{"id":316816,"date":"2026-06-01T12:00:32","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T11:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=316816"},"modified":"2026-05-30T12:41:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T11:41:07","slug":"an-open-letter-to-german-chancellor-friedrich-merz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2026\/06\/an-open-letter-to-german-chancellor-friedrich-merz\/","title":{"rendered":"An Open Letter to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz arriving at the White House in Mar 2026.\u00a0 (White House\/Wikimedia Commons)<\/p><\/div>\n

A call to Chancellor Merz to begin immediate talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin about peace in Europe. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

27 May 2026 – <\/em>When I wrote an open letter to you a half year ago, I urged Germany to pursue diplomacy with Russia rather than the normalization of war. Six months later, the situation in Europe is dramatically worse. Europe and Russia are slipping into open war. And in that drift, Chancellor, your responsibility is singular. No European leader \u2014 not in Paris, not in Warsaw, not in Rome \u2014 holds the position that Germany holds, or has the power that you personally hold, to interrupt this catastrophe. Will you try for peace?<\/p>\n

You yourself, with Prime Minister Meloni and President Macron, called in January 2026 for Europe to restart relations with Russia and described Russia as \u201ea European country.\u201c Yet you did not pursue diplomacy. With the future of Europe at stake, this is an extraordinary abdication of leadership. Have you, in your months as Chancellor, attempted one substantive dialogue with President Putin? Has your foreign minister attempted one substantive dialogue with Foreign Minister Lavrov? Real conversations, the kind that ended the Cold War. The answer, as far as the public record reveals, is no. Not once. And not for want of recognizing the urgency.<\/p>\n

The past days have brought a dangerous acceleration that should focus every European mind. Both capitals are now under sustained attack: Ukrainian long-range drones have struck deep into Moscow, including civilian sites; Russian missile and drone strikes against Kyiv have greatly intensified. Ukrainian drones have crossed into the airspace of the Baltic states, raising the immediate prospect of an incident that could pull Europe directly into the war. A horrific Ukrainian strike on a boys\u2019 school in Lugansk has further eroded what little remains of restraint. And on May 25, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, acting on instructions from President Putin, formally notified the United States Secretary of State that the Russian Armed Forces are now launching \u201esystematic and sustained strikes\u201c on facilities and decision-making centers in Kyiv, and the Russian Foreign Ministry has advised that the United States and other countries \u201eensure the evacuation of their diplomatic personnel and other citizens from the capital of Ukraine.\u201c That message is the prologue to a major escalation. Diplomacy is more urgent than ever.<\/p>\n

The way to defend Ukraine is not continued slaughter, but peace on terms that are agreeable to all parties. Instead, we face escalation, with more deaths, more destruction, and the real prospect of a war that expands beyond Ukraine. By calling for ever more weapons, ever greater war-fighting capacity, and ever louder demonstrations of \u201eresolve,\u201c and by signaling that Germany is preparing for war rather than working to end it, you have allowed Berlin to become an accelerant rather than a brake to a European-wide war.<\/p>\n

Germany\u2019s Responsibility: Six Particulars<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Germany bears profound responsibility for the situation it now confronts. Before German policy can be reset toward peace, Germany\u2019s record must be confronted honestly. I set out below six serious failures of German foreign policy vis-\u00e0-vis Russia since German reunification in 1990.<\/p>\n

First \u2014 the 2+4 Treaty and NATO\u2019s eastward expansion.<\/em>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

On 12 September 1990, in Moscow, Germany signed the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany \u2014 the \u201e2+4 Treaty\u201c \u2014 that completed German reunification. That treaty was secured because Mikhail Gorbachev was given solemn assurances, by Hans-Dietrich Genscher, by Helmut Kohl, by James Baker, and by other Western leaders, that NATO would not move eastward. The declassified record \u2014 including the now-public memoranda assembled by the National Security Archive of George Washington University \u2014 is unambiguous: those assurances were given and were clearly meant at the time to apply beyond the territory of the former GDR to Eastern Europe. These assurances were reaffirmed through 1990 and 1991.<\/p>\n

