Merkel reaches ‘dead end’ with Putin
German leader has reached a ‘dead end’ in dealings with Russian president
German Chancellor Angela Merkel might be at the pinnacle of her power as Europe’s “Iron Frau,” but the G7’s longestserving leader will be sharing the spotlight with the missing man from Moscow when the group’s leaders’ summit begins Sunday in the Bavarian Alps.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been a pariah since being kicked out last year from what had become the G8 for sending his army to invade and annex Crimea and then for abetting the civil war unleashed by pro-Russia rebels in eastern Ukraine. It is unlikely he will be welcomed back any time soon.
Merkel, who almost from the outset of the Ukraine-Russia crisis has been the G7’s de facto leader on the issue, proclaimed in a series of recent interviews that it was “unimaginable” that Putin would be welcomed back into the club “as long as Russia does not commit itself ... to the fundamental values of international law.”
With U.S. President Barack Obama’s international leader- ship an issue almost everywhere today, this should be Merkel’s moment. The German economy is far and away the biggest and strongest in Europe and she has been its sober custodian for nearly a decade.
But the pragmatic, plainspeaking clergyman’s daughter is unlikely to have much fun herding the cats at Elmau Castle this weekend.
The divide between Russia and Europe is threatening European stability like no other geo-political issue since the Cold War. At the same time Europe’s undisputed leader has had to assume the thankless task of trying to hold Europe together while Greece is nearly bankrupt and Great Britain is demanding a slew of concessions before holding a referendum on its future in the EU.
Merkel has already stated that both Greece’s dire problems and Britain’s future in the EU are not up for discussion, let alone negotiation, at the G7 because they are European issues. But the potential global consequences of both and their potential effect on the European experiment has rattled the West and will obviously be part of the frantic round of bilaterals that always take place in backrooms at such gatherings.
With Ukraine topping the agenda, and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Syria and Iraq percolating in the background, there will be less time to discuss the millenium’s hottest topic, climate change. This is an issue of personal interest to Merkel, who has sometimes been called the Climate Chancellor since she chaired her first G7 in 2007.
What Merkel badly wants from her G7 colleagues are green reforms that Germany can take to the climate summit in Paris in December. But her own government’s record on this issue is spotty, at best.
Attempts to create wind and solar power have made Germany a global pioneer in this field. But these mega projects have cost billions of dollars and have not come close to meeting expectations.
Climate change should be a big issue every time so many big polluters get together. So should European unity.
But this summit will largely be judged by whether it comes up with any new remedies to counter Putin’s aggression in Ukraine.
It is a key issue for Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who is also expected to discuss the global economy, Iran’s nuclear program and ISIL. Harper, the second-longest-serving G-7 leader after Merkel, will be visiting Ukraine for the 3rd time in 14 months on Saturday.
As part of Putin’s never-ending brinkmanship, it may not be too much of a stretch to suggest that a surge in pro-Russian attacks on Ukrainian positions this week were designed to put additional pressure on the G7 and produce the kind of opprobrium that Putin thrives on.
The original idea was that Merkel would speak for the West with Putin because they each grew up with a personal understanding of Central Europe’s complicated relationship with Russia. It was thought the two might find common ground because she spoke Russian well, having won prizes for learning it as a schoolchild in East Germany, and because he spoke German well, having learned the language before being sent to East Germany as a spy as the Berlin Wall crumbled.
That might have been true in the beginning. But those days are gone, probably forever.
The sense that Merkel’s aides have given the German media is that the chancellor has become exasperated with her Russian interlocutor. Merkel’s position, to put it bluntly, is that Putin is not often given to speaking the truth and seldom honours promises that he has made.
The lowest point might have come at a late-night meeting that they had just before the G20 last November in Australia. It was after that four-hour conversation that Merkel apparently concluded she had reached a diplomatic dead end with Putin. The icy body language they displayed when they were photographed together outside the Kremlin last month showed the precarious state of this crucial relationship.
Putin and Merkel will not have a chance to stare each other down at the G7, but there is no mistaking that they will be sharing centre stage.