Germany’s Merz lashes out at Trump’s US while trying to form coalition

Germany’s chancellor-presumptive has come out swinging against the United States administration of Donald Trump, hours after winning Sunday’s federal election.

“After]President] Donald Trump’s remarks last week … it is clear that this government does not care much about the fate of Europe”, said Friedrich Merz, leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), in a televised discussion on election night. He called for German “independence” from the US.

On February 18, Trump referred to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “modestly successful comedian” who had “done a terrible job” and had “begun a dictator without elections.”

It was a dramatic reversal from the tight bond Zelenskyy had enjoyed with Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden. If Ukraine were to join the NATO without delay, Selenskyy made an offer to resign on Sunday.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stunned European leaders a week earlier when he said that the country “must provide the overwhelming share of future lethal and nonlethal aid to Ukraine” and that they “must lead the charge against Russia by dedicating 5 percent of GDP to defense, an increase from 2 percent currently.”

At the next NATO summit in June, it was unclear whether “we will still be talking about NATO in its current form” or whether “we will have to establish a European defence capability much more quickly.”

In a news conference on Monday, Merz told reporters, “it is five minutes to midnight for Europe” on defence.

His bold rhetoric clashes with the slack support he received from voters.

The CDU’s 28.6 percent of Sunday’s vote is its lowest margin of victory since the party was founded in 1949.

Merz believes that the US is “tending Ukraine to the wolves.”

Merz is pursuing more aggressive negotiations with the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which lost control of the country.

His CDU, along with the Christian Social Union (CSU), could rule with 360 members in the 630-seat Bundestag, the German parliament. However, they would need to reconcile their differences regarding defense, economic, and foreign policy.

SPD leader Olaf Scholz has staunchly refused to deliver 500km-range (310-mile) Taurus missiles to Ukraine. If Russia continued to attack Ukrainian civilians, Merz declared in October that he would do it. In its conflict with Ukraine, Russia has consistently said that it is attacking civilians.

According to Milton Less, senior adviser for geopolitics at Cambridge University’s Centre for Risk Studies, “the US is throwing Ukraine to the wolves and providing weapons for Ukraine would strengthen its hand,” Less said. “But doing so will be complicated. The SPD and German society are at odds with one another regarding the issue of military support for Ukraine.

“Once the EU public grasps the staggering financial cost of propping up Ukraine’s war effort and the long-term danger of pushing Russia into tighter alliances with China, North Korea, and Iran, they’ll demand the war ends”, Demetries Grimes, a former naval commander and US attache to Greece and Israel, told Al Jazeera.

Merz and Scholz concur that cheaper energy is needed to boost the competitiveness of the German manufacturing sector, but the CDU leader wants to restart three of the Scholz government’s decommissioned nuclear plants.

Merz also wants to cut back on the SPD’s economic policy, which is centered on the welfare state.

He told the World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos last month, “It is a big mistake to pay for not working and to give others not the best incentives to return to the labor market.”

Germany’s constitutional deficit cap of 0.35 percent of GDP is one of their biggest disagreements. One of the reasons Scholz needed three years to increase defense spending to 2% of GDP was because of it. Both leaders have resisted boosting it to 5%.

“Without real budget muscle behind it, Merz’s rhetoric is just noise”, said Grimes.

Scholz now supports “a smart and targeted change of the debt rule,” arguing that Germany has room to borrow despite having a GDP of 62%.

Merz, a vocal supporter of the deficit ceiling, said he might change it in November but not because of the welfare spending that Social Democrats are so fond of.

Perhaps the pair’s biggest disagreement is on immigration.

“We will immediately stop that part of migration that comes from family reunification”, Merz told the WEF. “There are 500, 000]people] who came to Germany in the last four years without any control. This has to be stopped immediately”.

Merz, the SPD’s leader, requested that the measure on January 29.

When they refused, he shocked them by inviting support from any quarter, including the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). “I can’t trust him any more”, Scholz said after the vote.

United in adversity

Two factors may be bringing Merz and Scholz closer together, however. One is the surge in support for the AfD, which took 20.8 percent of the vote, twice its 2021 showing, by eating away at both the CDU and the SPD, partly on migration.

The two centrist parties have chosen not to collaborate with the far-right.

The other is the turnaround in the US support of Europe’s defence, which Less called “a game-changer” as the US could now pull 35, 000 soldiers stationed in Germany.

“I take Merz’s comments on independence from the US as a serious statement about his and Germany’s support for a stronger Europe”, Less said. The main reason people are opposing an alternative to NATO is that “the American security guarantee is no longer guaranteed.”

Can it be done? If Germany and France co-opt the United Kingdom into a supra-EU European defense coalition, this might be more advantageous.

Others are less convinced.

“Europe stepping up its defence game wouldn’t weaken NATO, it would strengthen the alliance, boost transatlantic ties, and improve cooperation”, said Grimes.

“The real issue isn’t autonomy for its own sake – it’s about boosting deterrence”, he said. “Enhanced European capabilities can only reinforce, not replace, that longstanding umbrella”.

Source: Aljazeera