Johns Hopkins University is one of the finest educational institutions in the world. Still, the university’s leadership needs to refresh its knowledge of recent history.
As with Harvard University in 2019, their rationale for awarding Chancellor Angela Merkel an honorary degree is starkly at odds with Merkel’s actual record. The German leader will receive the degree following a Thursday visit to Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies’ campus in Washington, D.C.
Johns Hopkins says that Merkel’s degree comes in “recognition of her sixteen years of principled global leadership and her legacy of promoting international cooperation and stability amid unprecedented challenges.” Merkel, the university statement continues, is “a singular force who has led her nation with conviction while fortifying relations at home and abroad … she has been a leader of purpose and principle.”
This is a rather imaginative interpretation of Merkel’s tenure in office.
True, Merkel has successes to her name. She has indeed been in office for nearly 16 years, securing repeated coalition governments during that tenure. It’s also true that Merkel’s economic record has been generally impressive. And whatever one thinks of Merkel’s controversial refugee resettlement policy, she deserves respect for her political courage in pursuing it. That said, it is not credible for Johns Hopkins to assert that Merkel has been the glue of the liberal international order.
Merkel’s failure to inject democratic ownership and accountability into the European Union has helped spur rising separation movements. Brexit might be only the first national exit from an unreformed EU that cares far more about centralizing its own power than delivering results for those citizens its two un-elected presidents are presumed to serve. It might be reflexive for D.C. elite circles such as Johns Hopkins to regard the EU as an apex manifestation of political morality, but the political bloc’s subordination of national parliaments and peoples to an unaccountable central authority is antithetical to American democratic values. Merkel’s leveraging of the Euro to reduce German export prices might also be considered predatory by some in less wealthy EU nations.
And that’s just the start.
Facing China, which poses the preeminent challenge to the 21st century liberal international order, Merkel has abandoned any pretense of “conviction” in service of “purpose and principle.” The chancellor has refused to support U.S., Australian, British, and French efforts to challenge China’s absurdly imperial claims over the near entirety of the South China Sea. Merkel has offered only the most cautious of condemnations in regards to China’s genocide against the Uyghur people and its oppression of Hong Kong. On the contrary, the chancellor has prioritized economic relations above all else. Assuring German car export access to China matters far more to Merkel than does the hallowed idealism with which Johns Hopkins now adorns her.
Then there’s Merkel’s Russia policy.
Johns Hopkins, quite ludicrously, tells us that Merkel has been steadfast in her support for the “territorial integrity of Ukraine.” This will be news to Ukrainians, most notably President Volodymyr Zelensky. Zelensky has faced Merkel’s sustained pressure to meet Vladimir Putin’s escalating aggression with commensurate concessions. The German navy stays away from the international waters of the Black Sea so as to placate Russia. And when it comes to the critical concern of Ukrainian energy security, Merkel’s leadership isn’t simply weak, it is directly subservient to Putin. Russia’s Nord Stream II energy pipeline will serve as an enduring metaphor for the hot air that defines Merkel’s moral leadership. Indeed, that is too generous a description. It would be more accurate to say that as long as it pumps, Nord Stream II will testify to the poisoned chalice of Merkel’s so-cherished moral leadership. Oh, and I nearly forgot, Merkel also allows the Russian GRU intelligence service to operate chemical weapons facilities on German soil. These policy choices appear to have escaped Johns Hopkins’ notice.
So yes, Merkel’s supporters may laud her condemnations of Viktor Orban and Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s human rights abuses. They may praise her dogged work ethic. But the survival of the democratic rule of law in the 21st century will not rise or fall on the choices of Orban and Erdogan. It will rise or fall on the choices that democratic leaders make in face of profound challenges from China and Russia. Merkel has plainly allowed those challenges to metastasize without restraint. And her legacy seems set to endure. Regrettably, Merkel’s likely successor seems set to continue her warped foreign policy trajectory.
The School of Advanced International Studies might want to pursue some more advanced analysis of Merkel’s actions in office, if only to see the folly of this undue honor.
