US President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw more than a quarter of the US forces stationed in Germany has left Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, completely exposed, while facing increasing pressure from Russian President Vladimir Putin, as the Russian capital Moscow welcomed the withdrawal of American soldiers. "Trump is spitting in Merkel's face, but this is in our interest," says former Russian diplomat Vladimir Frolov, who is now a foreign policy analyst.
After days of uncertainty, Merkel's office said, last week, that it had been notified of the planned withdrawal, and a White House press official repeatedly refused to confirm the deliberations. But media reports have made alarm bells ring in Berlin, where analysts saw the move by America as yet another sign of the cold transatlantic relationship and the changing priorities in Washington.
Whether or not the US president intends to undermine Merkel's efforts to confront Russia, this is the latest example of his resort to annoying European leaders by creating an unexpected policy.
Earlier this year, with the outbreak of the "Covid-19" pandemic in Italy, Trump banned flights from the European Union, without notifying European leaders, and in the past he expressed doubts about the item of mutual defense of NATO, where he supports This item is continent security.
Electoral ploy
The prominent CDU lawmaker, Peter Bayer, to whom Merkel belongs, says he is still not sure whether the reports are a "test balloon" or a ruse for Trump's campaign. He said in an interview: "If the president aims to do so, then this means that he is working to weaken the transatlantic alliance." He added: "This will not be in the interest of NATO and its members, including the United States, but in the interest of China and Russia."
The departure of 9,500 US soldiers would create a toxic geopolitical environment for Merkel, as Trump looks to organize a direct meeting with the Russian president at the G7 summit next fall, and pressure Germany to take a tougher stance with China, its largest trading partner. Frolov said that Putin, for his part, viewed the chancellor as a lame duck, because she announced that she would not run when her fourth term expires next year.
A history of confrontations
Merkel is a giant pragmatist, with a history of trying to deal with Putin, and has managed to maintain ties with the Kremlin since the European Union imposed sanctions on Russia over the Crimea, and has moved forward with the "Nord Stream 2" gas pipeline project across the Baltic Sea, despite Washington's growing hostility to this project. There are now doubts about whether this $ 15 billion project will go ahead as U.S. sanctions threaten participating companies. German officials say they are disappointed that they have received very little in investing in their relationship with Putin.
The chancellor is now under domestic pressure over what was recently disclosed, about the role of Russian military intelligence in a cyber attack on the Bundestag in 2015, as well as new tensions in negotiations over Ukraine, according to German officials. Merkel confirmed the new frenzy in the relationship in a foreign policy speech last month. She said Russia “supports client regimes in parts of eastern Ukraine, and attacks Western democracies, including Germany, with hybrid resources.”
Meanwhile, the United States will send senior officials to Vienna on June 22, for talks on arms control with their Russian counterparts. The Trump administration wants to help Moscow enter China through broader negotiations, to reduce the nuclear weapons stockpiles of the three countries.
Tense relationships
Merkel's relationship with Putin, who worked as an Soviet intelligence officer in East Germany before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, reached a low point in late May, and the German Foreign Ministry summoned the Russian ambassador, after federal prosecutors concluded that an officer in Russia's Military Intelligence was involved in the 2015 attack on Computer networks in the Bundestag, Merkel said that Russia's intervention was "outrageous," and the Foreign Ministry said Germany would deploy a new cyber security mechanism in the European Union to impose sanctions against suspects.
A strong man The murder of a Georgian man, on August 23, in broad daylight at the Kleiner Tiergarten park, a short distance from Merkel's office, led to an exchange of diplomatic expulsions between Berlin and Moscow at the time, and the German Federal Prosecutor, who took over the investigation in December, says that there Evidence of the Russian state's involvement in this attack, too. While officials await the results of the investigation, the ministry says it is "expressly ready for further measures" against Moscow.
To make matters worse, the talks aimed at ending the fighting in eastern Ukraine remain in place, and have yielded nothing, as German officials complain that Russia insists on presenting itself as a mediator in the conflict rather than being involved, according to people familiar with the talks, who said The situation is undermining the Minsk process, which started five years ago, and which defined a framework for negotiations.
The Social Democrats, the junior partner in Merkel's coalition, had a more conciliatory approach to Russia than the Christian Democrats, but now they demand the chancellor to stand up to Putin. "We cannot allow such things to happen on German soil," said Nils Schmid, a prominent Social Democrat member and member of the Bundestag Foreign Affairs Committee, in an interview.
Putin views Merkel as a "lame duck", after announcing that she will not run when her fourth term ends next year.
Talks aimed at ending fighting in eastern Ukraine remain in place, and have yielded nothing, as German officials complain that Russia insists on presenting itself as a mediator in the conflict rather than as a participant, according to people familiar with the talks.