A Green Foreign Policy: Coming of Age

A Green Foreign Policy: Coming of Age

Since the German Green Party’s foundation in 1980, questions of war and peace have often caused deep rifts both within and between the party leadership and its base. While foreign policy remains a controversial subject for the German Greens, much has changed since the stormy days when then- Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer stirred the party toward supporting the NATO intervention against Serbia in the absence of a UN mandate. At the last national party convention on November 21-23, 2014, roughly 600 party delegates showed that while remaining skeptical of military interventions- particularly without a UN mandate- ideological principles must not define the search for an adequate response to today’s complex conflicts. In many ways, the changing foreign policy debate within the Green party mirrors the gradual evolution of popular views on Germany’s growing role and responsibility in a conflict-ridden world.

A Pacifist Legacy

In the early 80s, the German Green Party formed out of a conglomerate of social movements with a strong overarching pacifist stance: environmental, nuclear disarmament and anti-atomic energy groups, feminists, and progressive civil rights defenders. Suddenly confronted with the responsibility to govern and the restraints posed by the coalition as well as international allies, the party experienced the most heated confrontations on humanitarian interventions after the Greens entered the government with the Social Democrats (SPD) in 1998. At the time, those speaking out in favor of a military intervention in Kosovo on humanitarian grounds were publically shamed as “war mongers” and “traitors”. The paint ball attack on Joschka Fischer during his dramatic speech at the party convention in 1999 in favor of the NATO intervention became a symbol for the highly entrenched positions within the Greens.

Many commentators argue that the party has since come of age, and developed a better understanding for the contradictions and dilemma policymakers are confronted with. In addition to having served as a federal coalition partner from 1998 to 2005, the Greens today are part of eight state governments, one of which is headed by a Green governor. Arguably as a result of the exposure to the restraints of governing, in addition to massive failures of the international community to stop civilian onslaught in Rwanda, Bosnia and now Syria, some Greens have come to recognize that a categorical rejection of military force can be at odds with a human rights- based foreign policy, and particularly the responsibility to protect. On the other end of the party spectrum, however, some Greens have warned the party leadership of selling out its pacifist founding values by adopting the notion of a “just war”. While the heat of the debate has decreased, the Greens still love to disagree.

Building Peace without Weapons?

In late November, the German Green Party convened in Hamburg to define the tenets of the party’s portfolio until the next general elections in 2017. The outcome was an overwhelming (re-)commitment to the German energy transition, ambitious national and international climate targets, a greater emphasis on sustainable agriculture, and a more humane refugee and asylum policy. While the environmental beacons of Green politics yielded a lot of harmony amongst the delegates, the debate about foreign policy promised to be much more controversial.

In early September, the vast majority of the Green Members of Parliament had rejected the government’s call to equip the Iraqi Kurds with lethal weapons for their fight against ISIS. One vocal exception was party chairman Cem Özdemir, who supported the weapons transfer to the Kurds despite the associated risks. By now a buzzword, Özdemir had said in a radio interview earlier this fall that “the Kurds need to defend themselves, and they do not do so with yoga matts under their arms”. The party chairman was, however, outnumbered by several Green heavyweights, such as Jürgen Trittin and Claudia Roth, who decried the lack of a wider political strategy in which such a weapons transfer ought to be embedded.

In Hamburg, a large majority of the delegates affirmed the rejection of weapon transfers to the Kurds by the Green Party’s Executive Board and the Bundestag fraction, mainly on the grounds of the inability to prevent the weapons from falling into the wrong hands. This concern is, of course, more than a hypothetical nightmare scenario. The recent large-scale capture of US military equipment from the Iraqi army by ISIS serves as a reminder that providing instable or volatile organizations with weapons comes with considerable risks. In any case, the critics argue, the problem of the region is not a lack but an abundance of weapons.

While the skeptics’ arguments are valid in and of themselves, it is the distribution of the weapons in the Iraqi and Syrian war zones- rather than merely their overall number- that need to be taken into account. And while agreeing on the need to significantly ramp up humanitarian support is undoubtedly noble and necessary, medical supplies and winter blankets will not help to free the thousands of Yazidi civilians still encircled on Mount Sinjar, or help the Kurds to prevent ISIS from making further territorial gains. The call for an overarching political strategy, of course, remains valid. But the integrity of spelling out the costs of inaction, rather than merely focusing on the risks of taking action, needs to be part of the debate.   

Room for Doubt and Alternative Positions

While one could have expected Özdemir to suffer a crushing defeat in the foreign policy debate in Hamburg, no such dynamic unfolded. Adding to the diversified and sincere foreign policy debate unfolding at the convention, a motion categorically rejecting weapons transfers to conflicts zones did not receive the necessary majority to pass. Instead, the delegates called to respect „the freedom of conscience of those parliamentarians who have a different opinion” on the matter.

The delegates also accepted a motion calling for Germany to consider its contribution if a UN mandate for military intervention in Iraq and Syria can be reached. Rather than categorically ruling out the possibility of the participation of the Bundeswehr, the delegates thereby emphasized the need to decide on a case-to-case basis, and above all to build international consensus to ensure compliance with international law. To some extent, the rejection of a military “coalition of the willing” is the embodied long shadow of the war in Iraq. One may argue, however, that many more thousands of Syrians and Iraqis will have to die while the West is patiently waiting for a UN mandate to intervene backed by China and Russia.

Deeply thought provoking was the remarkable statement by Sahap Dag, who was invited to speak at the convention on behalf of the Council of the Yazidis in Germany. While he emphasized his gratefulness for the support the Yazidis have so far received from Germany, he described how his brothers in Iraq are fighting with “40 year old guns against the modern tanks of ISIS.” Striking a chord with Green core values, he reminded the delegates that “persecuted minorities need protection (…). If you are afraid to arm the Kurds, you have to send soldiers yourself or at least enable those willing to fight to do so.” Sahap Dag received standing ovations after his speech, but the gap in positions remained wide.

Tenets of a Green Foreign Policy

In contrast to the debates of the 90s, the dissent voiced at the national convention in Hamburg was in fact a constructive one. Given the magnitude and complexity of today’s conflicts, there can be no credible blue print solution. The German Greens have learned that while crisis intervention can never be an automatic process, a rigid ideological framework is a poor guide for practical decision-making if not checked against the restraints of a messy reality. 

While the spectrum of the pacifist left and the self-proclaimed “realist” wing of the Green party remains wide, tenets for a Green foreign policy have started to emerge in the past years: Amongst them are Germany’s irreversible anchor in the European Union and NATO; support for human rights and democratic movements worldwide; a priority for civil conflict prevention, management and resolution; military intervention only as an ultima ratio and never in isolation of a wider political strategy to address a conflict; strengthening international law, multilateralism and international bodies, particularly the UN; a rejection of geopolitics and “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” paradigm; an increase of humanitarian and development assistance both in war-torn countries and fragile neighboring states; a restrictive weapons export policy; and an overall holistic understanding of security policy, including poverty reduction, climate policy and human rights.

Many of these tenets, such as military intervention only as the ultima ratio, strike a broad consensus across the German party spectrum (excluding the Left party). Rather than a peripheral phenomenon, the changing Green foreign policy debate over the past decade has been closely embedded in the evolution of a broader post-WWII pacifist discourse in Germany. Spelling out the practical meaning of Germany’s growing role and responsibility in a conflict-ridden world will be a gradual process dependent on a mosaic of debates in the Bundestag, public events, the media, classrooms and market places. The Greens, for their part, have embarked on the journey.