Germany’s Green Hawks
The Greens’ arguments for tougher foreign policy are finally resonating with Germans
It may seem counter-intuitive to observers from English-speaking countries—where Green parties don’t immediately come to mind when people think of tough-talking politicians—but in Germany, some of the biggest foreign policy hawks fly the Green banner. The party largely advocated a values-based German foreign policy long before Russia invaded Ukraine—but now the country is finally taking notice. With the now popular 2021 Chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock serving as Foreign Minister in Olaf Scholz’s SPD-led government, Green politicians are in a good position for some foreign policy wins. So, what do they want? And how do Green objectives fit into the country’s much talked about “sea change,” or “Zeitenwende?”
Being Right About Nord Stream 2
For starters, there’s the controversial Nordstream 2 pipeline. The Greens were the only major party to call for its cancellation before the 2021 federal election. “The Nord Stream 2 pipeline project does not contribute to climate protection, runs directly counter to the energy and geostrategic interests of the European Union and endangers the stability of Ukraine,” read the party’s election manifesto at the time.
The Greens were a minority in political Berlin for arguing that Germany and Europe found itself in a systemic, ideological, geopolitical struggle between liberal democracy and authoritarianism—a topic few politicians were previously keen to level with German voters. “With their authoritarian hegemonic ambitions, not only do states such as China and Russia, which systematically nullify human and citizens’ rights, force other states into economic and political dependence; they also want to divide Europe,” the party wrote in its 2021 manifesto. “The global systemic competition with authoritarian states and dictatorships is real.”
Although some parliamentarians in other parties voiced similar concerns over NS2, every other major party’s leadership remained committed to the pipeline, which would bypass eastern Europe and deliver gas to Germany directly, and insisted it was a purely commercial project. It was only when Chancellor Scholz announced its cancellation just ahead of Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine did wide sections of Germany’s political elite finally acknowledge its geopolitical implications.
The Greens’ NS2 stance was also largely out of step with previous German public opinion. Just prior to the Russian invasion, close to 60 percent of Germans supported continuing the pipeline.
The Greens’ New Popularity
But with Russia now waging war against a country less than a ten-hour drive from Berlin, public opinion has hardened on Russia—and come around more to the Green foreign policy mindset. NS2’s cancellation was met with essentially no public backlash. More than half of Germans want an immediate boycott of Russian energy—something the Scholz government has so far resisted, arguing it needs time to diversify away from Russian oil, gas, and coal. Not only do most Germans now want their country to take a tougher stand against Russia, but they also now clearly wish to be less economically dependent on China.
Germans also appear to understand that the Greens have been arguing for the policy approaches they now favour long before Russia’s war in Ukraine began dominating the front pages of German newspapers and headlining most evening news programs. Baerbock and Energy Minister Robert Habeck—the two Green co-leaders just before the 2021 election—are now the two most popular politicians in the country.
The Green Zeitenwende
Recent events have seen Germans increasingly buy into arguments that the country—and Europe as a whole—finds itself inside a systemic, geopolitical rivalry. For the public to acknowledge this is already a significant win for the Greens. But that doesn’t mean the party isn’t having its own moments for policy self-reflection.
Nowhere is that truer than on the issue of hard power and weapons. The 2021 manifesto Baerbock and Habeck campaigned on ruled out NATO’s defence spending target of 2 percent of GDP, and came out in favour of banning weapons exports to war zones. It was only in January that Baerbock ruled out Germany arming Ukraine during a visit to Kyiv.
“Our restrictive arms export policy is based on our history,” she said at the time.
Only this week, she herself did a complete reversal. “What’s clear is that Ukraine needs more military hardware, above all heavy weapons,” she said at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg Monday.
In a March speech to launch a new National Security Strategy for Germany, Baerbock reiterated her commitment to a world free of nuclear weapons at the same time as she held that NATO’s nuclear deterrent must remain credible. Despite a longer history of tougher foreign policy stances than either most of the German political class or the public, the Greens are, in a sense, still doing what many Germans are currently doing—trying to reconcile the moral idealism that characterizes so much of German public life with the harsh realities Putin’s Russia has confronted them with. Baerbock and Habeck are also in a position of having to try and make their part of the governing coalition work, even as politicians from their own party—like Green parliamentary co-leader Toni Hofreiter—call for the Scholz Cabinet to get tougher on Russia and immediately boycott Russian energy.
Having helped to move the German mindset, even the Greens now find themselves in new foreign policy territory.