After exactly 16 times and 16 days in office, German Chancellor Angela Merkel stepped down on December 8, 2021, and retired from politics. The new German government is led by Merkel’s former finance minister, Olaf Scholz, who heads a “ business light coalition” of social egalitarians, flora and liberals – three rather different political parties. Their cooperation is grounded on a 177- runner-long “ coalition contract” negotiated over two-and-a-half months and in great secretiveness by elderly party leaders and overwhelmingly approved by the class base of each of the three parties.
Not unexpectedly, the detailed and kindly hurtless document is largely consumed with domestic affairs. Formerly, the election crusade antedating the general election of late September 2021 was dominated by nexus- gaping, with little attention being paid to the outside world. Indeed, the still raising COVID-19 extremity, controversies and public resentment about the large number of confusing vaccination conditions, implicit new lockdowns, the folding frugality, twisting public debts, disturbing high affectation rates and numerous other domestic issues need to be taken seriously Maybe this explains why only 28 runners of the “ coalition contract” deal with Germany’s unborn part in Europe and the wider world. Yet one of the most pivotal issues at stake in the coming times is Germany’s and indeed the EU’s part in global politics. It’s high time for Germany to assume a more applicable part in the world and overcome its well-justified character of thinking and acting like a “ geopolitical dwarf”.
Germany and the EU are hovered with being crushed in the profitable and geopolitical “ great power competition” between the US and China. A smiling Vladimir Putin is ready to take advantage of Germany’s confusion and query about how to avoid taking sides, while still honouring its traditional closeness to the US The New York Times reported that the buzzword for the new German government will be “ durability”. In fact, we may witness a radical departure of German foreign policy – though maybe not relatively in the way as numerous may hope.
Who’ll chart they way?
Germany’s new foreign policy will be overseen by three womanish politicians. Above all, there’s the 40- time-old Annalena Baerbock, one of the Green Party’s top leaders and the first womanish German foreign minister ever. Also there’s the new defence minister, Christine Lamprecht of the SPD, who as a former justice and family minister has plenitude of administrative experience but no track record in the defence or foreign policy realms. The new minister for profitable cooperation and development is the SPD’s Svenja Schulze, who also has plenitude of governmental but little, if any, foreign policy involvement.
Still, it’ll be substantially Baerbock’s and the Green Party’s value- driven foreign policy gospel that will make a huge difference. Baerbock, still, has no governmental and no foreign policy experience either, and some of her reflections during the televised election debates came across as naïve and ill-informed. Yet she’s a fast learner, a quick thinker with an emotional personality and, not least, she represents the zeitgeist The zeitgeist, it seems, is strict. Merkel’s tendency to hear, integrate and patiently attempt to find negotiations between contending interests is gone. What does this mean in practice?
Baerbock will pursue a foreign policy with a keen eye on making climate protection an important criterion for transnational deals and fiscal aid. She and her party, which has a strong peacenik tradition, will also be reticent to modernise NATO, increase Germany’s defence donation or agree to German military engagements abroad. They won’t vacillate to irk the large German arms assiduity by abridging arms exports. Germany, after all, is the world’s fourth largest munitions exporter he new foreign minister can be anticipated to put a great emphasis on the rule of law and the mortal rights dimension in transnational affairs. This will lead to a further hardening of programs toward China and Russia, but also toward countries similar as NATO supporter Turkey and EU members Hungary and Poland, which have all embraced decreasingly autocratic ways of governance.
The Green Party has explosively condemned the Nordstream II channel deal with Russia and is floored by numerous of Putin’s ruthlessly autocratic programs, including his imprisonment of political opponents, support of Belarus’s inhuman weaponising of migration and Moscow’s raising destabilisation of Ukraine Why India, China wo n’t be Germany’s new stylish musketeers Baerbock and her Green Party are clearly no musketeers of undemocratic leaders. This will also make the new German government’s relations with the Narendra Modi government in India delicate. In Germany, not least on the political Left, Modi has many musketeers. Basically he’s seen as an autocratic and exorbitantly nationalist politician who has undermined Indian republic. There was little sympathy for Modi’s closeness to the Donald Trump administration. Trump, after all, was and continues to be a red flag for any tone- esteeming German politician.
Still, in Berlin, India receives fairly little political attention and it can be anticipated that German-Indian business and trade links will continue to flourish. After all, Germany is India’s most important trading mate within the EU and ranks sixth on the scale of India’s encyclopedically most important trading mates. The new German government is doubtful to apply any substantial changes for Germany’s policy toward India. In fact, new foreign minister Baerbock and not least Svenja Schulze, the new minister for profitable cooperation and development, may indeed essay to ameliorate German-Indian cooperation in the profitable aid area – though not without asking for the enhancement of labour and social conditions in India.
The Green Party’s emphasis on mortal rights will bring it into stark conflict with China. In fact, Baerbock agrees with the European congress that the EU and Germany shouldn’t predicate their China policy on engagement and profitable cooperation but on fastening on mortal rights and the rule of law. It’s therefore doubtful that one of Merkel’s major foreign policy achievements with China, the EU’s Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) of December 2020, will be enforced any time soon. EU parliamentarian Reinhard Bütikofer, a former leader of the German Green Party, is one of the EU congress’s leading China jingoists Baerbock will therefore find herself in agreement with the decreasingly harsh China and Russia programs of the US, which will really please the Joe Biden administration. Yet, numerous within in the Green Party view the US and its polarised domestic politics, including the implicit return of Trump, with great dubitation.
The Biden administration, also, has dissatisfied numerous in Germany and Europe. Washington’s chaotic and ruthless pullout from Afghanistan, the AUKUS deal with Australia and the UK, which sidelined the EU, and also the delinquent junking of transatlantic trip restrictions and import tariffs, has led to important frustration. And numerous of Germany’s crucial companies, not least within the crucially important machine sector, have made themselves largely dependent on the Chinese request and will do nearly anything to avoid annoying the political leadership in Beijing. Last but not least, according to the German constitution, it’s the chancellor who defines the guidelines of German politics, including the country’s foreign policy. It can be anticipated that not unalike Angela Merkel, Chancellor Scholz will put himself in charge of policy timber regarding the most pivotal issues and countries. Foreign policy toward the US, China, Russia and the EU will over all be conducted from the chancellor’s office. And as a former finance minister, Scholz is doubtful to overlook the fact that nearly 44 of German GDP is grounded on exports, of which roughly half go to the other EU countries and important of the rest to China and the US Maybe we will soon witness a fierce battle for Germany’s foreign policy soul between Olaf Scholz’s potent real-political chancellery and the redoubtable and romantic Annalena Baerbock’s foreign ministry.