As largely expected, Germany’s federal election did not produce any major surprises. The center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) narrowly beat the ruling center-right alliance of the Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) as Angela Merkel’s 16-year chancellorship comes to an end.
The complex task of creating a new working coalition is under way and Merkel will stay on for a while longer until her successor is chosen. The Sept. 26 vote was continuity and stability, with no fundamental changes in domestic or foreign policies.
Ukraine had hoped for a result that would modify Berlin’s policy towards Moscow —- marked by ambiguity, accommodation and appeasement.
German politicians are behind the times and out of step in trying to have it both ways — staying on good terms with the Kremlin dictator while claiming to be the leader in upholding European values. Germany is simply not doing enough to stop Russia’s war or help Ukraine’s European integration.
Merkel personified this approach. Indeed, her foreign policy adviser Christoph Heugen has just revealed in Der Spiegel that “she always kept in mind what was tolerable for Russia.”
This meant blocking any steps to advance Ukraine’s membership into NATO or the European Union and refusing to sell defensive arms to Kyiv, which is fighting off Russia on its own. The current leaders of Germany’s main two political parties campaigned on sticking to the appeasement strategy.
Merkel will not be missed in Ukraine for other reasons. After former U. S. President Barack Obama abdicated leadership in stopping Russia’s war, Merkel became the architect of the Minsk and Normandy Four processes. The peace talks have helped slow the conflict considerably and reduce bloodletting from a full-scale hot war. And the West has applied modest sanctions against Russia, with Merkel helping Europe hold the line.
But Merkel nevertheless let Moscow off the hook by accepting its cynical claim to a “facilitator of peace,” rather than the perpetrator of aggression and war.
Her staunch defense of the Russian-German Nord Stream 2 pipeline made a mockery of any Western and Ukrainian hopes of tough sanctions against the Kremlin. It’s a disgrace that Berlin is fine with an $11 billion pipeline that threatens the economic and national security of Eastern Europe. Even before the pipeline starts pumping gas, all the critics of the 1,230-kilometer pipeline have been proven right: The Kremlin is withholding natural gas supplies, driving up prices, and cutting deals with such nations as Hungary to end Ukraine’s status as a gas transit country after 2024. That was the plan all along, which Merkel must have known.
The silver lining in the German elections is the fact that the leader of the Greens, Annalena Baerbock, whose party came in third with 15 percent, has emerged as a kingmaker in the coalition-building process.
While focused on environmental and climate change issues, she has adopted a more principled and tougher stance towards Russia. Baerbock wants Nord Stream 2 to be scrapped and has no illusions about the nature of Russia’s aggression and hybrid warfare. The fourth party likely to be involved in the new coalition is the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP). It too is more critical of the Kremlin.
The best that Ukraine can hope for is that the Greens and the FDP will be able to influence Berlin’s foreign policy and get tougher with Moscow. Then Germany can reclaim its role as Europe’s leader, a status in doubt today.
