Germany’s Merz offers hope for Ukraine amid the Trump nightmare

BERLIN — At last, Europe has a straw to clutch at — and it’s not as flimsy as it could have been. 

German voters elected a new Bundestag on Sunday, heralding a potentially radical change in direction for the government, and for Europe. 

Friedrich Merz, the conservative candidate who will be Germany’s next chancellor, declared he wanted Europe to gain full “independence” from the United States on defense. “After Donald Trump’s statements last week,” Merz said in a live TV discussion on Sunday night, “it is clear that the Americans, at least this part of the Americans, this administration, are largely indifferent to the fate of Europe.”

Merz has floated the idea of a new European defense alliance to replace NATO, including nuclear cooperation with France and the U.K. He is hawkish on Russia, but has also apparently resolved to take on Trump with the same determination. 

“Merz is signaling that the foundation of Germany’s post-World War II orientation will change under his government,” said Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at EurasiaGroup. “And Merz seems to have understood the threat that Trump presents.”

That is good news for Ukraine, which has been battered and bullied by the new White House in the past two weeks. What’s even better news is that the likely coalition that Merz will assemble stands a good chance of agreeing to a much stronger line on supporting Ukraine (and bolstering European security) than Germany has managed in recent years. 

Olaf Scholz, the self-style “peace chancellor”, has said he will not form part of the SPD team in any coalition. | Andreas Rentz/Getty Images

The second party in Merz’s likely coalition is the Social Democratic Party of Olaf Scholz, who styled himself as a “peace chancellor” reluctant to escalate the Ukraine conflict. 

But Scholz has said he will not form part of his SPD’s team in any coalition. That opens the door to a figure such as current Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, another hardliner on Russia.  

The fact Merz’s CDU/CSU conservatives can potentially form a “grand coalition” with the SPD means the new government is likely to be more stable than the previous, fractious power-sharing alliance of three parties.

If the coalition needs more support during parliamentary votes, Merz may turn to the Greens, whose most prominent figure Robert Habeck is among the most hawkish on defense spending and support for Ukraine. 

‘Imperialism at its worst’

“Americans are not just leaving Europe alone, but are working against Europe,” Habeck said on Sunday, after the polls closed. “They are letting Ukraine down. I would say they are betraying it. This is imperialism at its worst.” He urged Europe to unite and agree to financing solutions quickly, warning Germany must not take long to form a new government.

If the senior team in the next coalition includes Merz and Pistorius, Germany will suddenly look like it has acquired a backbone when it comes to security policy, just when Europe needs one.

Trump has spent his first month back in office systematically wrecking the transatlantic alliance, first on trade and then — most devastatingly — on defense. 

Without consulting a single European ally, the president and his team opened unconditional talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on “peace” in Ukraine, declared Volodymyr Zelenskyy was a “dictator” and said Kyiv would never win back all the land Moscow has illegally taken. 

On Sunday, the Ukrainian president even offered to resign if it helped deliver peace and meaningful security — such as NATO membership — for his country. 

But one of the items on Merz’s to-do list will be examining whether NATO itself is still fit for purpose in the Trump era. 

Speaking on TV on Sunday night, Merz said he was not sure by the NATO summit in the summer “whether we will still be talking about NATO in its current form or whether we will have to establish an independent European defense capability much more quickly.” 

There are still challenges for Merz, and for Europe’s new self-defense mission: He is not a popular figure in Germany. 

Far-right threat

The far right is snapping at Merz’s heels, with the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party achieving its best-ever result and eyeing an overall victory in 2029. The AfD threat will keep the pressure on Merz to resolve Germany’s explosive migration question, after a series of terrorist attacks perpetrated by foreign nationals horrified the nation.

It is an issue with the potential to wreck a coalition with the SPD and could easily trigger the kind of instability that would put Merz’s wider foreign policy plans at risk.

Germany’s economy remains moribund, a situation that seems likely to continue, especially if  Trump’s trade agenda makes life even tougher for Germany’s flagship car industry and other exporters. Failure to address the economic hardships of voters’ lives will damage Merz’s ratings and destabilize the coalition even further.

The vexed issue of the debt brake — the question of whether to loosen the fiscal rules to allow investment in industry and, crucially, a big outlay on defense — will also loom large for the new government. It destroyed the previous one. 

And then there’s the ticking clock. It is normal for coalition talks to take two months or so before a new government is finalized. Ukraine does not have that long. Trump and Putin may even meet in the coming days. 

EU leaders are frantically trying to come up with a multi-billion-euro aid plan for financing and arming Ukraine as U.S. support dries up. They are convening an emergency summit on March 6 to discuss defense. Many will be looking to Merz for leadership.

Although Merz is unlikely to be in charge by then, he knows how urgent the task of sealing that coalition deal really is. “The world out there won’t wait for us,” he said.