In the end, it was enough for ten hours in Washington. 90 minutes of crisis diplomacy with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on the deployment of Russian troops on the border with Ukraine, a 45 minute press conference, lunch with Russia expert Fiona Hill and – this was important to Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock – a conversation with the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.
It is the eve of January 6th, the anniversary of the storming of the Capitol by a mob who believed they were acting on behalf of then US President Donald Trump. “We see the flags raised at half-mast,” says Baerbock on the National Mall with the white dome in the back. The question of how “we as liberal democracies work together to ensure that democracies are strong and protected from attacks from inside and outside” determined the talks with Pelosi.
One of the lessons learned from the attacks on the US parliament is that “democracy does not fall from the sky”. Democracy needs strong democrats, constant advocacy for human rights and the rule of law, as well as a commitment to and promotion of state institutions – which can also be understood as an announcement in the European context, for example in the direction of Hungary or Poland.
It was important for Baerbock to have a conversation with the speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States, the Democrat Nancy Pelosi.
(Photo: Thomas Imo / Imago)
However, the minister’s inaugural visit to the US had actually been very different: it should last a good three days, with stops in New York at the United Nations: a meeting with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, with which she would emphasize her commitment to multilateralism can lend. She also wanted to take part in the Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty – that would also have been a signal.
Baerbock’s topics: disarmament and arms control
The Green politician wants to focus on disarmament and arms control, which is why she traveled to the Swedish capital for a meeting of the Stockholm Initiative for Nuclear Disarmament in the old year. In front of the UN, she could have promoted her position that Germany’s support for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty goes very well with efforts to attend the Conference of the Parties to the more extensive Nuclear Weapons Prohibition Treaty as an observer – which the closest allies, the nuclear powers USA and France, see clearly differently.
All of these plans were ruined by the rapidly increasing number of new corona infections with the highly contagious Omicron variant, which in the coming weeks and months will also force international politicians back into virtual formats in many cases – that much can be said with some probability. Personal conversation is irreplaceable, especially in the Ukraine crisis, as Baerbock emphasizes after their meeting with Blinken.
On the one hand, the topics are so sensitive that you only want to discuss them over secure lines in an emergency. The West must coordinate down to the last detail which political steps and, above all, which economic sanctions it will take if Russian President Vladimir Putin does not engage in the dialogue that is to be conducted in four different constellations over the next few days: bilaterally between Washington and Moscow, in preparatory talks for a Normandy format with France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine and in meetings of the NATO-Russia Council and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
One thing is clear for Berlin: Russia cannot unilaterally go behind the obligations under international law that it has entered into. These include, for example, the Helsinki Final Act of the CSCE and the Paris Charter, which grant all states the right to organize their defense according to their ideas and also to freely choose their alliances.
When is the threshold of military aggression reached?
We also have to vote across the Atlantic on the question of when the threshold of military aggression would be reached, at which the sanctions will be put into effect. An invasion of Russian troops undoubtedly fulfills the criterion. Even if Putin were to use gas as a means of pressure, Berlin could hardly avoid working towards punitive measures in the EU – Baerbock is again committed to a corresponding agreement that US President Joe Biden had negotiated with Chancellor Angela Merkel.
But Putin has refined hybrid warfare in recent years. If Russian mercenaries reappear in the Moscow-controlled separatist republics in Donbass and the Luhansk region, how will NATO, the EU and the USA react? Although Biden has at least roughly outlined the “serious consequences” in talks with the Kremlin chief, Putin is left in the dark about the details. The strategy of deterrence also means that he should not be able to calculate the reactions and the threshold for them down to the last detail.
On the other hand, Baerbock believes that in politics and also in diplomacy business it is important that the chemistry between the actors is right. So it is also about maintaining the connection with US Secretary of State Blinken, after an initial, also lengthy personal conversation at the G-7 Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Liverpool at the end of last year, and building trust. It is important to her that one can speak openly if there are differences – and there are questions about whether to deliver defensive weapons for defense in Kiev, the controversial Russian gas pipeline Nord Stream 2 or when dealing with China, the another major geopolitical issue.
With her day trip across the Atlantic, Baerbock wants to make it clear “what great importance” she and the new federal government as a whole attach to transatlantic relations. “As Europeans, we have no stronger partner than the USA,” she assures “dear Tony”. At the same time, it is a mission in self-assertion: the Europeans have to be visible and have to play an active role if they want to have a say, no matter how much Blinken assures them that they not only consult the allies but promise them participation.
Baerbock would have gladly attended further meetings in Congress, which because of the pandemic will not take place, as will “appointments in the country with people”, which the minister would like. She does not want foreign policy to be understood as a business between governments alone. The Americans call this type of public relations work public diplomacy. Such encounters, which can make foreign policy tangible, have not always been Berlin’s greatest strength in recent years.
Baerbock refers to an exchange year she spent in Florida, “where the weather was a little better than in snowy Washington”. She belongs to the “Erasmus Generation”, who have experienced for themselves that international understanding lives above all from personal contacts, from friendships, shared experiences and stories. And who felt personally affected by the storming of the Capitol. “A year ago as Germans, as Europeans, I think we all looked at Washington in deep, deep friendship and shaken,” says the minister, before getting back into the car to the airport – with the resolution to return soon to avoid missing Catch up on conversations.