NATO, China and Nord Stream 2: Germany’s Likely Future Coalition Partners Bicker over Foreign Policy
A “Notarized Testimonial to Distrust”
The Social Democrats want that final deal to be short, believing it is enough to agree on the basic guidelines. Why, after all, are detailed stipulations necessary among political friends? SPD negotiators say that such precise provisions were necessary in its coalitions with the center-right Christian Democrats because the two parties come from opposing political camps, and because the SPD had to deal with Angela Merkel, a practiced tactician who is excellent at making her junior coalition partners fade into invisibility. The coalition deal between the two, says one SPD negotiator, “was a notarized testimonial to distrust.”
This time around, the source continues, the situation is different. The three parties essentially want the same thing: progress, modernization and climate protection.
For the Greens, it all sounds too good to be true. They are concerned that Scholz will follow the Merkel playbook once he moves into the Chancellery, which is why they are eager to spell everything out, down to the last detail. Otherwise, they say, there is a real possibility that they will be duped.
That is also true when it comes to foreign policy. The working group is hammering out policy for three portfolios: foreign policy, defense and development. Very little was said about these issues during the campaign, and the exploratory talks didn’t touch on them much either, with the three parties preferring to paper over their differences. Now, though, clarity must be found on the most significant issues: Germany’s relationships with the U.S., China and Russia; the future of NATO; the German military’s overseas profile; and Germany’s role in the world.
The bickering began already with the length of the joint paper. The leaders of the three parties involved decreed that the working group could only produce a maximum of five pages in Calibri font size 11, with 1.5 line spacing. No time is allowed for renegotiations and the finished paper must be submitted by 6 p.m. next Wednesday.
Some Green Party working group members, though, are rebelling against these parameters. It is impossible, they say, to outline the policy of three cabinet portfolios on just five pages. The SPD, meanwhile, has held firm. “It’s not going to change,” says an SPD member involved in the negotiations. “You can complain all you want, but it won’t help.”
The Social Democrats say that particularly in foreign policy, it isn’t necessary to codify every little thing. The point is to develop a shared approach, a framework. “It’s not about generating 10 draft laws.”
Thus far, the working group’s paper is full of passages written in red, green or yellow, marking passages on which agreement has not yet been reached. Each party makes its own proposal, and the color is only turned to black once agreement has been reached. If a specific formulation finds its way into the media, it is deleted.
The frontlines don’t just run through the working group. Some of them run through the parties themselves. The Greens have always been divided between the more pragmatic wing, known as the Realos, and the left. Within the SPD, pacifists like parliamentary floor leader Rolf Mützenich are at odds with the pragmatics surrounding Scholz. And the SPD delegation is led by Heiko Maas, whose Foreign Ministry leadership came under intense fire during the last legislative period from the Greens and the FDP.
In the paper produced during the initial exploratory phase of the negotiations, the Greens and the FDP managed to insert a provision calling for a parliamentary investigation into the debacle surrounding Germany’s withdrawal from Afghanistan – a demand aimed squarely at Maas.