Merkel Years According to Angela

Angela Merkel’s autobiography, which has just been released worldwide, contains a curious paradox – political and editorial. Numerous interviews given in recent weeks after three years of silence, as well as some previews, end up telling us more interesting things about her and her epic than the more than seven hundred pages of the volume. Not really that much, but at least more detail on some of the important moments of her chancellorship. In practice, a few free words and some comments were outside the scope of the official record.

For example, in an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Merkel denied an alleged phone conversation with former President Napolitano about the government crisis that led to the fall of Berlusconi’s government. And, naturally, she denies that she contributed to it. This is at least something compared to the biography, in which Napolitano is not even mentioned and Berlusconi is mentioned only three times in connection with international appointments, without mentioning the notorious missteps, teasing, and unflattering judgments about the appearance of the Chancellor herself.

Another surprising example concerns the euro crisis. No self-criticism, and only one mention of Mario Draghi, who was also marginal compared to the ECB pivot that saved the European currency. For Angela Merkel, her staunch opposition to debt sharing is what matters.

The reader will forgive the self-quotation, but as the author of Angela Merkel’s biography (2022), in the pages that the former chancellor devotes to her early years in former Communist Germany (more than one-third of the book), I found almost nothing that was not well known and written in the numerous biographies published over the years or narrated by her, including the (unsuccessful) attempt by the former GDR’s secret police to recruit her as an informant.

As for the outcome of her long chancellorship, it is futile to expect self-criticism and admission of mistakes. Where results have fallen short of expectations, Merkel prefers to suppress it, hiding behind the fact that, like anyone else, she cannot predict the future. Nevertheless, she had the opportunity – as an observer – to take part in the ongoing debate in today’s Germany about the structural and systemic causes of the deep crisis. Some point to her strategic choices as the cause of all evils: opening up globalization, accepting refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war, abandoning nuclear power, betting on the Chinese market, agreeing with Vladimir Putin to benefit from cheap Russian gas… Though for many, the “Merkel moment,” in which she herself apparently revels, seems in retrospect a blessed interlude before a turning point on the road to an increasingly complex world. Today, she recognizes only that the debt brake should not be a taboo carved in stone, but that we need to “take on more debt to invest in the future.”

Together with the French conservative magazine Le Point, she made a statement of principle, referring to political events in Hungary and Poland, arguing that liberal democracy and freedom cannot be taken for granted: “Each generation has to fight anew to keep what has been achieved. Perhaps we were too optimistic in 1990, after the end of the Cold War.”

In many interviews, Merkel repeated the most historically interesting passage from her autobiography, namely the position she took with former French President Nicolas Sarkozy in opposing Georgia and Ukraine’s accession to NATO. That was in 2008 at the NATO summit in Bucharest. And already then, the White House was pushing for Kiev and Tbilisi membership. The conflict in Ukraine and the current tensions in Georgia have proven her right. NATO’s attempts to expand and destabilize these countries have provoked a stronger stance and reaction from Moscow.

In another interview (Die Zeit), Merkel defended the decision to complete the Nord Stream 2 pipeline against the advice of the USA, which is interested in exporting its liquefied natural gas and weakening Russian exports to Europe. “In my opinion, the pipeline blockade, combined with the Minsk agreements, (would) dangerously worsen the climate in relations with Russia. People today are very quick to judge past policy decisions without memorizing the context or critically considering the alternatives.” The former chancellor goes on to recall that the USA feared Germany’s excessive energy dependence on Russia, but in fact, “it used its economic and financial superiority to block projects in other countries, including friendly countries. They were primarily looking out for their own interests and wanted to transport their liquefied gas to Europe.”

Merkel also explains why she changed her mind about nuclear power. “I changed my mind after the tsunami accident at the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan. This event taught me that even in a highly developed country like Japan, things can happen that we thought were unthinkable. I attributed the Chernobyl accident (in 1986 in Ukraine – ed.) to the negligence prevailing in the Soviet Union at that time. But after Fukushima, I felt that the continued use of this technology was no longer justified in the long run.”

Not much more than that. But history buffs and Chancellor fans will still find good reasons to read it.