Angela Merkel according to Angela Merkel

First things first: The long-awaited memoirs of Angela Merkel, which have now been released simultaneously in more than 30 countries as if they were a new Harry Potter novel, are above all one thing: incredibly boring. Of course, anyone searching the index for names and checking what Angela Merkel has written about Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama and other historical figures will find a few more or less interesting quotes in the book. And even beyond the big names, there are occasionally insightful passages in these memoirs. But those are rare oases in a tedious desert spanning more than 720 pages in the original German version. Endless accounts of long-forgotten conferences from the early 1990s alternate with detailed descriptions of German domestic politics, prompting the question: If even German readers will find this boring, how dull must it be for an international audience?

For a general reader, the purchase of these memoirs can therefore hardly be advised. There are simply too many genuinely interesting books out there that are a better written and more interesting than Merkel’s “Freedom: Memoirs 1954-2021.” However, those who have the misfortune or privilege (take your pick) of being professionally involved in describing or analyzing European politics likely have no choice: They must read these memoirs. After all, the author is one of the most significant political world leaders of the first half of this century. For 16 years, Angela Merkel shaped the policies of the largest economy within the world’s biggest economic bloc. For that reason alone, it is not irrelevant to see what she has to say about this period.

And there is good news, too: Some parts of this book are interesting, some even relevant. This is especially true for Merkel’s statements on Ukraine and Russia. No politician is mentioned nearly as often in Merkel’s memoirs as Vladimir Putin. Merkel refers to the Russian president more than 140 times. A distant second is Putin’s right-hand man in Germany, Gerhard Schroeder, Merkel’s predecessor as German chancellor. Only then, with a significant gap, do politicians like Merkel’s political mentor Helmut Kohl appear. George W. Bush, whom Merkel describes rather warmly, and, with an even greater gap, Wolfgang Schaeuble and Barack Obama follow suit. Austria’s former chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who opposed Merkel’s policies during the migration crisis of 2015/16, receives the ultimate snub: He is not mentioned at all.

Regarding Putin, it is clear that Merkel aims not only to distance herself from the Russian dictator, but also to cast her policy toward Ukraine in a favorable light. A key focus in this regard is the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, where Merkel played a decisive role in blocking Ukraine (and Georgia) from receiving a “Membership Action Plan” (MAP), the precursor to NATO membership. In doing so, the German chancellor stood her ground even against George W. Bush, who sought the opposite outcome. It was no small matter to publicly challenge the president of the United States, Merkel writes, but she insists that she had to go for this confrontation. When negotiations in Bucharest seemed deadlocked, Merkel (according to Merkel) declared categorically: “We can sit here for days, but my fundamental position on NATO membership will remain my final word – I will not agree to a MAP [for Ukraine].”

This steadfastness later drew sharp criticism from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and others. However, Merkel makes it clear in her autobiography that even with the benefit of hindsight, she would make the same decision again today. And she presents plausible arguments to justify her stance. For instance, she correctly points out that in 2008, only a minority of the Ukrainian population supported the idea of NATO membership for their country. At the time, preparing Ukraine for NATO accession would have been imposed against the majority will of the Ukrainians. Additionally, Merkel states that she considered it “grossly negligent” to discuss granting a MAP status to Ukraine without analyzing Putin’s perspective.

In doing just that, Merkel raises the question of what would have happened in the event of a Russian attack on Ukraine (and Georgia) had those countries been granted a Membership Action Plan in 2008. “The assumption that Putin would simply let the time between the MAP decision and the beginning of a Ukrainian and Georgian membership pass uneventfully seemed as wishful thinking to me, a policy based on hope,” Merkel writes. She considered it an illusion to believe “that the MAP status would have protected Ukraine from Putin’s aggression – that this status would have had such a deterrent effect that Putin would have passively accepted developments.” What, then, would have happened, she asks, if Russia had attacked Ukraine? What would it have meant for NATO’s credibility if the Alliance had stood by without providing military support in response to attacks on its candidate countries? Or would it have been conceivable for NATO member-states to respond militarily in such a case, sending equipment, even troops? “Would it have been conceivable for me, as chancellor, to ask the German Bundestag for such a mandate, including for our Bundeswehr, and to secure a majority for it? In 2008?”

Merkel does not need to answer her rhetorical question, and likewise she does not need to emphasize that securing a majority in the Bundestag for a Bundeswehr combat mission against Russia in Ukraine would have not been very realistic, to say the least. It is equally difficult to imagine other NATO states sending their armies into a conflict with Russia on Ukraine’s behalf. Dying for Donbas? Most Europeans, then and now, would likely have answered this question like Herman Melville’s Bartleby: “I would prefer not to.”

While this part of Merkel’s account is coherent, she completely omits what would have been the logical conclusion of the decision to deny Ukraine a MAP status: At the very least, the country should have been equipped with weapons to defend itself against Russia. However, Merkel (like the entire German political mainstream) repeatedly and strictly rejected this course of action for years.

She also continued to insist on the construction of the Nord Stream II gas pipeline, claiming it was “a commercial project.” In February 2015, as on many other occasions, Merkel stated: “Germany will not support Ukraine with weapons. I am firmly convinced that this conflict cannot be solved militarily.”

There was just one problem: In the Kremlin sat a man who was (and still seems to be) firmly convinced of the opposite. And war is not the tango. It doesn’t take two to go ahead. The people of Ukraine until this very day have been paying the price for the belief that conflicts cannot be resolved through military means.

Merkel completed writing her book before Donald Trump won the US election for a second time, but she factors it in. It will come as no surprise that she does not think highly of Trump. In her memoirs, she portrays him as a kind of political real estate agent. During their meeting in Washington in March 2017, Trump immediately began asking her questions about Putin: “The Russian president evidently fascinated him greatly. In the years that followed, I had the impression that politicians with autocratic and dictatorial tendencies had a particular hold on him.” From her conversations with Trump, she concluded that there would be no collaboration with him on building a value-based world order: “He judged everything from the perspective of the real estate businessman he had been before entering politics. Every piece of land could only be allocated once. If he didn’t get it, someone else would.” In Trump’s zero-sum worldview, one country’s success was another country’s failure. “He seemed particularly distrustful of Germany.”

Merkel likely thinks of the looming danger in a world without American leadership when she makes a demand that is sure to attract significant attention: In her memoirs, she essentially states that Ukraine cannot independently decide when the fight against Russia must end. Merkel emphasizes that there must be a “willingness for diplomatic initiatives” also on the Ukrainian side. “These must be planned in advance so that they are available at the right moment. When that moment arrives cannot be decided solely by Ukraine, but only together with its supporters.” On the one hand, this is self-evident. One does not need Merkel to know that it’s true. But how bleak must this sentence sound in Kyiv?

Michael Martens is Southeast Europe correspondent for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, based in Vienna.