{news} USGP-INT: German Greens Slide into Turmoil

[Justine McCabe]

From: Mike Feinstein <mfeinstein at feinstein.org>
  Date: September 22, 2007 2:23:51 PM EDT
  To: natlcomaffairs at green.gpus.org
  Subject: Re: [usgp-dx] "War and Peace and the Greens of Germany"
  Reply-To: mfeinstein at feinstein.org


  http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,506473,00.html


  German Greens Slide Into Turmoil


  By David Crossland in Berlin


  Germany's pacifist Greens are divided over whether to back the country's military mission in Afghanistan. Their infighting, weak leadership and gradual retreat from Realpolitik has cast doubt on the party's chances of returning to power.




  Even though the Greens haven't been in government since 2005, their in-fighting is significant because it could thwart the party's chances of returning to power for a long time to come.


  Grassroots members rebelled against the leadership at a congress last Saturday when co-leaders Reinhard Bütikofer and Claudia Roth asked delegates to vote in favour of prolonging Germany's military mission in Afghanistan.


  But delegates rejected the motion, effectively abandoning the pragmatism which former leader Joschka Fischer had stamped on the party to make it electable and fit to govern as junior partner to the Social Democrats from 1998 until 2005.


  The mandate for Germany's 3,000 troops stationed in Afghanistan comes up for renewal in a parliamentary vote next month, as does the mandate for the deployment of a handful of Tornado reconnaissance jets that have been helping NATO forces combat Taliban fighters in the war-torn south of the country.


  It is virtually certain to be approved with the votes of the grand coalition of conservatives and Social Democrats. But if the Greens now oppose it, they will be signalling a departure from the center ground where the party had been regarded as a kingmaker in a future German government.


  Sending German troops abroad runs counter to the Greens' pacifist roots but Fischer, as foreign minister, browbeat them into doing it twice -- during the 1999 Kosovo crisis when they backed the deployment of German fighter jets to help bomb Serbia, and in 2001, when they voted in favor of sending German troops to Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa to help the US-led war on terror.


  Painful Transformation


  They finally ditched pacifism at a party congress in 2002 which approved a motion that the use of force could not be ruled out as a last resort to combat genocide and terrorism.


  The move merely sealed on paper a painful transformation that the Greens have undergone in practice, led by 1970s street-fighter Fischer, one of Germany's most popular and eloquent politicians.


  Fischer's departure from active politics after the 'Red-Green' coalition lost the 2005 election deprived the party of its biggest electoral asset. Saturday's vote and the evident weakness of the current Green leadership have cast further doubt on its outlook.


  "The party which had in the public's perception moved into the center ground in recent years and had to many seemed indispensable in every conceivable alternative to the grand coalition will no longer be able to carry on playing that role in the foreseeable future," Hubert Kleinert, political scientist at the Hesse college for state administration, wrote in an opinion piece for SPIEGEL ONLINE.


  "In addition, the party leadership has failed to show a united front or leadership ability."


  Rivals have been pouring scorn on the Greens. The general secretary of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, Ronald Pofalla, said: "The Greens are apparently unwilling and unable to take responsibility for the people of Afghanistan." Several conservatives said the vote precluded a future coalition between the conservatives and Greens.


  Farewell Realpolitik


  Birgit Homburger, a member of parliament for the opposition liberal Free Democrats, said: "They have finally said goodbye to Realpolitik."


  Most Greens support Germany's involvement in Afghanistan as part of the NATO-led International Security and Assistance Force, in which around 3,000 German troops are stationed in Afghanistan, mainly in the safer north of the country where they are helping with infrastructure projects.


  But many in the party oppose the deployment since March of German Tornado jets in an active combat role. The problem is that the government has combined the two mandates for renewal in a single parliamentary vote. As a result, delegates at Saturday's congress refused the leadership's request to recommend a 'Yes' vote by MPs in October.


  Several of the 51 Greens MPs have said they plan to vote Yes regardless, even at the risk of being deselected by the party base when candidates are chosen for the next general election, expected in 2009. "The Greens are in a difficult position. The party hasn't made things easy for itself," said MP Priska Hinz. "But I haven't changed my personal opinion." She plans to vote in favour of prolonging the mandate.


  The Greens have become victims of their own success in the two decades since they emerged as a movement of scruffy rebels bent on making a conservative industrial society more environmentally friendly and tolerant.


  Mission Accomplished


  They have helped to make the water cleaner and the air purer, and with global warming topping the global agenda their stance on the environment is now part of mainstream politics and has been eagerly adopted by Merkel.


  They have been scoring a steady 9 percent in opinion polls and are neck-and-neck with the opposition Left Party.


  But since Saturday's congress, analysts have been warning that the Greens are setting themselves up to be a perennial opposition party rather than a viable partner in government.


  No clear successor to Fischer has emerged and the party's complicated leadership structure reflects that. The two co-leaders, Roth from the left wing and Bütikofer from the 'pragmatic' wing, are vying for influence with each other and with prominent former ministers in the form of Jürgen Trittin and Renate Künast, who now shares duties as floor leader with Fritz Kuhn.


  "The entire leadership was so helpless and lacking in courage at the congress that they all have disqualified themselves from leading the party into the next general election," wrote left-wing newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau in an editorial. "Now everyone knows that no one has the stuff to replace Joschka Fischer."
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NWC Delegate
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