[W:#341]With Putin's war in Europe, the legacy of Germany's Merkel is now being seen in a very different light

[Rogue Valley]

With Putin's war in Europe, the legacy of Germany's Merkel is now being seen in a very different light

3.14.22
With Vladimir Putin's unprovoked attack against Ukraine, political analysts are now reassessing the long and deeply complicated relationship the Russian leader had with ex-German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and how Moscow came to hold so much sway over the rest of Europe. The former German leader was known for speaking Russian and keeping diplomatic ties with Putin. It was also during her term that Germany stepped up its energy links to Moscow and kept its national defense spending to a minimum. But, Russia's invasion of Ukraine has now led to a dramatic shift in German politics. New Chancellor Olaf Scholz's "forceful policy shifts is a firm repudiation of the core of Merkel's foreign economic policy," Jacob Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund think tank, told CNBC via email. "Germany's foreign economic policy is no longer predicated on 'Russia being a stability oriented actor,' but instead an aggressive imperialist power," Kirkegaard added.

Merkel's "big failure" was not reversing those economic links and energy projects in the wake of Moscow's illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, said Daniela Schwarzer, executive director for Europe and Eurasia at the Open Society Foundations think tank. Germany's gas imports from Russia amounted to around 36% of its total in 2010, which rose to a roughly 65% share by 2020, according to figures from Eurostat. Alberto Alemanno, a professor of EU law at H.E.C. Paris Business School, said: "No other country has downplayed Russia's rebellious stance towards the world order as Merkel's Germany." "It is Nord Stream 2 which epitomizes Merkel's appeasement approach towards Russia, to the point of embodying today all what was wrong with Germany's stance towards Russia. By establishing an unnecessary relationship of interdependence with Vladimir Putin, Merkel's Germany made him stronger while weakening the whole of Europe and NATO," Alemanno added.

Trump and Merkel excused and emboldened Vladimir Putin and here we are, with a brutal war raging in Europe.

 

[PoS]

Merkel's mistake was embracing this ridiculous green energy movement. Its led to Germany closing nuke plants and thereby destroying its own energy independence. But its not the only country thats done this.

 

[german hick]

it´s always easy to judge afterwards

the idea of "change through trade" is for me still nicer than cold war. Did not work with Putin. Now blaming everything on Merkel is quite cheap

@PoS shall we store the waste in your garden then? plus: I think the Ukrainians and all their neighbours would sleep better if they had renewables instead of nuclear power. A very cheap one cause the radioactive winds would not reach Australia when Putin bombs the reactors.

 

[PoS]

it´s always easy to judge afterwards

A lot of people have been saying what the Germans are doing was stupid for many years now, so you sure proved them right.

the idea of "change through trade" is for me still nicer than cold war. Did not work with Putin. Now blaming everything on Merkel is quite cheap

Youre right. The blame should fall on the Germans themselves since theyre such a stupid people, always diving in headfirst without thinking.

@PoS shall we store the waste in your garden then?

Nuclear waste is always stored on site, and there has never been an issue with it in all of history, so your silly remark just shows that you know nothing about nuclear power. Do yourself a favor and learn things before talking about them.

plus: I think the Ukrainians and all their neighbours would sleep better if they had renewables instead of nuclear power. A very cheap one cause the radioactive winds would not reach Australia when Putin bombs the reactors.

So the Germans closed their nuclear power plants because theyre afraid Putin might attack them? You sure say a lot of stupid stuff, but this is the dumbest one yet. Congratulations.

 

[german hick]

A lot of people have been saying what the Germans are doing was stupid for many years now, so you sure proved them right.

there is alway one who said it before

Youre right. The blame should fall on the Germans themselves since theyre such a stupid people, always diving in headfirst without thinking..

what an elaborated answer - congratulations! The difference between us: I don´t claim all Australians are stupid - but experience here says some indeed are.

Nuclear waste is always stored on site, and there has never been an issue with it in all of history, so your silly remark just shows that you know nothing about nuclear power. Do yourself a favor and learn things before talking about them.



So the Germans closed their nuclear power plants because theyre afraid Putin might attack them? You sure say a lot of stupid stuff, but this is the dumbest one yet. Congratulations.

yeah, you´re so right..

