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Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock at the Green Party Congress on October 15, 2022 in Bonn
Photo: Andreas Rentz / Getty Images
Even viewed a few days later: the party congress of the Greens last weekend in Bonn was adventurous.
Because probably rarely before at a party congress has a discipline been practiced so artfully politically: squirming.
What could be heard here in speeches seemed like an almost superhuman contortion with convictions that had actually been called one's own in the past and which were now conveyed to the ground of alleged facts and counted by means of a few rhetorical moves.
You know it as the popular "we-made-it-very-difficult-for-ourself" or the notorious "this-decision-was-really-not-easy-for-us-" - what follows is mostly highly unpopular, of which those squirming around her already know it could bring disappointment and anger.
The green-washed version of this at the party congress was the sentence "we face the dilemmas!"
Most outlandish was Annalena Baerbock's defense of the scandalous traffic light decision to authorize arms shipments to autocratic regimes.
Specifically, it is about the delivery of fighter jets and ammunition to Saudi Arabia, ie military equipment that is very likely to be used in the Yemen war against the civilian population;
delivered to a government even more likely to have journalist Jamal Khashoggi dismembered.
In view of the resolutely presented solidarity with the Ukrainians in the name of human rights and the now expressed with the Iranians - Omid Nouripour emphasized at the party conference »Human rights are women's rights, women's rights are not negotiable« (applause in the hall),
Just one example of many of how women's rights are doing in Saudi Arabia: In August this year, dental hygienist Salma al-Shehab was sentenced to prison for supporting the release of a Saudi feminist activist on Twitter.
Duration of imprisonment: 34 years.
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How it started:
On March 27, 2019, Baerbock wrote on her Twitter account »Weapons have no place in war zones.
Saudi Arabia is taking part in the Yemen war and trampling on human rights.
Arms export ban to Saudi Arabia must continue to apply.
The federal government is undermining EU rules on arms exports through arms cooperation with France.
And on September 12, 2022, Robert Habeck confirmed to the Süddeutsche Zeitung: "One thing is clear: Weapons do not belong to human rights violators."
How it's going:
On September 29, 2022, Habeck declared that the supplies for the equipment and armament of combat aircraft and their ammunition for Saudi Arabia were approved.
According to SPIEGEL information, the decision on new arms exports to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates was made in the secret Federal Security Council shortly before Olaf Scholz traveled to both countries at the end of September.
The reason for this turning away from earlier promises, but also from a programmatic core of the Greens, is a European armaments project, a political legacy of the grand coalition, which obliges Germany to these exports.
And this is where it comes in, the public wriggling, where realpolitik becomes our-hands-tied politics.
Because at the party conference, Baerbock said: "It was incredibly difficult for us, for Robert and me, but we can't sit there and say: 'Whoa, this old contract has been magically gone, it no longer exists'." So the Gulf state can now buy military equipment parts, weapons and ammunition for their fighter planes for over 35 million euros with the blessing of the Greens.
A small alleviation of the ethical torment of profiting economically from a war is offered by the fact that it is at least profiting economically from a war.
Because, as Baerbock explained further: "In this difficult consideration that we want and need more European armaments cooperation - because otherwise the 100 billion will not be enough and I don't want to save even more in the social area and then Lisa will no longer have any means for the children, which they urgently need.«
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What is meant here is Elisabeth "Lisa" Paus, the Green Federal Minister for Families, Women, Senior Citizens and Youth.
Sure, what number of heartless party members could agree to making a decision that leaves Lisa with no means to help children?
The people in the Yemen war must also understand this.
The foreign minister shifts the criticism of the arms deliveries to a foggy track, on which the Greens seem to be waving weapons through, apparently out of pure social policy and love for children, with which war crimes are allegedly being committed.
And finally, Baerbock makes a statement that is simply not true: "There are no arms deliveries from Germany to Saudi Arabia, where human rights are trampled underfoot." (Applause in the hall.)
Well, just because it's a European armaments project doesn't make the shipments from Germany any less... shipments from Germany.
Incidentally, the motion intended to reverse this decision did not even make it to the vote.
According to Tagesschau, the applicants and the Commission agreed internally on formulations that could be accepted by both sides: the European armaments project will remain, but the Greens fundamentally reject arms exports to Saudi Arabia.
In English there is the beautiful phrase "eat your cake and have it too" for precisely such attempts, for example both against arms deliveries to authoritarian regimes and to deliver them there.
This is the sweet rhetorical pie slice in which the bitter pill is administered, the miraculous power of squirming: conveying that you condemn what you are required to do, making it less of a bad thing to do it anyway.
This tortuous communication by the Greens seems like a negative manifestation of the explanatory transparency that Habeck was still downright spoiling.
It was acknowledged that he made politics more understandable and comprehensible by appearing differently.
What Friedrich Merz accused him of, that one could watch him think, was in reality a novelty of political speech that made the complexity of realpolitik processes perceptible and allowed a constructive ambiguity in the formulation of thought processes.
Longer Instagram videos that explained the dilemmas, for example between dependency on energy supplies and a critical approach to autocratic regimes, which made difficulties and challenges visible, were the opposite of the Basta messages of a Gerhard Schröder,
The downside of this approachable, political elaboration, however, is that criticism of unacceptable decisions is simply moderated with loud thinking, public quarreling and chummy »Lisas«.
However, the disclosure of self-critical introspection close to the citizen does not free one from ethical consequences and does not make the decisions, especially in relation to the arms deliveries, any less bigoted.
Where previously you struggled for words, you now wriggle for excuses.