'Already an Exception': Merkel's Legacy Is Shaped by Migration and Austerity - The New York Times - 0 views
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Those contradictions rest at the core of the Merkel legacy
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As German chancellor, Ms. Merkel oversaw a golden decade for Europe’s largest economy, which expanded by more than a fifth, pushing unemployment to the lowest levels since the early 1980s.
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As the United States was distracted by multiple wars, Britain gambled its future on a referendum to leave the European Union and France failed to reform itself, Ms. Merkel’s Germany was mostly a haven of stability.
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But her decision to embrace more than a million asylum seekers unsettled that cozy status quo. Outside Germany, the austerity she and her longtime finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble imposed on debtor countries like Italy, Spain, Portugal and, especially, Greece sowed misery and resentment that fester to this day.
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Some, like the former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, compare Ms. Merkel’s austerity politics to the Treaty of Versailles, which imposed punitive economic measures on Germany after World War I, humiliated the country and fanned the flames of populism.“This is now what is feeding the political beasts,”
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Her modest and moderate governance style, absent ideology and vanity, is the polar opposite of that of the strongmen now strutting the world stage. Her Germany — that “vulnerable hegemon,” as the intellectual Herfried Münkler calls it — became a beacon of liberalism.
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Merkel knows a different form of social and societal equality,” Mr. Gysi said, adding of her former center-left rivals: “That made her so much more open to adopting ideas from the Social Democrats.”
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“Angela Merkel personifies the best Germany we’ve ever known,” said Timothy Garton Ash, a professor of European Studies at Oxford University. “She managed Germany’s rise to once again become Europe’s leading power. But she failed to prepare Germans sufficiently for what that means.”
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Ms. Merkel has never been one for rousing speeches. (“We had those kinds of speeches 70 years ago,” Ms. Roll said. “Her lack of talent and interest in this department was a good thing.”)
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She never boasted that Germany got what it wanted after summit meetings (though it mostly did). But as exports and domestic demand boomed, Germany prospered and so did Ms. Merkel’s popularity ratings.
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Gregor Gysi, a fellow Easterner and political opponent from the Left party, said that spending half her life under Communism gave her a visceral thirst for freedom — but also made her more socially conscious than other Western conservatives.
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But like her friend and ally President Barack Obama — America’s first black president, who was succeeded by President Trump — Ms. Merkel will be judged by what comes next
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now in the third so-called grand coalition with the Social Democrats, Ms. Merkel’s habit of taking inspiration from (and credit for) their ideas has left the party a shadow of itself.
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It has also opened her own party to challenges on its right flank, leaving room for the emergence of the nationalist Alternative for Germany, which capitalized on her decision on asylum seekers.
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The French president François Mitterrand and his British counterpart Margaret Thatcher had both worried about a resurgence of “bad Germans.” Ms. Merkel’s greatest achievement, Ms. Roll said, was that “she came to represent the good Germans.”
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“It won Germany incredible respect — this image of a friendly humanitarian Germany, a Germany that protects,” Ms. Roth said. “She marked that image.”
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“German populism is perhaps not her child,” said Henrik Enderlein, the dean of the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. “But it is a child of the Merkel era.”
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“An Adenauer or a Kohl would have done it,” Mr. Fischer said. But Merkel, who had grown up behind the Iron Curtain and without the Western pro-European mind-set, “wasn’t there yet,” he said. “Her European conscience was not fully formed yet.
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Was hers a European Germany, one that saw Europe’s interests as its own? Or a Germany that ultimately wanted a German Europe?
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The real missed opportunity, observers say, was to use the crisis to propel a more far-reaching build-out of European Union institutions, which remain unprepared for the next financial meltdown.
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If there was ever a time to make a bold push to complete the institutions of the eurozone, this was it, said Joschka Fischer, a former German foreign minister.
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Even before the migration crisis arrived, the debt crisis provided a pivotal test for a chancellor at the helm of a newly dominant Germany.And it led to criticism that Ms. Merkel, while leading humbly, was no less the hegemon — prioritizing German interests; manipulating European Union institutions to Germany’s abiding benefit; turning southern countries into captive export markets; tightening the hold of German banks
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“But she always made clear: ‘I don’t build deadly walls,’ ” he recalled her saying. “She grew up behind one.”
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In Germany, too, politics has become noisier and nastier. Open sexism has entered the chamber with Alternative for Germany, said Ms. Roth, the vice president of the parliament.“Merkel has been the target of countless attacks, gendered attacks, sexualized dirt,” Ms. Roth said.
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Some have begun to referring to Merkelism, a modest but steadfast liberalism built on consensus rather than confrontation, as a recipe for democratic governance in the 21st century. Others fear that Merkelism will disappear with her.
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“She is so unvain that she does not overly care about leaving behind a blueprint for the West 4.0,” said Mr. Kornelius, her biographer. “She primarily wants to preserve what she can.”
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She has prevented crises rather than carried out visions, Mr. Kornelius said, and has been reactive rather than proactive. “But that is incredibly valuable at a time when we are dealing with questions of our liberal order in an unraveling world — and with leaders like Donald Trump.”
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Today, Ms. Merkel’s Germany can feel like a liberal island in a growing sea of illiberal forces. She has not changed — the world around her has.“She is already an exception today,” Mr. Knaus said. “I hope she is not a relic of an era that is coming to an end.”
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“She was a catastrophe,” said Mr. Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister, “and she will be missed, because who comes next will certainly be worse.”