Analyst Glenn Diesen accuses Chancellor Merz of provoking Russia and backing Gaza operations
- Glenn Diesen used a viral post to cast Friedrich Merz as a danger on three fronts — Russia, Gaza, and Europe’s military buildup. - The charge collides with Merz’s actual record: arming Ukraine hard, promising Europe’s strongest conventional army, then publicly criticizing Israel’s Gaza push. - That matters because Merz is trying to move Germany into a more muscular foreign-policy role while balancing Trump friction and pressure from the AfD.
A foreign-policy post went viral because it flattened three separate fights into one clean accusation. Glenn Diesen — a Norwegian political scientist known for arguments sympathetic to Russia’s security framing — portrayed German Chancellor Friedrich Merz as simultaneously provoking Moscow, backing Israeli operations in Gaza, and pushing a larger European military project. The reason it landed is simple: Merz really is trying to make Germany more assertive abroad. But the catch is that the Gaza part of the charge fits badly with what Merz has actually been saying in public. ### Who is Glenn Diesen here? Diesen is not a German government insider or a mainstream Berlin power broker. He is a Norway-based academic and commentator whose work focuses heavily on Russia, Eurasia, and criticism of NATO’s post-Cold War expansion. So when he frames Merz as “provoking Russia,” he is speaking from a worldview that treats Western military expansion and support for Ukraine as major drivers of the conflict, not just responses to it. (en.wikipedia.org) ### Why target Merz now? Because Merz has spent the past year moving Germany toward a much harder security posture. In May 2025, he said Germany would provide whatever funding the Bundeswehr needed to become the strongest conventional army in Europe. That was not a vague aspiration. It was a headline commitment to rearmament and to a bigger German role inside Europe’s defense architecture. For critics like Diesen, that looks like escalation dressed up as deterrence. (en.wikipedia.org) ### Is the Russia part of the accusation fair? Fair depends on your starting premise. If you think stronger European militaries and sustained support for Ukraine reduce the chance of Russian coercion, Merz looks conventional, not reckless. If you think NATO-adjacent military expansion itself deepens the security spiral, then Merz looks provocative. What is concrete is that Merz has backed a tougher line on Russia and stronger European defense capacity, so Diesen did not invent the underlying policy direction — he interpreted it in the harshest possible way. (politico.eu) ### What about Gaza? This is where the viral framing strains. Merz was initially aligned with Germany’s traditional pro-Israel posture, including the insistence that Hamas must be disarmed and removed from any future role in Gaza. But by late May 2025 he was openly criticizing Israel’s military course, saying he no longer understood the goal of the army’s actions in Gaza and warning that even close friends might stop accepting them. That is not the language of a leader simply “backing Gaza operations” without qualification. (politico.eu) ### So why did the post spread? Because it compresses a messy reality into a simple villain profile. Merz has annoyed multiple audiences at once — Russia skeptics think he must do more, antiwar critics think he is escalating Europe, pro-Israel hawks dislike his Gaza criticism, and transatlantic loyalists worry when he needles Washington. Viral political posts do well when they turn that mess into one sentence with a target. (bundesregierung.de) ### Where does Trump fit in? Merz also picked a public fight he did not need. In late April 2026, he said the US was being “humiliated” by Iran in the war, which triggered a furious reaction from Donald Trump. That spat mattered because Merz had been trying to keep Berlin’s relationship with Washington workable even while arguing Europe needed more strategic independence. Instead, he ended up looking like a European leader talking tough while still needing US security backing. (semafor.com) ### Why does this matter in Germany? Because Merz is trying to sell a more forceful German foreign policy to a country that is still deeply uneasy about military power, energy shocks, and open-ended confrontation. Every viral attack that casts him as reckless feeds that domestic vulnerability — especially when the far right can argue that mainstream elites are dragging Germany into other people’s wars. (semafor.com) ### Bottom line? Diesen’s post worked as political framing, not as a clean description. Merz is undeniably pushing a harder line on Russia and a stronger European military role. But the Gaza charge leaves out the part where Merz publicly broke with Israel’s current campaign. That mismatch is the whole story. (politico.eu)