 

[PoS]

there is alway one who said it before

But the Germans are too stupid to notice.

what an elaborated answer - congratulations! The difference between us: I don´t claim all Australians are stupid

Because theyre not, just the Germans.

 

[Tangmo]

We have the Putin-Schroeder-Merkel Geostrategic Axis of Energy against NATO, EU, Europe, the USA.

Indeed, the true Axis of Evil. That is, the failed German model of relations with Russia that is now and at long last being corrected.

By 2010 Schroederovsky had become Putin's BFF.

By 2020 Merkel had become Putin's BFF in Germany and indeed throughout all of Europe.

It's the Kremlin Krime Mafia elite capture of the Berlin political elites and the industrial elites.

Elite Capture was manifested when the Merkel CDU joined the longstanding and Russia Hugger SPD to make it a twofer of Russia Huggers for the Kremlin.

Under Merkel of the CDU.

Begun by Schroeder of the SPD.

The red and the black and their walk on the Dark Side.

 

[german hick]

But the Germans are too stupid to notice.



Because theyre not, just the Germans.

okay - I´ll try to meet your NIVEA: go back to Kindergarten

Mummy should not have let you play with the keyboard

@Tangmo: with liking this juvenile bs you lost your very last credibility

 

[Ginza]

A lot of people have been saying what the Germans are doing was stupid for many years now, so you sure proved them right.

The Germans have always acted only in their own economic interests.

They tried and failed to enslave Europe.

A few years back they failed to listen to Trump and Johnson who urged them years ago to increase their defence budget and NOT to become dependent on Russian energy.

Recently, they have been shamed by world opinion, and by the Ukrainians themselves, into sending aid to Ukraine.

They have only done so because, yet again, the world despised them.

This article was written on 8 February 2022 well before the Russian invasion :

"Europe Is on the Brink of War, and Germany Has Gone Missing"

Opinion | Europe Is on the Brink of War, and Germany Has Gone Missing

The crisis in Ukraine has been a trial by fire for the country’s new chancellor, Olaf Scholz.

www.nytimes.com

 

[lemmiwinx]

Putin was KGB assigned to East Berlin at the same time Merkel was serving in the East German army. Coincidence?

 

[PoS]

okay - I´ll try to meet your NIVEA: go back to Kindergarten

Mummy should not have let you play with the keyboard

@Tangmo: with liking this juvenile bs you lost your very last credibility

Aww, look. Someone's mad at me for telling the truth

 

[Tangmo]

Indeed, the DP Bundesgang brooks no critiques or criticisms.

Germany right or wrong.

Yet the decades old German model of relations with Russia has been blown to hell -- by Russia and Germany joined.

While the new coalition government in Berlin has taken radical corrective steps to reverse seven decades of error in but seven dayze, the Bundesgang continues to ignore or reject 'em. It's the SOS instead.

 

[Chagos]

Anyone "liking" a post which claims that Angela Merkel served in the East German Army, need make no further effort to disqualify himself.

 

[Infinite Chaos]

The blame should fall on the Germans themselves since theyre such a stupid people, always diving in headfirst without thinking.

Wholesale broad brushing of any peoples anywhere is a stupid thing to do.

 

[Ginza]

Indeed, the true Axis of Evil. That is, the failed German model of relations with Russia that is now and at long last being corrected.

Germany has been strongly criticised and ridiculed for its offer of helmets to Ukraine.....at a time when the UK and USA were supplying missiles to Ukraine.

Now the Ukrainian President has openly accused Germany of enabling Russia to invade Ukraine :

 

[Ginza]

"Ukrainian president slams Berlin’s prioritization of economic ties with Russia over democratic values."

Invoking the Holocaust, Zelenskyy hammers Germany for failing Ukraine

Ukrainian president slams Berlin’s prioritization of economic ties with Russia over democratic values.

www.politico.eu

 

[Tangmo]

Germany has been strongly criticised and ridiculed for its offer of helmets to Ukraine.....at a time when the UK and USA were supplying missiles to Ukraine.

Now the Ukrainian President has openly accused Germany of enabling Russia to invade Ukraine :

Biden did it in private which really hit Chancellor Scholz in the nutbag.

