The German foreign minister wants to mediate in the conflict on the Russian-Ukrainian border. While Baerbock does not rule out sanctions against Putin, the SPD does not want to offend Russia.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock lays flowers at the memorial to those who died in the 2014 coup in Kiev.
On Monday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock embarked on her most difficult mission to date. First she spoke to the Foreign Minister in Kiev, and later also to the President of Ukraine. On Tuesday she will meet the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow. With troop deployments on the border, Russia is showing itself to be a territorial aggressor, while Ukraine is hoping for support from the West. Baerbock’s two-day trip sounds like shuttle diplomacy and, in view of the dwindling foreign policy influence of Europe in general and Germany in particular, is above all a domestic political balancing act. The SPD, the Greens and the FDP are divided on how to proceed with Russia.
It sounded patronizing when Baerbock presented her foreign policy program in the German Bundestag last week and then a Social Democratic member of parliament said: “Olaf Scholz can do Europe. That’s why we can move Europe forward in this coalition, also with this Foreign Minister.” Only the SPD applauded. Baerbock himself had previously stated that he wanted to “represent the interests of Germany and Europe in the world on the basis of clear values”. In the case of Russia, she spoke of a mixture of dialogue and toughness during the election campaign.
Few transatlanticists in the SPD
Immediately before leaving for Kiev, she specified that Germany was “determined to react if Russia escalated.” The “list of conflict issues we have to talk about” is long. She did not mention the Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea pipeline, which Baerbock, in contrast to the SPD, views critically. After her meeting with the Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba on Monday afternoon, she repeated the formulation agreed in the EU that Russia would pay a high price for any further aggression. You are entering into a “serious dialogue” with Russia, but are “miles apart” for the time being. Ukraine’s sovereignty is non-negotiable.
According to Baerbock, no country has “the right to dictate to another country the direction in which it can go, what relationships it can have and what alliances it can enter into”. In Moscow, one could interpret this sentence as an encouragement to Ukraine to join the West, possibly even NATO. Germany relies on the OSCE and on different discussion formats, such as the Normandy Quartet together with France and the two opponents, in order to be able to guarantee Ukraine’s security “at the dialogue table”: “It’s incredibly difficult. There isn’t one magic door that you can open and then the crisis is solved.” Different windows need to be opened. She ruled out arms deliveries with reference to “our history”. In terms of energy policy, the minister would like closer cooperation and announced the opening of an “office for hydrogen diplomacy” in Kiev.
A click on the nose for Baerbock
Baerbock was probably not more precise because the sympathies for Russia are deeply rooted in the SPD. There are hardly any flawless transatlanticists in Willy Brandt’s party. Two current requests to speak illustrate this anticipatory understanding. Klaus von Dohnanyi, once Mayor of Hamburg and Minister of State at the Federal Foreign Office, gave a remarkable interview to the news magazine “Focus”.
“Patient negotiations” with Putin are necessary, he said. Europe needs its “own opinion in Ostpolitik” to counteract the impression of being a US vassal. Von Dohnanyi rejects sanctions, they only serve to bring about domestic peace. The Foreign Minister got a sniff: “Ms. Baerbock will find out that for many countries the moral aspects that she considers right are not the priority.”
The fact that the question of war or peace also has other than moral aspects is not common to all social democrats. Ralf Stegner, a member of the Bundestag, complains that most of the comments on foreign policy are “worrying”. Instead of “spiral sanctions” and German arms deliveries to Ukraine, “diplomacy and detente are urgently needed”.
What does Olaf Scholz want?
The Ukrainian ambassador in Germany calls for his country to be “urgently supported with the necessary defensive weapons”. Against this background, the German negotiating position loses strength when the Chancellor’s party openly speculates about overcoming NATO in a “pan-European peace order” through a “pluralistic security community”. Rolf Mützenich, the leader of the SPD parliamentary group in the Bundestag, indulges in this fantasy.
Olaf Scholz prides himself on the fact that foreign policy guidelines are determined in the Chancellery. He told Baerbock that the territorial integrity of the states must remain unaffected. There was no talk of specific sanctions. The new German foreign policy and the value orientation of the “traffic light” could experience their baptism of fire in Moscow. There it will be shown what to think of Baerbock’s threatening but imprecise words from Kiev and who can be asked to come to the “dialogue table”.