t’s still not easy being Green. Shortly after coming in third place in the 2021 German federal election, the environmentally conscious and youth powered Greens decided to join, as a junior partner, the three-party Ampelkolition (“traffic light coalition”) with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) and pro-business Free Democrats (FDP). This often-strange assortment of bedfellows is now tasked with ushering in a new era of fiscally responsible progressive change. For the Greens, this will be an opportunity to continue to advance domestic priorities such as the phasing out of coal by 2030 and digitalizing the German economy. Additionally, this new coalition government offers the Greens a prime seat in crafting Germany’s international posture, as its co-Chair and former-Chancellor candidate, Annalena Baerbock, is now the Foreign Minister. The questions now are, who is Germany’s new top diplomat and what will the current iteration of the Green party bring to Germany’s foreign policy?
Who Is Annalena Baerbock?
Baerbock, born in 1980, grew up in a small town in the northwest state of Lower Saxony in the then-Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). She participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations with her family and her early formative years were mostly spent in a newly united Germany. Baerbock would go on to study public law and political science at the University of Hamburg, public international law at the London School of Economics and initiate, but never complete, a Ph.D. at the Free University of Berlin. Aside from the United Kingdom, she has lived abroad in the United States (Florida) and Brussels.
Her ascent in Green politics was swift. She officially joined the party in 2005 and went from a foreign policy advisor to a member of the European Parliament to becoming a member of the German Bundestag herself in 2013 to co-leading the Greens with Robert Habeck since 2018. Her peers describe her as detailed, passionate and ambitious. She was nominated in 2021 as the Green’s first Chancellor candidate and for a brief moment, she led in the polls. However, the Green party’s frontrunner status was short-lived. Baerbock became consumed with numerous tax and plagiarism scandals and voters increasingly felt she was too young and inexperienced for the position. After SPD emerged victorious from the election, she was selected as the first woman and second Green foreign minister after months of coalition negotiations. As the new government takes shape, the Green party’s historic trajectory offers early signals of where she may hope to lead Germany next.
What About The Green Party?
The Green party was formed the same year Baerbock was born and coalesced environmentalist, and grassroots peace advocates into one faction. “One of the important roots of the Green Party was the movement against nuclear armament at the beginning of the 1980s. There was an important pacifist tradition and the majority of the party had a critical point of view of American foreign policy, especially under the government of Ronald Reagan,” says Hubert Kleinert, a former Green Party politician and current professor at the Hesse University of Applied Sciences.
When Germany unified and the Greens became more mainstream, its foreign policy orientation began to splinter. This phenomenon was most pronounced as the Greens joined a coalition government with the SPD under the Chancellorship of Gerhard Schröder in 1998. Joschka Fischer, a Green party stalwart, was selected as the Foreign Minister and became the party’s most popular politician throughout his tenure.
Fischer utilized his position to shepherd in the Green’s transition from a strictly pacifist party to one supporting humanitarian interventions. He, as with Baerbock, comes from the pragmatic realo wing of the party which is frequently pitted against the more hardline fundis. This was the case during the heated debate on the deployment of German troops to halt the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo in 1999. Fischer persuaded enough of his fellow Greens to shed their non-interventionist stance in favor of upholding human rights through military force. But the internal divisions were not easily healed or forgotten. Since then, however, the realos have continued to grow in influence and Baerbock has inherited a foreign policy legacy that continues to thread the line between idealism and isolationism.
How Will Baerbock And The Greens Impact German Policy?
The Greens will now have to align their vision for Germany’s role in the world with the prerogative of the Ampelkolition at-large and the hard realities of international politics. “The Greens today are strong supporters of European integration and their foreign policy prioritizes values over interests, especially human rights,” says Dr. Kleinert. Additionally, they will seek to elevate issues such as climate change and arms control and hold rule-of-law violators within the EU, such as Poland and Hungary, to account. The Greens will also have to negotiate thorny issues within the coalition on topics such as Germany’s NATO defense spending commitments and continued role in hosting U.S. nuclear weapons.
