of an empire’s liberalizing influence from abroad, sacrificing democratic ideals such as human rights and freedom of speech so as not to anger those in the power”.
It is true that several European governments, as well as Washington, have for years criticized Germany’s policy towards Russia – and also towards China. But this was not heard in Berlin – until the Russian army invaded Ukraine on February 24th.
Steinmeier admits mistakes
When the war began, Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke of a “turning point”. Did he also mean “fundamental change in German foreign policy?”
Last Tuesday, President Steinmeier publicly acknowledged that he was wrong about Russia, especially on the Nord Stream 2 issue, which has cost Germany a lot of credibility.
“We failed to build a common European home,” Steinmeier said. “I did not believe that Vladimir Putin would embrace the complete economic, political and moral ruin of his country because of his imperial madness,” he added. “In this I, like others, was mistaken.”
However, when Putin took office, there was no way of knowing how he would behave over time, added Steinmeier.
Henning Hoff disagrees: Since the second Chechen war, which began in 1999, when Putin was still prime minister, it was already possible to recognize the “criminal, hypernationalist” character of the Russian leader, he argues.
Alexander Dobrindt, head of the parliamentary group for the conservative CSU party, currently opposing the Scholz government, is one of the few German politicians who still upholds the traditional policy of encouraging change through trade. He claims that her goal was to ensure peace and create common prosperity. However, Putin destroyed it. “But at the time, those decisions weren’t fundamentally wrong,” Dobrindt said.
Merkel: Ukraine should not join NATO
With the exception of a statement released immediately after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Angela Merkel has avoided speaking out. What is known is that she does not regret her decision in 2008 to block Ukraine’s membership of NATO. It “stands by its decisions regarding the Bucharest summit in 2008”, announced a spokeswoman for Merkel.
And this position is still the consensus within NATO itself: most members of the military alliance are happy not to be forced to provide military assistance to Ukraine because they don’t want to be dragged into a direct war with Russia.
Merkel’s successor, Olaf Scholz, also sees it that way. However, he has encouraged changes in the defense area. Today, the German government, headed by a Social Democrat and a Green Federal Deputy Chancellor, announced that it wants to massively rearm the Bundeswehr (German Armed Forces) and is also supplying Ukraine with weapons, “in a break with long traditions”, as defined by Scholz on Wednesday.
Bundeswehr is “a joke”
What do the two foreign policy experts advise the German government? Clean up the Bundeswehr, which is “perceived as a laughing stock” by allied and enemy nations alike, advises Bierling. The German government must first develop a European security strategy and then a global security strategy. And he misses “politicians in Germany who specialize in security issues. With few exceptions, neither party has much to offer.”
According to Hoff, the objective should be: an even faster abandonment of the use of fossil fuels; in the military aspect, Germany must “become a player capable of playing a role in NATO and the EU in proportion to its economic weight”; and also to encourage a “policy of Europeanization of Russia and China”.
German mediation is still needed
This however does not mean that German diplomacy and mediation are no longer necessary. Ukraine’s ambassador calls for German weapons, but also appealed to Scholz to be more active in mediating the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
“We need the personal leadership of Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz in particular today” for negotiations with Putin, Melnyk said in an interview. “This would be a litmus test for the new German foreign policy.”
In this context, Melnyk also advocates the so-called “Normandy Format”, ie regular meetings between France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine, which originated largely in the Merkel government. “We ask Federal Chancellor Scholz to convene the Normandy Format Summit as soon as possible.”
However, the current composition is not enough for Melnyk, and this may reflect a certain distrust towards Berlin: “It is also clear that we need the Americans on board to negotiate with Putin with one voice and from a position of strength. ”
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