Analysis | German diplomacy after the election
What we could expect from a traffic-light coalition
On September 26, Germans went to the polls and voted for change: the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) finished in first place ahead of Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU), producing a shakeup in the German parliament’s composition. It is now increasingly likely that a three-party coalition government will replace the “Grand Coalition” between the CDU and SPD, which has governed Germany for the last eight years.
Most now expect a red-yellow-green “traffic-light” coalition agreement to emerge, led by the SPD, whose party color is red, alongside the environmentalist, progressive Green Party (known as the Greens) and the classical liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), whose color is yellow. On Friday, the three parties published a “consensus paper” at the end of their exploratory talks to form a government, which outlined shared goals and principles for domestic and foreign policy. Commentators have highlighted its “ambitious framework,” with potentially significant implications for German foreign policy and diplomacy.
Now, party leaders are negotiating the concrete terms of this change in personnel and policy, talks which will likely conclude in December. The likely ascension of the Greens into an unprecedented three-party governing coalition promises a shift in Germany’s place in the world, if one limited and constrained by the competing interests of the three governing parties.
After months of poor performance in public opinion polls, Olaf Scholz led the SPD to first place in this election. This provided him with a mandate to launch coalition negotiations ahead of the incumbent conservative party, the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU), whose candidate for the chancellery, Armin Laschet, failed to pick up where his popular predecessor, Angela Merkel, had left off, and his party finished in second place. While a repeat of the so-called “Grand Coalition” government of recent years between the center left SPD and center right CDU is possible, this is a deeply unpopular outcome among the German public, and Laschet is set to resign his party chairmanship. An SPD-led three-party coalition would best reflect voter preferences. It would also be the first formal three-party coalition in post-1945 German history.
Personnel not policy
This year’s election was primarily about people, not policy. Indeed, foreign and defense policy were absent during campaign debates. Speaking at a roundtable at Georgetown University in the aftermath of the election, Angela Merkel biographer Joyce Marie Mushaben reminded attendees that this was the first time that no incumbent was running for the chancellery since the formation of the Federal Republic. “Anyone under the age of 20 only knows Merkel as chancellor,” she said. The CDU chancellor leaves a leadership void after 16 years in office, which certainly contributed to a greater focus on personalities than substance in the election campaign. This was likely to Scholz’s advantage, as he was able to portray himself as a component successor to Merkel, having served as her finance minister under the most recent Grand Coalition government, despite his contrasting center-left politics.
A traffic-light coalition would have significant personnel implications for foreign policy, because it would likely grant control of the foreign ministry to the Greens, which of all the major parties outlined the most comprehensive shift in German foreign policy in its election manifesto. Meanwhile, the fiscally conservative FDP would likely select the finance minister, although this is far from guaranteed. Both the Greens and the FDP have taken a harder line on an increasingly authoritarian China in recent years, although the Greens have been much more vocal than the other major on human rights issues. This could result in a shift in emphasis, at least in rhetoric, in German diplomacy toward a harder line on Chinese (and also Russian) authoritarianism, and a greater focus on human rights under a Green-led foreign ministry.
Now that the cast of characters for a new coalition government is emerging, policy disagreements may come to the surface. In the days after the election, Green co-chairs Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck met with FDP leader Christian Lindner and his team to hash out a joint plan before approaching the SPD leadership. The parties took this step to avoid a repeat of the collapse in coalition talks in 2017 between the Greens and the FDP over migration and energy policy. That collapse is a reminder of significant ideological differences between the Greens and the FDP, especially when it comes to the urgency of climate change, and on the centrality of economic considerations in the country’s foreign policy.
Three’s a crowd?
The unprecedented challenge of managing a three-party coalition may lead to tensions. With a Green foreign minister and a Social Democratic chancellor, the need to mitigate intra-coalition differences may lead to greater centralization of foreign policy in the chancellery, constraining the independent impact of a Green foreign minister. Moreover, the SPD’s historic ambivalence toward Germany’s relations with Moscow, and its assent to Merkel’s foreign policies under the grand coalition, mean that a Chancellor Scholz will likely “not veer far from Merkel’s approach of separating diplomatic criticism from economic cooperation.” This includes the fate of the controversial Nordstream 2 pipeline.
Greater centralization of foreign policy might help to ensure better coordination across ministries, and the announcement by the parties in Friday’s consensus paper of a proposed “national security strategy,” Germany’s first, would provide a basis of principles for the country’s foreign policy. Whether the government will create a dedicated National Security Council, based in the chancellery, remains to be seen, but such a move would indicate greater centralization of foreign policy decisionmaking and would reflect expert consensus on this issue.
Noisy neighbors
A key test for the chancellery and the foreign ministry after a coalition agreement emerges will be to cement a clear direction for German diplomacy with its nearest neighbors: France and the E.U. institutions in Brussels to the West, and Warsaw and Moscow to the east.
While Warsaw and Moscow present challenges for their respective embrace of authoritarianism, “France has been watching this election very closely,” Georgina Wright of the Paris-based Institut Montaigne think tank told a panel discussion at the Atlantic Council on September 30. France takes on the E.U. presidency in January, and French President Emmanuel Macron received both Scholz and Laschet in the weeks before the German election. He needs the next German government as a critical partner to address shared security, economic, and strategic challenges.
For all Western countries, China’s increasing influence on the global stage poses challenges. The Rhodium Group’s Noah Barkin has described Merkel as “China’s best friend in Europe,” and the new German government, however policy and personnel shakes out, will need to take account of competing priorities. As Julian Mueller-Kaler, a Berlin-based analyst at the Atlantic Council told me, debates between and among the likely coalition partners will proceed “between a more normative and a more realist approach to world affairs.” The government must balance Germany’s economic interests in China with increasing tensions between a democratic West and an authoritarian Beijing, meaning that “much is at stake for Europe and Germany in the next few years,” he said.
Limit expectations
“No one ever starved by betting on continuity in German foreign policy,” Institute for the Study of Diplomacy Board member and Georgetown government Professor Jeff Anderson noted at the post-election roundtable at Georgetown. Regardless of the outcome of coalition talks, shifts in relations with the United States are unlikely, for example; all the main German parties share a broadly Atlanticist worldview. While the rushed U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan spurred renewed questions about U.S. commitments to global leadership, the next German coalition is unlikely to make radical shifts in its approach. As Mueller-Kaler put it, “few countries have benefited so significantly from the liberal international order.”
An aversion to ideology and bold strategic thinking has characterized the Federal Republic’s role in the world since its post-war inception, and the arch-pragmatism of the Merkel years will continue as a core feature of German foreign policy. But the Greens’ elevation to government will provide new rhetorical emphasis in German diplomacy on climate and human rights, while, overall, we can expect Germany to maintain its broadly Atlanticist orientation in the world, and a largely pragmatic approach.
Alistair Somerville is the publications editor at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy and editor of The Diplomatic Pouch. Follow him on Twitter @apsomerville