In the immediate post-Merkel era, the Greens are setting their foreign policy imprint in the early days of the Ampelkolition. Baerbock will lead a German diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympics in Beijing due to her concerns about human rights abuses in China. She has repeatedly expressed concerns over the plight of Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai, pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, and the crimes against humanity committed against the Uyghur population. Her values-based diplomacy vis-à-vis China will invariably run up against Germany’s economic interest.
Due to Germany’s export-led-economy, China has increasingly become a key trading partner and market for its products. And throughout her Chancellorship, Merkel worked to further develop this relationship as a hedge against a recalcitrant America. The Greens will likely have an ally with the current U.S. government, as the Biden Administration hopes to build transatlantic coalitions to combat China’s growing influence around the world. But Baerbock will face pushback from her SPD colleagues within the coalition, particularly from Chancellor Scholz, if her human rights approach encroaches too far on Germany’s economic stability.
A similar trend can be seen with Russia. The Greens would like to take a harder line against Russian President Vladimir Putin and have consistently come out against the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project between the two countries. Recently, as Russian troops gather along the border with Ukraine, Baerbock warned that “in the event of further escalation this gas pipeline could not come into service” This again put her in at odds with her SPD counterparts, who have consistently backed the project, and in alignment with the United States. Russia is a major gas supplier to Germany and a confrontation has the potential to disrupt this key energy source.
The tasks before the Greens are considerable but not insurmountable and time will now tell if they have the acumen to reconceptualize a new German foreign policy within the existing political framework. Friedrich Rosenthal, a twenty-six-year-old Green supporter from the state of Saxony Anhalt, is hopeful that, among many issues, the Greens will be able to build a stronger and more united Europe. “I hope that during Baerbock’s term in office, we will come closer to the possibility of modernizing the EU and its structures, creating more spaces of co-determination and co-design that are easily accessible to citizens, and thus also making the EU even more democratic,” he says. The Greens now have their work cut out for them as they work to craft a more livable world for this next generation.
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Germany’s New Green-Powered Diplomacy
Photo by Mark Spiske via Unsplash.
January 12, 2022
Environmental sentiment in Germany allowed the Green party to secure a spot in the three-party ruling coalition - and the Foreign Minister portfolio for party leader Annalena Baerbock. The party now has a chance to have an outsized impact on German foreign policy, writes CEPA Fellow Aaron Allen.
I
t’s still not easy being Green. Shortly after coming in third place in the 2021 German federal election, the environmentally conscious and youth powered Greens decided to join, as a junior partner, the three-party Ampelkolition (“traffic light coalition”) with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) and pro-business Free Democrats (FDP). This often-strange assortment of bedfellows is now tasked with ushering in a new era of fiscally responsible progressive change. For the Greens, this will be an opportunity to continue to advance domestic priorities such as the phasing out of coal by 2030 and digitalizing the German economy. Additionally, this new coalition government offers the Greens a prime seat in crafting Germany’s international posture, as its co-Chair and former-Chancellor candidate, Annalena Baerbock, is now the Foreign Minister. The questions now are, who is Germany’s new top diplomat and what will the current iteration of the Green party bring to Germany’s foreign policy?
Who Is Annalena Baerbock?
Baerbock, born in 1980, grew up in a small town in the northwest state of Lower Saxony in the then-Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). She participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations with her family and her early formative years were mostly spent in a newly united Germany. Baerbock would go on to study public law and political science at the University of Hamburg, public international law at the London School of Economics and initiate, but never complete, a Ph.D. at the Free University of Berlin. Aside from the United Kingdom, she has lived abroad in the United States (Florida) and Brussels.
Her ascent in Green politics was swift. She officially joined the party in 2005 and went from a foreign policy advisor to a member of the European Parliament to becoming a member of the German Bundestag herself in 2013 to co-leading the Greens with Robert Habeck since 2018. Her peers describe her as detailed, passionate and ambitious. She was nominated in 2021 as the Green’s first Chancellor candidate and for a brief moment, she led in the polls. However, the Green party’s frontrunner status was short-lived. Baerbock became consumed with numerous tax and plagiarism scandals and voters increasingly felt she was too young and inexperienced for the position. After SPD emerged victorious from the election, she was selected as the first woman and second Green foreign minister after months of coalition negotiations. As the new government takes shape, the Green party’s historic trajectory offers early signals of where she may hope to lead Germany next.
