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To German voters, Angela Merkel has got it just right.
As she approaches the tenth anniversary of assuming power, the chancellor appears unassailable, leading opinion polls as she looks back on a decade of tumbling unemployment, a successful push to balance the budget and a stock-market rally that’s outperformed international peers.
Yet increasingly she gives Germans something more than a return to the industrial might that eluded her immediate predecessors: a sense of growing international clout beyond the purely economic that is feeding voter support at home even as it generates friction overseas.
From Athens to Brussels, in Ukraine and Russia, Merkel has projected German values across Europe while taking confrontational stands that post-Cold War governments used to avoid. That extends to facing down members of her parliamentary caucus over granting more aid for Greece. The reward is near-record levels of domestic support midway through her third term -- a traditional graveyard for political leaders including Margaret Thatcher -- increasing the likelihood that she’ll seek a fourth in 2017.
“She wants to define the terms more and more, and that resonates across German society,” Daniel Hamilton, head of the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, said in an interview. While Merkel is committed to the European bargain that created the euro, “the impression is that she stands up for German interests and for ‘what’s right.’ That has carried her a lot.”Global crises, including all-night peace talks on Ukraine and multiple sessions on the standoff with Alexis Tsipras’s government in Greece, are once again dominating Merkel’s agenda after a lull following her re-election in 2013. They’ve also ratcheted up tension and sown disunity in Europe amid historic grudges and the continent’s north-south divide. Along with the familiar portrayal in Greece of Merkel and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble as Nazis, the latest phase of the crisis saw social media mobilize globally in favor of Tsipras and his Coalition of the Radical Left, or Syriza, predominantly at Merkel and Germany’s expense.
Paul Krugman used his New York Times blog to lambast Merkel over Europe’s “disaster.” In the U.K., author and political activist Owen Jones denounced her in denounced her in the Guardian as “the most monstrous western European leader of this generation.” #ThisIsACoup trended on the internet as Syriza’s challenge to the mainstream was seen to be subjugated to Merkel’s will.
The impact on Germans? She is more popular now than when she defeated Gerhard Schroeder in the September 2005 election. One poll this month showed her bloc within reach of an absolute majority if elections were held now, prompting Torsten Albig, a Social Democratic state leader, to suggest the party of Chancellors Schroeder, Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt shouldn’t bother to run against Merkel in 2017.
‘Natural’ Criticism
“Criticism – even harsh criticism – is a natural consequence of Germany’s increasing influence within Europe,” Sylke Tempel, chief editor of the German policy journal Internationale Politik, said in a commentary on the European Leadership Network website. “Germans seem to have grasped this reality well, accepting international critique with equanimity, if also with a certain amount of surprise.”
With her declared goal of preserving the euro area under threat, Merkel over-ruled Schaeuble last month and marshaled the 19 member countries to keep Greece in the currency union. On Ukraine, she’s rebuffed U.S. politicians advocating arms shipments while rallying the European Union to maintain economic sanctions on Russia, even at the expense of German exporters. “She’s the bedrock on pro-European problem solving,” Alexander Stubb, the Finnish finance minister and former prime minister who knows Merkel from numerous European summits, said in an interview. “Just throw it at her and slowly but surely she finds a solution.”
Throughout, she’s kept economically weaker France at her side as Germany’s key ally, reached out to the U.K. before the country’s planned vote on EU membership and built alliances with smaller EU members such as Slovakia. She’s also made a public show of support for the Balkans in the face of moves by Vladimir Putin to reassert Russian influence in the region.
“Merkel is at the pinnacle of her power,” said Jan Techau, head of the Carnegie Endowment office in Brussels. She symbolizes “the safe buffer between Germany and the ugly world out there, and this is what German voters want.” There are dangers to what at times looks like omnipotence: German business leaders complain that Europe’s biggest economy is stultifying under her risk-averse leadership. Infrastructure investment falls short, her abrupt decision to phase out nuclear power in favor of renewable sources is a work in progress, while her lack of an obvious successor threatens a power vaccum at the heart of Europe.
Asked in an interview with ZDF television on Sunday if lasting damage had been caused by Germany’s stance on Greece, Merkel shrugged off the controversy.
“On the one hand there’s respect. On the other hand, there are demands for us to put ourselves in the position of others,” she said. “But I don’t have the impression that we were isolated.”
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