Further reassessing Angela Merkel as Germany struggles

Her austerity moves after the Great Recession, even years after, even to the point of nearly tanking all the PIIGS, and definitely tanking Greece, have been assessed and reassesed plenty.

No, per this UnHerd piece, it's time to reassess her foreign policy meshing with her domestic policy.

This is the Angela Merkel who, per her infamous der Spiegel interview, discussed by me in depth here, deliberately used the Minsk Accords as a sort of "appeasement" to give Ukraine more time to at least moderately up-kit its army, and even more, up-train it to something supposedly like Western standards (though we're now seeing how realistic that is).

Per UnHerd, that's the same Merkel who couldn't or wouldn't get Germany off Russian natural gas. It's the Germany who allegedly abetted Volkswagen's diesel emissions cheating scandal, both in the US and in the EU. It's the Merkel who, despite the problems with nuclear power, killed all German power plants after Fukushima without any Plan B on board, and instead, without solar or wind enough to come close to replacing them, started burning more coal — and not just coal, but that dirty-for-coal lignite shit that we stopped burning in US coal-fired plants years ago. And, this coming from a Ph.D. scientist who knew better on not only climate change in particular but air pollution in general. Tis true that, since 1990, Germany has cut emissions more than the US, but that's not totally a fair comparison. First, that includes shutting down most of East Germany's dirty industry and second, it's based on a flat population. In the last 15-plus years, the US has done better.

It's the Merkel who, doubling down on old-fashioned German automotive excellence, didn't prod German carmakers into hybrids, sees them behind the curve on full electrics especially vis-a-vis China, and between that and German utility costs, per that Unherd piece, one wonders just how unstable the German car industry is.

And, the piece goes on to note that the economic weakness that has resulted from this has given a new boost to the Alternativ für Deutschland, along with it being the only party other than die Linke that opposes the war in Ukraine. Wolfgang Munchau says AfD had plateaued after getting its initial boost from opposing her opening the doors on refugee immigration.

Back to the economy. Munchau says it was a form of neo-mercantilism, which makes it all the more stupid for pissing Russia off when you're relying on its natural gas to literally fuel that.

The German economic situation is so bad that, beyond alt-ish websites, the AP just wrote in depth about it.