 

[PoS]

Wholesale broad brushing of any peoples anywhere is a stupid thing to do.

But in this case its justified...

 

[Tangmo]

The Guardian undresses Merkelov of the CDU and Schroederovsky of the long term Russia Hugging SPD too so the reader should be advised the sights seen therein are grotesquely ugly.

What's abundantly clear now is that the German model of relations with Russia, pursued long term by the SPD and during Merkelov's 16 money grubbing years is a complete disaster and a total muckup. It's a catastrophe of the Kremlin's elite capture of the German political class in Berlin and the financial industrialists of Frankfurt.


Germany agonises over Merkel’s legacy: did she hand too much power to Putin?

The war in Ukraine has prompted criticism of former chancellor’s decisions on Nord Stream pipeline and Russia

After the war in Ukraine led German chancellor Olaf Scholz to pivot dramatically on his country’s postwar creeds of faith, attention is shifting to his predecessors, who took Germany down a strategic path towards Russia that became a dead end. The conflict in the east has caused a seismic shift in Germany, where Scholz has made a U-turn on a restrictive stance on weapons exports, announced huge increases in military spending and vowed to wean the country off Russian gas. Since then, all eyes have been on Gerhard Schröder, the unrepentant ex-chancellor who in his final weeks in power shook hands with Vladimir Putin to ratify the Nord Stream pipeline underneath the Baltic Sea. Just weeks later, Schröder slipped effortlessly through the revolving door to become chairman of Nord Stream. The resultant increase in Germany’s reliance on Russian energy, politicians in Berlin now concede, may have led Putin to believe Germany would be too hamstrung to support concerted economic sanctions.



Less clear is why Schröder’s course of expanding economic ties with Russia was broadly continued by his successor, Angela Merkel. But voices have been growing louder in criticising her sidelining of the foreign policy and security experts who warned her against seeing Russia as a reliable partner in trade. “A sober assessment of the German government’s misjudgments in its dealings with Russia over the last 16 years is now overdue,” said CDU politician and former Bundeswehr officer Roderich Kiesewetter. “To Nato’s great surprise, France and Germany in 2008 blocked a Membership Action Plan for Georgia, warning that Russia would interpret it as an existential threat. But four months later, Russia invaded Georgia anyway. In 2014-2015, when the US wanted to arm Ukraine over Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Merkel and François Hollande opposed such a strategy. “But in the shadow of such seeming diplomatic successes, Russia continued to build up its military threat.” “Economic pragmatism in dealing with Russia wasn’t just a feature of the Social Democrats’ romanticism,” said Jana Puglierin, head of the European Council on Foreign Relations’ Berlin office. “Merkel, too, believed that through trade you could bind Russia into a multilateral system, and thus a rules-based order. Even after 2014-2015, when the alarm bells were ringing, she simply didn’t turn it into a political issue.” Research by Policy Network Analytics, a non-profit data intelligence network that connects political decisions to strategic economic investments, suggests Nord Stream’s political dimension may have been more apparent to her than she has let on.

Germany agonises over Merkel’s legacy: did she hand too much power to Putin?

The war in Ukraine has prompted criticism of former chancellor’s decisions on Nord Stream pipeline and Russia

www.theguardian.com

Which is but one clear indication among many over years Merkelov was attuned completely to Putin's geostrategic schemes predicated in energy. In other words, nothing to do with parliamentary democracy and the Western philosophy of classic liberalism. BTW, Trump shat all over Merkelov because Putin was courting or influencing each of 'em and Trump didn't like the idea he may have been playing second fiddle with Putin because of Merkel being Putin's BFF in all of Europe.

 

[Chagos]

Anyone wishing to "Russianize" German family names should perhaps learn how to do it properly.

Rather than "Polonianizing" a male ex-Chancellor and putting his successor into a gender she does not hold.

 

[Tangmo]

I've always liked the title of The Frauer Merkel myself.

The Leader.

She's the female gender Frauer model of how not to kiss up to Putin and his Kremlin Krime Mafia. After all, Germany to include Schroederovsky made krime pay for decades, post Cold War especially. They made the Russian dictatorship even more profitable than without 'em. While doing so and enriching themselves too. So now I hear Schroederovsky has a tattoo of Putin all over his back. It's what I hear anyway, is how it goes over there. Indeed, Schroederovsky did say Putin is "the perfect democrat."

