Party Positions in Wartime: Are Green Dreams Shaping?

In the election campaign, the Greens campaigned for disarmament, a “value-based foreign policy” and a speed limit. Then came the war in Ukraine. Energy policy in particular has now become a tightrope walk.

Katharina Dröge is at the lectern during the budget debate in the Bundestag. The leader of the Greens faction shouted energetically: “You can’t do business with authoritarian and totalitarian regimes without it being of foreign policy importance.” It gets loud in Parliament.

CDU leader Friedrich Merz shakes it with mocking laughter. Union parliamentary group manager Thorsten Frei points the finger at Dröge. The words “Habeck” and “Qatar” can be heard from heckling. After all, the Federal Economics Minister from the Greens was only a few days ago in the Gulf to arrange gas deals.

Dröge explains: If Putin bombs children, everything must be done to become independent of Russian gas. And for the Green politician, “everything” also means buying gas in Qatar.

Gas from Qatar and arms shipments

The Greens are defending some things they actually oppose these days: gas deals with autocrats. Fracking gas that can harm the environment when extracted. Coal-fired power plants as a reserve. Deliveries of arms to crisis areas.

Against their own convictions, they support tax cuts for drivers and the abolition of the nationwide corona rules – both concerns of the FDP. And then there is the special fund of 100 billion euros for the Bundeswehr.

The former leader of the Greens, Annalena Baerbock, sells it as a strength in the Bundestag to change one’s own policy in the face of the war. She admits: A few years ago, the Greens would probably not have launched a special fund. What the current Federal Foreign Minister sells as a strength triggers a stomach ache in some in the party.

Criticism of the special fund for the Bundeswehr

Timon Dzienus is federal spokesman for the Green Youth. He mentions the 100 billion euros for the Bundeswehr in an interview with the BR a “very fatal step”. It is not a sustainable policy that creates security, but “a short-term, sometimes fearful reaction”.

With its criticism of the special fund for the Bundeswehr, the more left-leaning youth organization of the Greens sets itself apart most clearly from the government course. Otherwise, Dzienus finds the behavior of his own people credible: “I don’t have the feeling that Robert Habeck likes to go on a gas shopping tour in Qatar. And I also don’t have the feeling that Annalena Baerbock is fundamentally in favor of arms deliveries to war zones.” In view of the special situation of the war, the Green Ministers are trying to “react appropriately” according to the 25-year-old.

Realpolitik instead of pacifism

The reluctance of the Green Youth shows that pragmatic realpolitik is supplanting the image of the pacifist eco-party. 23 years ago, the Bundeswehr’s mission in Kosovo presented the party with a crucial test.

But the Greens tick differently today. The number of members has doubled in the past five years – to more than 125,000 members. Many newcomers not only want to speak, but also to rule.

But also green projects

The new leaders of the Greens, Ricarda Lang and Omid Nouripour, have been out and about a lot these days to explain to the party that coalition means compromise. It is no coincidence that calls for a speed limit on motorways are currently only being repeated very quietly. Because the Greens know that this cannot be done with the FDP.

It is more important for the party leadership to push through other green projects: the promotion of buses and trains, the faster expansion of renewable energies, more energy efficiency. Because of the war in Ukraine, there is broad support for this.

Greens win in poll

Dzienus from the Green Youth sees his party as having arrived at reality for a long time, and not just since the war: “I think it’s a reality check for society and some conservative attitudes.” It is not the green morality that has failed, but the irrational belief in fossil fuels.

The Greens and the war: that means building on some old beliefs and questioning others. That seems to work. The only traffic light party in the ARD-Germany trend has increased since the federal elections are the Greens.