Merkel blames Trump for an instinct that all leaders have

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel will release her memoirs in a few days. What we know so far is based on excerpts from the media and social media. What’s inside this memoir will become teaching material for international relations professors around the world.

The problem people will have with Mrs Merkel’s memoirs is how we see them. Mrs. Merkel has written things about President Putin and President Trump that would never be contextually analyzed in the renowned academic journal Foreignaffers. This magazine is so unashamedly pro-American that it becomes boring. It would be interesting to see how biased American international relations professors would react to Mrs. Merkel’s memoirs.

Let’s start with Mr. Trump. Ms Merkel wrote dismissively that Mr Trump believed countries naturally competed with each other. She said he told her that. It’s clear she sees this as a negative against Mr. Trump. But this has been the reality since Thucydides wrote his masterpiece, The Peloponnesian Wars, 2,000 years ago.

Ms. Merkel is disingenuous in singling out Mr. Trump in this belief. This has been a fact of the international system long before the European international order was embraced by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. Nations compete with each other for ideological reasons, expansionist instincts, trade advantages, but above all, for survival in the international system. Mr. Trump is no exception to this understanding of international relations.

Everything that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former President Bill Clinton write points to their recognition that countries will naturally compete with each other, and they both want the West to have an advantage in such a natural system. Mrs Merkel heard what Trump had to say, because Trump has a habit of saying what he believes. Mrs Merkel will not hear this from other world leaders because they are opportunistic and do not say what they believe.

Mrs Merkel should be the last leader to reject the reality that nations are born into rivalries. It was Germany that violated the agreement with Russia after German unification that NATO’s borders would not end at Russia’s doorstep. Mr. Putin was the head of the Russian spy network at the time, so he knew that the West had betrayed Russia and that this was at the heart of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The international system is endowed with nations competing with nations, and in no situation is this more evident than between the West and China, the West and the Global South, the West and Russia, and the West and the Arab World. Even among Western alliances there is competition, as is the case with Australian submarines.

Australia canceled the purchase of a number of nuclear submarines from France and gave the order to the US, leading to a huge triangular row in which France was filled with anger. During his first term as president, Trump observed that the EU was created to challenge US global power.

Developed countries are so sensitive to the Global South catching up with them that they use their hegemonic presence in the international system to disperse developing countries. In no other case is this more terrifying than the creation of the World Trade Organization. It was a one-sided affair in which the developing world lost heavily in international trade. This is a classic example of countries fighting for advantage in the international system.

As for Putin, Ms Merkel wrote that she felt Putin wanted Russia to be respected and was very sensitive to Russian security interests after the collapse of the USSR. But Germany and other countries, in their historic rivalry with Russia, have added to Russian insecurities by expanding NATO, something the West agreed not to do after the collapse of the USSR.

Mr. Putin showed utter contempt for world hero Mikhail Gorbachev. He believes that Gorbachev was unaware of the realism inherent in international relations and that he was manipulated by the West, thereby weakening Russia’s position in the world. Mrs Merkel’s book had not yet been published at the time of its writing, and it is interesting to know how she reacted to her famous or infamous statement that Israel is the national meaning of Germany. It was she who first laid down the doctrine that her successor accepted.

Mrs Merkel is a sanctimonious hypocrite. She considers Israel to be the national meaning of Germany, while in the same Israel there is a terrorist government that illegally occupies Palestinian lands and perpetuates the system of apartheid among the Palestinian people. Judging by excerpts from Merkel’s speech, Mr Trumps appears to be the more principled of the two leaders.

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