The 2+4 Treaty restricts the placement of NATO troops in the former GDR, and recalls the principles of the Helsinki Final Act, which emphasizes that no nation\u2019s security should come at the expense of another\u2019s. Does any serious person believe that the Soviet Union cared about Western troops on the territory of the former GDR but was indifferent to NATO armies in Warsaw, Vilnius, or Kyiv? Of course not.<\/p>\n

The matter of NATO enlargement was discussed in detail and explicit assurances of non-enlargement to the East were given by Germany to the Soviet leaders \u2014 and then were broken. Germany was the principal beneficiary of those assurances, which were the quid pro quo for Germany\u2019s reunification. Yet as early as 1993, German leaders began to promote the violation of those assurances.<\/p>\n

Second \u2014 Chancellor Merkel\u2019s own testimony.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In her memoirs, Angela Merkel writes with striking candor that she understood at the time of the 2008 Bucharest Summit that inviting Ukraine and Georgia into NATO would be tantamount to a declaration of war on Russia. She knew Russia\u2019s red line. And yet she gave in to American pressure, accepting the compromise communiqu\u00e9 that Ukraine and Georgia \u201ewill become\u201c NATO members. That single sentence set in motion the catastrophes of 2014 and 2022. Merkel\u2019s later candor is a gift to her successors: she has told you, plainly and in her own words, what was understood at the time. Germany should not now pretend otherwise.<\/p>\n

Third \u2014 the betrayal of the February 21, 2014 agreement.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

On 21 February 2014, in Kyiv, Germany\u2019s then\u2013Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, together with his Polish and French counterparts, brokered an agreement between President Yanukovych and the opposition. The agreement provided for a return to the 2004 constitution, the formation of a national-unity government, and early presidential elections. President Putin was consulted; the agreement was confirmed. It was a serious diplomatic achievement under conditions of intense violence. Yet within twenty-four hours Yanukovych was forcibly overthrown by a violent coup. Germany did not insist on the agreement it had just guaranteed. Instead, following the U.S. lead, Germany backed the new government, as if there had been no agreement in place. That decision persuaded Moscow that Western signatures could not be trusted.<\/p>\n

Fourth \u2014 Minsk II.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In February 2015, Chancellor Merkel personally negotiated Minsk II in the Normandy Format and pledged Germany\u2019s political backing through the Declaration of Support adopted in Minsk on 12 February 2015. For seven years, the key political provision \u2014 autonomy for the Donbas regions within a sovereign Ukraine \u2014 was never implemented by Kyiv. Germany did not press Kyiv to implement the autonomy provision it had championed \u2014 and Merkel later acknowledged that the agreement had been used as a holding action to allow Ukraine to rearm. President Hollande said the same. The guarantee, in other words, was not a guarantee at all. It was a stratagem \u2014 once again at Washington\u2019s behest. Once again, the message to Moscow was that Western signatures cannot be trusted.<\/p>\n

Fifth \u2014 Nord Stream.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

On 7 February 2022, in the East Room of the White House, President Biden announced \u2014 with then-Chancellor Olaf Scholz standing beside him \u2014 that \u201eif Russia invades\u2026 then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.\u201c Asked how, he replied, \u201eI promise you, we will be able to do that.\u201c The pipelines were destroyed seven months later in an act of sabotage in the Baltic Sea. The available evidence \u2014 investigative reporting in the United States and Germany, the trail followed by the German federal prosecutor, and the public statements of former officials \u2014 points overwhelmingly to a joint Ukrainian-American operation. The German government has long known this. And yet Germany has permitted the public blame to fall on Russia, against the direct evidence, while an act of industrial sabotage against the German economy has gone unprosecuted and unanswered.<\/p>\n

Sixth \u2014 the April 2022 Istanbul agreement that was within reach.<\/em>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Just weeks after Russia\u2019s invasion in February 2022, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators converged in Istanbul on the terms of a peace agreement: Ukrainian neutrality outside NATO, multilateral security guarantees, agreed troop limits, and the political resolution of the Donbas and Crimea questions over time. The agreement was within days of signature. Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, one of the mediators, has confirmed publicly that the deal was close and that the West \u2014 the United States and the United Kingdom in particular \u2014 moved to block it. Prime Minister Boris Johnson\u2019s mission to Kyiv in April 2022 to instruct Ukraine not to sign is a matter of public record. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian lives, and the wider European order, have paid the price for that US\u2013UK intervention. Germany has not raised its voice on this \u2014 even though Germany, more than any other European state has borne the economic consequences.<\/p>\n

