Regarding, my earlier post: MoA, apparently, has an unpopular analysis among independent analysts. Personally, I don’t think it matters what anyone else thinks about it, except for Russia. I’m just presenting a machine translation (my German is limited to guten tag) of everything Merkel said regarding the topic. Thank you, Nicolas Cinquini, for the link (I’ll be posting his analysis, soon)! Merkel’s interview is behind a paywall, so I’m not able to directly link to a translated version (link, below, is to an archived version in German). I copied and pasted the translation from my built-in translator (iPadOS).

“Did you think I was coming with a ponytail?” (Starting from page 3):

ZEIT: Do you ask yourself whether the years of relative calm were also years of failure and you were not only a crisis manager, but also partly the cause of crises?

Merkel: I wouldn’t be a political person if I didn’t deal with it. Let’s take climate protection, in which Germany has done a great deal in international comparison. With regard to the topic itself, however, I concede: Judging by what the IPCC’s International Climate Report says today, not enough has happened. Or let’s look at my policy towards Russia and Ukraine. I come to the conclusion that I made the decisions I made back then in a way that I can understand today. It was an attempt to prevent just such a war. The fact that this was not successful does not mean that the attempts were wrong.

ZEIT: However, you can find plausible how you acted in previous circumstances and still consider it wrong in view of the results today.

Merkel: However, this presupposes saying what exactly the alternatives were at the time. I thought the initiation of Ukraine and Georgia’s accession to NATO discussed in 2008 was wrong. The countries did not bring the necessary conditions for this, nor was it thought to the end what consequences such a decision would have had, both with regard to Russia’s actions against Georgia and Ukraine and NATO and its rules of assistance. And the Minsk Agreement 2014 was an attempt to give Ukraine time.

Note d. Ed.: The Minsk Agreement means a series of agreements for the self-proclaimed Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, which had renounced Ukraine under Russian influence. The aim was to gain time through a ceasefire in order to later reach a peace between Russia and Ukraine.

She has also used this time to become stronger, as can be seen today. Ukraine of 2014/15 is not today’s Ukraine. How to participate in the battle for Debalzewe (railway town in Donbass, Donetsk Oblast, i.e. Red.) At the beginning of 2015, Putin could have easily overrun them at the time. And I very much doubt that the NATO states could have done as much then as they did today to help Ukraine.

ZEIT: In your first public appearance since the end of your chancellorship, you said that you recognized how Putin thinks about Europe back in 2007 and that the only language he understands is toughness. If this realization came so early, why did you pursue an energy policy that made us so dependent on Russia?

Merkel: It was clear to all of us that this was a frozen conflict, that the problem had not been solved, but that is exactly what gave Ukraine valuable time. Of course, one can now ask the question: Why did you still agree to the construction of Nord Stream 2 in such a situation?

ZEIT: Yes, why? Especially since there was already very fierce criticism of the construction of the pipeline at that time, for example from Poland and the USA.

Merkel: Yes, one could come to a different opinion. What was it about? On the one hand, Ukraine attached great importance to remaining a transit country for Russian gas. She wanted to pass gas through her territory and not through the Baltic Sea. Today, it is sometimes pretended that every Russian gas molecule was the devil. It wasn’t like that, the gas was contested. On the other hand, it was not the case that the federal government had applied for the approval of Nord Stream 2, the companies did. For the federal government and for me, the result was to decide whether we would make a new law as a political act in order to expressly refuse the approval of Nord Stream 2.

ZEIT: What prevented you from doing that?

Merkel: On the one hand, such a refusal in combination with the Minsk Agreement would have, in my view, dangerously worsened the climate with Russia. On the other hand, energy dependence arose because there was less gas from the Netherlands, Great Britain and limited production volumes in Norway.

ZEIT: And there was an early exit from nuclear energy. Also initiated by you.

Merkel: Right, and across all parties, the decision to produce less gas in Germany as well. One should have decided to buy more expensive LNG from Qatar or Saudi Arabia, the USA was only available later as an export nation. This would have significantly worsened our competitiveness. Today, under the pressure of war, what I support is being done, but at that time it would have been a much more massive political decision.

ZEIT: Should you have made this decision anyway?

Merkel: No, especially since there would have been no acceptance at all. If you ask me for self-criticism, I will give you another example.

ZEIT: The whole world is waiting for a word of self-criticism!

Merkel: This may be true, but on many points the attitude of the critics does not correspond to my opinion. I think it would be fine to bow to it just because it is expected. I thought so much back then! It would be almost an indictment if I just said now, just to have my peace and without really thinking like that: Oh, that’s right, now I also notice it, that was wrong. But I’ll tell you a point that concerns me. He has to do with the fact that the Cold War was never really over, because Russia was basically not pacified. When Putin invaded Crimea in 2014, he was expelled from G8. NATO has also stationed troops in the Baltic States to show that we are ready for defense as NATO. In addition, we have decided in the alliance to spend two percent of the respective gross domestic product on defense. The CDU and CSU were the only ones who still had this in their government program. But we should also have reacted more quickly to Russia’s aggressiveness. Germany has not achieved the two-percent target despite an increase. And I didn’t think of a flaming speech every day.

ZEIT: Why not? Because you secretly thought you didn’t need it?

Merkel: No, but because I acted according to Helmut Kohl’s principle: What matters is what comes out at the end. Giving a rousing speech only to end up as a bedside rug wouldn’t have helped the budget. But when I look through history for successful recipes, I come to the NATO double-track decision …

ZEIT: … Helmut Schmidt ultimately lost his chancellorship through this decision …

Merkel: Right, which only increased my respect for him. What was intelligent about the NATO double-track decision was the dual approach of retrofitting [Counter-arming] and diplomacy. Translated into the 2 percent target, that means we haven’t done enough to deter through increased defense spending.