From Blossoms to Bombs: What on Earth Happened to Germany's Greens
“Keine Waffen und Rüstungsgüter in Kriegsgebiete!”, no weapons and armaments in war zones, read a declarative text overlayed on a lime green Adobe stock image of a dove. This tweet, posted in September 2021 from Germany’s Green Party, reinforced the Party’s starkly anti-war stance which has been a core tenant of the Party’s identity since its inception. At the height of their relevance in the newly formed ‘Traffic Light’ Coalition, this statement aimed to reassure Green voters that their Party would remain unequivocally opposed to foreign intervention, weapons sales, and NATO saber-rattling.
However, all flowers wilt under extreme heat, and the Green Party’s Sonnenblume proved to be no different. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine subjected the Greens to their greatest moral dilemma since their founding: abandon their foundational beliefs against armaments and NATO, or go against the overwhelming consensus of their ruling partners, the German public, and Europe as a whole. The Greens, led by Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck, and Minister of Foreign Affairs Annalena Baerbock, caved to the consensus, radically shifting the Green Party away from their core pacifist values.
Although shocking at face value, from a contemporary political perspective, the Green’s shift to a neoliberal pro-intervention outlook is anything but. This policy shift is an attempt by the Greens to gain legitimacy as a main player. Every major Party in Western Europe is vehemently opposed to Putin and is in favor of weapons support and aid for Ukraine. The anti-aid parties are almost entirely right wing populists, who are grave enemies of the Greens in the cultural space. In addition, the war against Putin is also a win for their green energy platform, which has long warned of the dangers of Russian natural gas dependence. The pro-Ukraine platform is therefore, theoretically, in line with an opposition to tyranny, bigotry, and fossil fuels. In this sense, the Green’s defense of Ukraine positioning is fairly unsurprising and logically consistent.
What has been surprising, however, is the extremely hawkish stance the German Green’s have adopted. Habeck and Baerbock have consistently supported some of the more controversial elements of the Western defense of Ukraine as a part of their “Full Solidarity with Ukraine”1 commitment. Such contentious measures include providing Kiev with heavy weapons, Leopard tanks, and now long-range Taurus missiles. On the rhetorical side, the Green’s have warned of an imminent Russian invasion of Eastern Europe and have endorsed a restoration of Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders2. This positioning is relatively maximalist, placing them in the same camp on this issue as American neoconservatives such as Mike Pence and Nikki Haley.
The Greens silence on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline attack was especially out of character. The sabotage of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline caused a major ecological disaster and was a direct attack on German national infrastructure. While methane flowed into the Baltic, the Green leadership kept their lips sealed shut. Members of Germany’s far-right Afd, however, voiced sharp criticisms of the Western powers, characterising the event a direct violation of Germany’s sovereignty by its own allies3.
Although initially gaining a boost from their firm and relatively aggressive stance, recent polls show the German public is growing wary of the Greens. The party has been suffering for months, falling to fourth in several polls, behind Germany’s staunchly anti-Ukraine-aid Afd. In addition, Green politicians are constantly being accosted in public by their leftist former members, who have taken up a strategy of dousing ranked Party members in paint4. Other metrics also bode poorly for the Green Party as an increasing number of Germans are expressing dissatisfaction with ever-growing military aid for Ukraine5.
The German Green’s departure from their peace-focused platform is one of the greatest political u-turns by a major party in history. Only time will tell if this choice saved the Party from widespread rejection, or whether it spells the beginning of the end of one of Europe’s great Leftist Parties.
Sources:
https://www.gruene.de/artikel/volle-solidaritaet-mit-der-ukraine
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-greens-stay-bullish-despite-attacks-in-bavaria/a-66957776
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