What About The Green Party?
The Green party was formed the same year Baerbock was born and coalesced environmentalist, and grassroots peace advocates into one faction. “One of the important roots of the Green Party was the movement against nuclear armament at the beginning of the 1980s. There was an important pacifist tradition and the majority of the party had a critical point of view of American foreign policy, especially under the government of Ronald Reagan,” says Hubert Kleinert, a former Green Party politician and current professor at the Hesse University of Applied Sciences.
When Germany unified and the Greens became more mainstream, its foreign policy orientation began to splinter. This phenomenon was most pronounced as the Greens joined a coalition government with the SPD under the Chancellorship of Gerhard Schröder in 1998. Joschka Fischer, a Green party stalwart, was selected as the Foreign Minister and became the party’s most popular politician throughout his tenure.
Fischer utilized his position to shepherd in the Green’s transition from a strictly pacifist party to one supporting humanitarian interventions. He, as with Baerbock, comes from the pragmatic realo wing of the party which is frequently pitted against the more hardline fundis. This was the case during the heated debate on the deployment of German troops to halt the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo in 1999. Fischer persuaded enough of his fellow Greens to shed their non-interventionist stance in favor of upholding human rights through military force. But the internal divisions were not easily healed or forgotten. Since then, however, the realos have continued to grow in influence and Baerbock has inherited a foreign policy legacy that continues to thread the line between idealism and isolationism.
How Will Baerbock And The Greens Impact German Policy?
The Greens will now have to align their vision for Germany’s role in the world with the prerogative of the Ampelkolition at-large and the hard realities of international politics. “The Greens today are strong supporters of European integration and their foreign policy prioritizes values over interests, especially human rights,” says Dr. Kleinert. Additionally, they will seek to elevate issues such as climate change and arms control and hold rule-of-law violators within the EU, such as Poland and Hungary, to account. The Greens will also have to negotiate thorny issues within the coalition on topics such as Germany’s NATO defense spending commitments and continued role in hosting U.S. nuclear weapons.
In the immediate post-Merkel era, the Greens are setting their foreign policy imprint in the early days of the Ampelkolition. Baerbock will lead a German diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympics in Beijing due to her concerns about human rights abuses in China. She has repeatedly expressed concerns over the plight of Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai, pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, and the crimes against humanity committed against the Uyghur population. Her values-based diplomacy vis-à-vis China will invariably run up against Germany’s economic interest.
Due to Germany’s export-led-economy, China has increasingly become a key trading partner and market for its products. And throughout her Chancellorship, Merkel worked to further develop this relationship as a hedge against a recalcitrant America. The Greens will likely have an ally with the current U.S. government, as the Biden Administration hopes to build transatlantic coalitions to combat China’s growing influence around the world. But Baerbock will face pushback from her SPD colleagues within the coalition, particularly from Chancellor Scholz, if her human rights approach encroaches too far on Germany’s economic stability.
A similar trend can be seen with Russia. The Greens would like to take a harder line against Russian President Vladimir Putin and have consistently come out against the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project between the two countries. Recently, as Russian troops gather along the border with Ukraine, Baerbock warned that “in the event of further escalation this gas pipeline could not come into service” This again put her in at odds with her SPD counterparts, who have consistently backed the project, and in alignment with the United States. Russia is a major gas supplier to Germany and a confrontation has the potential to disrupt this key energy source.
The tasks before the Greens are considerable but not insurmountable and time will now tell if they have the acumen to reconceptualize a new German foreign policy within the existing political framework. Friedrich Rosenthal, a twenty-six-year-old Green supporter from the state of Saxony Anhalt, is hopeful that, among many issues, the Greens will be able to build a stronger and more united Europe. “I hope that during Baerbock’s term in office, we will come closer to the possibility of modernizing the EU and its structures, creating more spaces of co-determination and co-design that are easily accessible to citizens, and thus also making the EU even more democratic,” he says. The Greens now have their work cut out for them as they work to craft a more livable world for this next generation.
