Tanks, vodka and feminism: on the highway with Germany’s high diplomat 

A go to to Saudi Arabia is just not a straightforward project for Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s overseas minister and a vocal champion of feminism and human rights. Der Spiegel in contrast the journey to a “vampire visiting a garlic store”.

But since taking workplace in December 2021, the previous Inexperienced get together chief has defied her get together’s fame for dogmatism by performing as an arch pragmatist able to steadiness ideas with realpolitik.

Throughout a press convention together with her Saudi counterpart final week, Baerbock praised the nation’s efforts to search out options to crises in Yemen and Sudan and hailed its “unimaginable potential” for partnership on renewable vitality.

However she additionally cautioned that it was “no secret that many issues nonetheless divide us” within the discipline of human rights — and handed the minister a duplicate of her 80-page handbook on feminist overseas coverage.

Baerbock insists that she has at all times been a pragmatist; she labored to search out compromises with coal unions in her Brandenburg constituency when the federal government was setting targets to section out the fossil gasoline. “Conservatives attempt to say Greens are at all times ideological,” she instructed the Monetary Occasions on her flight again to Berlin. “Now we have values certainly. After which there’s the world because it exists. So you must discover options and compromise.”

It has been a rollercoaster couple of years for the 42-year-old, whose political future was all however written off after a bruising 2021 election marketing campaign. Because the Inexperienced’s first-ever candidate for chancellor, she confronted accusations of plagiarism and adorning her CV that despatched the get together plummeting from high of the polls 4 months earlier than the vote to a third-place end on election day.

Though it was the Greens’ greatest outcome, permitting them to enter the federal authorities in a three-way coalition, when she took up the function of overseas minister her fame was in tatters.

She carried out a unprecedented comeback, turning into certainly one of Germany’s hottest politicians within the wake of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine final 12 months. In opposition, as Inexperienced get together chief, Baerbock had been a robust opponent of sending arms into battle zones. However following the Russian assault, she carried out a 180-degree flip, arguing “the horrible horror that we see each day” justified the choice.

Her continued robust stance has gained admiration even from political rivals. “On Ukraine, the battle and the Russian assault, she is completely clear,” stated Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmerman, the hawkish Free Democrat head of the Bundestag’s defence committee. “I’m actually glad about that.”

Contrasts are inevitably drawn with the Social Democratic (SPD) chancellor Olaf Scholz, who promised a “sea change” in Germany’s strategy to defence and safety, however spent the primary 12 months of the battle irritating allies by dithering over sending tanks and different heavy weapons.

Baerbock, identified for her straight-talking, has at occasions finished little to cover her variations from the chancellor. After Scholz agreed in January to produce Kyiv with German Leopard 2 tanks after months of deliberations, she joked at a carnival look that she had considered dressing in animal print — however then fearful that “the chancellery wouldn’t give me a journey allow for weeks.”

The pair have suffered friction over China, with Baerbock taking a harder line and on one event publicly instructing the chancellor the best way to strategy a gathering with president Xi Jinping.

The variations between them generally confuse Germany’s worldwide companions, who query whether or not Baerbock is little greater than a lobbyist with no actual energy.

Her supporters insist that, in Germany’s closely decentralised system of coalition authorities, that is regular. They are saying that her outspokenness on Ukraine, particularly, has formed each the federal government place and the general public debate in a rustic that — burdened by its second world battle historical past — nonetheless harbours deep reservations about wading right into a battle with Russia.

Baerbock’s relationship with Scholz has improved in current months, in keeping with one particular person conversant in his considering, who insisted that the chancellor noticed her as an asset to his authorities.

However she has triggered deep annoyance amongst many SPD figures, who wince at what they see as her common gaffes.

In January, she stated that nations within the west had been “preventing a battle in opposition to Russia, not in opposition to one another”, contradicting cautious western makes an attempt to not current Nato as a warring get together.

Critics bristle at her obsession with “values-based overseas coverage,” with one SPD member of parliament describing her as “very morally charged”.

Baerbock additionally riles some overseas counterparts. When she went to Beijing final month and voiced issues about strain on civil society, Chinese language overseas minister Qin Gang instructed the press: “What China wants least is a instructor from the west.”

The German minister pushes again in opposition to accusations of preaching. “It’s not about saying: we’re excellent,” she stated. Standing final week alongside the Qatari overseas minister, whom she met in Doha after visiting Saudi Arabia, she pointed to Germany’s gender pay hole of round 20 per cent.

Guntram Wolff, director of the German Council on International Relations, stated the jury was nonetheless out on her communication with difficult worldwide companions. “There’s at all times this huge debate: Is she going too far? Is it appropriate to be in Beijing and say issues so loudly and clearly moderately than being diplomatic?” he stated. “It’s truthfully unimaginable to reply which works higher. However actually she has modified the fashion so much. It’s so much much less diplomatic, rather more straight.”

Her tone has drawn schoolgirl comparisons — typically from males. “She’s a little bit of a know-it-all,” stated one MP from her personal get together, although he additionally praised her toughness and her “clear worth compass”.

The irritation attributable to Germany’s first feminine overseas minister could stem partly from the truth that, not like figures reminiscent of former chancellor Angela Merkel, she has put her gender on the centre of her political id.

The mother-of-two, whose husband gave up his job to take care of their school-aged daughters, ruffled feathers this 12 months by publishing her manifesto on feminist overseas coverage. A lot of the content material, such because the significance of together with girls in peace negotiations, is accepted knowledge in humanitarian circles. However the branding has proved divisive.

She additionally takes pleasure in goading highly effective males. When the Russian overseas minister Sergei Lavrov tried to influence her to affix him in vodka at midday throughout a gathering shortly earlier than the Ukraine invasion, she ridiculed the notion that daytime ingesting may very well be a check of toughness for somebody who had given delivery to 2 youngsters.

Baerbock’s hardline strategy on Russia has gained her followers amongst Germany’s allies. Her different key viewers is the German public — and a Inexperienced get together base that’s already considering forward to the following elections in 2025. It had broadly been seen because the “flip” of Robert Habeck, the Inexperienced economic system minister and vice-chancellor, to run for the chancellery.

However Habeck has been battered by a nepotism scandal at his ministry and fury at his plan to ban new oil and fuel heating. The Inexperienced get together was punished in elections in Bremen this month, struggling its worst outcome within the state in 20 years. One current nationwide ballot put it beneath the far-right Various for Germany (AfD).

Some doubt whether or not the Greens will even have sufficient assist to warrant fielding a candidate for chancellor on the subsequent elections. But when they do, Baerbock stays a frontrunner. “She’s nonetheless the preferred determine among the many main Greens,” stated Peter Matuschek, head of political and social analysis on the German pollster Forsa. Nonetheless, he warned: “It’s one factor to be a well-liked overseas minister and one other factor whether or not folks belief you with the chancellorship.”

Baerbock performs her playing cards near her chest in the case of her ambitions for the highest job. However she doesn’t intend to repeat what she sees as her previous mistake of creating compromises to enchantment to the general public. “In case you’re not your self, on the finish of the day folks don’t belief you,” she stated.