European NATO member-states must enhance their defense capabilities in order to deter potential Russian aggression, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned. The former politician also expressed concern that US President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House could potentially undermine regional security.
Speaking during a presentation of her memoirs, titled ‘Freedom: Memories 1954-2021’, in Berlin on Tuesday, Merkel acknowledged that her government had failed to reach NATO’s 2% defense spending target quickly enough. She noted, however, that similar trends had been observed in many other European nations at the time.
Merkel, who served as chancellor from 2005 to 2021, was one of the guarantors of the 2014-15 Minsk agreements, which aimed to reintegrate Donbass into Ukraine while granting the region greater autonomy. In 2022, she admitted that the accords had in fact been an “attempt to give Ukraine time” to build up its military.
During the event on Tuesday, the former official read aloud an excerpt from her book, in which she tentatively attributed the escalation of the Ukraine conflict to a lack of face-to-face communication between Western leaders and Russian President Vladimir Putin during the Covid-19 pandemic that raged globally from late 2019 into early 2022.
According to Merkel’s memoirs, Moscow’s military campaign against its neighbor has “fundamentally changed the situation not only for Ukraine, but also for us, members of NATO, especially the European ones.”
Citing her book, the former official said it “was a mistake to underestimate Putin.”
The ex-chancellor argued that while the West should continue supporting Ukraine, diplomatic solutions should also be developed and put on the table when the conditions are ripe.
In her book, Merkel calls for the establishment of “credible deterrence for the defense” of European NATO member states. She also advocated relaxing the German government’s self-imposed ‘debt brake’ to fund its military.
Enshrined in the German constitution, the so-called ‘debt brake’ limits the issuance of government debt and caps annual structural deficits to 0.35% of the country’s GDP.
The former head of government insisted that “credible deterrence in the foreseeable future is a deterrence within NATO. Europe on its own cannot manage it [without the US].” However, US President-elect Donald Trump could be reluctant to deepen defense cooperation with European allies, Merkel suggested.
The Republican has repeatedly warned that in the event of a military conflict, Washington would not come to the rescue of those NATO member states that have failed to pull their weight in terms of defense spending.
In June, Russian President Putin rejected claims that Moscow was planning to attack NATO as “absolute nonsense.”