Annalena Baerbock made waves with a statement on the Ukraine war.
Unwise choice of words - but no reason for escalation, comments Christian Deutschländer.
In times of peace, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was often misunderstood and therefore underestimated as the office for jelly words and snappy waves.
The last incumbents did little about it.
Heiko Maas was not up to even this minimum requirement.
And Frank-Walter Steinmeier was fundamentally wrong in his course on Russia (and now admits that, that makes him pleasantly different from others).
Now Annalena Baerbock, Green, officiates.
And she has just got herself into trouble with her choice of words towards Moscow.
Baerbock makes waves with his choice of words: "We are fighting a war with Russia"
"We are fighting a war against Russia and not against each other," Baerbock blurted out in English during a debate in the Council of Europe.
Of course that sentence is rubbish.
Germany is not fighting a war, is not a party to the war and, for heaven's sake, it shouldn't become one.
Baerbock's sentence plays into the hands of the perverse Moscow propaganda: Russia refused to call its attack on Ukraine, bomb terror and mass murder of civilians "war", and can now knit the legend that the West is unilaterally declaring war here.
What to do?
At least domestically, Baerbock has earned so much fairness and wisdom not to jazz up a - stupid - slip of the tongue to declare war.
At least the Union, which recently did not manage every sentence itself, should be clear.
What Baerbock still has to be told: A foreign minister whose greatest strength lies in her word should weigh her words more wisely.