So I get my card punched for literary license in these matters of nomenclature -- of course. Just not in Germany where they take themselves frighteningly seriously. Super seriously and right on down to the last infinitesimal detail. Indeed, when I wuz abroad in SK, then Thailand and finally in China for 10 more years they said to me disapprovingly that I'm "always with the joke." Ha! I told 'em I'm American which sent 'em away and back to the strictly dour company they keep.

 

[Tangmo]

The Guardian has just finished undressing Merkel, Putin and Schroeder and their miserably failed and disastrous Axis that has hit a wall in their cozying up together in the post Cold War world. So readers might be advised that the sights in this excellent and salient article get to be grotesquely ugly.

Germany agonises over Merkel’s legacy: did she hand too much power to Putin?​

The war in Ukraine has prompted criticism of former chancellor’s decisions on Nord Stream pipeline and Russia

After the war in Ukraine led German chancellor Olaf Scholz to pivot dramatically on his country’s postwar creeds of faith, attention is shifting to his predecessors, who took Germany down a strategic path towards Russia that became a dead end. The conflict in the east has caused a seismic shift in Germany, where Scholz has made a U-turn on a restrictive stance on weapons exports, announced huge increases in military spending and vowed to wean the country off Russian gas. Since then, all eyes have been on Gerhard Schröder, the unrepentant ex-chancellor who in his final weeks in power shook hands with Vladimir Putin to ratify the Nord Stream pipeline underneath the Baltic Sea. Just weeks later, Schröder slipped effortlessly through the revolving door to become chairman of Nord Stream. The resultant increase in Germany’s reliance on Russian energy, politicians in Berlin now concede, may have led Putin to believe Germany would be too hamstrung to support concerted economic sanctions.


But voices have been growing louder in criticising Merkel's sidelining of the foreign policy and security experts who warned her against seeing Russia as a reliable partner in trade. “A sober assessment of the German government’s misjudgments in its dealings with Russia over the last 16 years is now overdue,” said CDU politician and former Bundeswehr officer Roderich Kiesewetter. “To Nato’s great surprise, France and Germany in 2008 blocked a Membership Action Plan for Georgia, warning that Russia would interpret it as an existential threat. But four months later, Russia invaded Georgia anyway. In 2014-2015, when the US wanted to arm Ukraine over Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Merkel and [French president François] Hollande opposed such a strategy, instead investing in diplomatic efforts,” Kiesewetter told the Observer. “In the shadow of such seeming diplomatic successes, Russia continued to build up its military threat.” There are also fresh questions over Merkel’s unwavering support for the Nord Stream project. “With Nord Stream, this was always a political and not a commercial project,” said Kiesewetter. “Germany never addressed the European and the security dimension of the project. Research by Policy Network Analytics, a non-profit data intelligence network that connects political decisions to strategic economic investments, suggests Nord Stream’s political dimension may have been more apparent to her than she has let on.

Germany agonises over Merkel’s legacy: did she hand too much power to Putin?

The war in Ukraine has prompted criticism of former chancellor’s decisions on Nord Stream pipeline and Russia

www.theguardian.com

Germany has many amends to make in respect of NATO. So it is favorable that with the coalition of SPD Chancellor Scholz supported and impelled by partners the anti Russia Greens and the anti Russia Free Democrats, Germany has begun its massive mea culpa. Good on Germany for this long overdue sudden, radical and major adjustment.

I've often wondered btw whether Merkel actually enjoyed watching Trump try to wreck NATO.

 

[Infinite Chaos]

But in this case its justified...

No, never justified at all.

 

[Ahlevah]

Wholesale broad brushing of any peoples anywhere is a stupid thing to do.

Yeah, I agree. It creates division among people who basically want the same thing, which is to embrace Western values of individual freedom and democracy among nations which desire it and, at least, should be given a chance to decide for themselves the nature of their government. Putin is at war with the West and wants it divided. We should not indulge him. United we stand, divided we fall. It’s as simple as that.

 

[PoS]

No, never justified at all.

If the shoe fits...