The former German Chancellor, Angela Merkel will be releasing her memoir in days’ time. What we know so far is based on extracts in the media and social media. What is inside that memoir will be teaching material for International Relations professors all over the world.
The problem people will have Ms Merkel’s memoir is how we see it. Ms. Merkel wrote things about President Putin and President Trump that will never be contextually analyzed in the famous academic journal, “Foreign Affairs.” That journal is so shamelessly pro-American that it is boring. It would be interesting to see how the biased American International Relations professors treat Ms. Merkel’s memoir.
Let’s start with Mr. Trump. Ms. Merkel disdainfully wrote that Trump believes that countries naturally compete with each other. She said he told her that. It is clear that she sees that as a negative in Mr. Trump. But that has been the reality since Thucydides wrote his masterpiece, “The Peloponnesian Wars” 2000 years ago.
Ms. Merkel is being disingenuous in singling out Mr. Trump for that belief. That is a fact of the international system long before the European international order became enveloped by the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648. Nations compete with each for reasons of ideology, expansionist instincts, advantage in trade but most of all for survival in the international system. Mr. Trump is no exception in that understanding of international affairs.
Everything that former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and former President Bill Clinton write point to their acceptance that nations will naturally compete with each other and they both want the West to have an advantage in such a natural system. Ms. Merkel heard what Trump had to say because Trump has the habit of saying what he believes in. Ms. Merkel will not hear that from other world leaders because they are opportunistic not to say what they believe in.
Ms. Merkel should be the last leader to reject the reality that nations are born into rivalry. It was Germany that reneged on the agreement with Russia after the unification of Germany that NATO borders would not stop at the doorstep of Russia. Mr. Putin was the Russian spymaster at the time so he knew that the West betrayed Russia and that lies at the heart of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The international system is endowed with nations competing against nations and in no situation it is more graphic that the relationship between the West and China, the West and the Global South, the West and Russia, and the West and the Arab world. Even among the Western alliance, there is competition as in the Australian submarine controversy.
Australia cancelled its purchase of a number of nuclear-powered submarines from France and gave the order to the US, which led to a huge triangular spat in which France was overflowing with anger. During his first term in office, Mr. Trump observed that the EU was born to challenge the global power of the US.
The developed countries are so sensitive to the Global South catching up with it uses its hegemonic presence in the international system to pulverize the developing countries. In no other instance, is this more terrifying than the formation of the World Trade Organization. That was a one-sided affair in which the developing world lost out badly in international trade. That is a classic example of nations competing for advantage in the international system.
In relation to Putin, Ms. Merkel wrote that she sensed that Putin wants Russia to be respected and is very sensitive to Russian security interests after the fall of the USSR. But Germany and other countries in their historic rivalry with Russia aggravated Russian insecurities by the expansion of NATO, which the West agreed not to do after the collapse of the USSR.
Mr. Putin has shown utter disdain for the global hero, Mikhail Gorbachev. He believes Gorbachev was ignorant of the realism that inheres in international relations and he was manipulated by the West, thus weakening Russia’s standing in the world. Ms. Merkel’s book is not out at the time of writing and one is curious to know how she dealt with her famous or infamous pronouncement that Israel is Germany’s reason of state. It was she who first enunciated that doctrine that her successor embraced.
Ms. Merkel is a sanctimonious hypocrite. She sees Israel as Germany’s reason of state when this same Israel has a terrorist government that illegally occupies Palestinian lands and has perpetuated a system of apartheid on the Palestinian people. From reading the extracts of Merkel, Mr. Trumps comes across as the more principled of the two leaders.
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