The Second Catastrophe: Germany\u2019s Economic Self-Destruction<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Your first concern must be peace. Yesterday\u2019s message from Moscow tells us how late the hour is. But there is a second catastrophe unfolding alongside the first: the willful destruction of the German economy, with Berlin as both author and victim.<\/p>\n

Germany\u2019s industrial economy was built on trade with Russia. The destruction of Nord Stream and the subsequent severance of Germany\u2019s trade relations with Russia have left Germany buying natural gas from the United States at prices several times higher than the Russian pipeline gas it replaced. This is industrial suicide. Germany\u2019s chemical sector, its steel sector, its glass industry, its energy-intensive manufacturers \u2014 the very foundations of the Mittelstand \u2014 are losing international competitiveness day by day. Skilled jobs are draining out of the German economy. And the German taxpayer and the German consumer are making a transfer of national wealth from Germany to American gas producers at a scale unprecedented in postwar Europe.<\/p>\n

On top of this, the German government is now pledging an enormous defence build-up \u2014 hundreds of billions of euros over the coming decade \u2014 to arm for a war that diplomacy can easily prevent. This is a profound misallocation of national resources. The fundamental challenge facing Germany in this decade is competitiveness in the digital age. Every euro spent on tanks, missiles, and artillery shells is a euro not spent on Germany\u2019s AI capacity, its chip-design and chip-fabrication capability, its energy infrastructure, and the high-speed digital networks that Germany needs to remain a top global economy.<\/p>\n

The hard reality, Mr. Chancellor, is that there is no security to be bought with these arms that diplomacy cannot buy at a tiny fraction of the cost, and there is no prosperity to be had without the digital and energy investments that this arms buildup will crowd out.<\/p>\n

My Appeal<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Chancellor Merz, more than any other European leader, the question of whether Europe descends into general war, or returns to negotiation, and to economic sanity, rests with you. The hour is very late. Yesterday\u2019s formal message from Moscow to Washington says so explicitly. Please open a dialogue with President Putin. Please send your foreign minister to Moscow or invite Russia\u2019s Foreign Minister to Berlin. Please reopen the OSCE channels that Germany has allowed to atrophy. \u00a0Please tell Kyiv to cease its strikes on civilian targets.<\/p>\n

Most importantly, please tell the German public the truth: that a negotiated peace based on Ukrainian neutrality is the realistic path out of catastrophe, and that restoring a normal economic relationship with Russia is the realistic path out of Germany\u2019s industrial decline.<\/p>\n

The terms of an acceptable agreement that Germany could propose are clear. The fighting would stop on an armistice line. All sides would renounce any future resort to violence on the question of borders. Ukraine would restore its neutrality, and NATO would permanently renounce further eastward enlargement.<\/p>\n

Europe and Russia would restore economic relations and would stop the warmongering. The OSCE would once again become the central forum for European security, with the fundamental precept that European security is indivisible, not based on military blocs dividing Europe. Alongside this peace, Germany would redirect its national resources toward the digital, AI, semiconductor, and energy investments that Germany\u2019s economic future demands.<\/p>\n

History will record what you do in the weeks ahead, and what you fail to do. So will the German public. So will the peoples of Russia, Ukraine, and Europe generally. It\u2019s time for diplomacy, Mr. Chancellor. The choice is yours to make.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Jeffrey D. Sachs, Professor of Sustainable Development and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University, is Director of Columbia\u2019s Center for Sustainable Development and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He has served as Special Adviser to three UN Secretaries-General [Kofi Annan (2001-7), Ban Ki-moon (2008-16), and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres. His books include <\/em>The End of Poverty<\/a>, Common Wealth<\/a>, The Age of Sustainable Development<\/a>, Building the New American Economy<\/a>, and most recently,<\/em> A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism<\/a>. Sachs was also an advisor to the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as to the first president of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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