2009/09/09

Monthly Mind September 2009: Germany sorely needs a "one-stop" foreign policy

When Hillary Clinton speaks for the USA every word of her speaking notes is coordinated beforehand by the ministries concerned and approved by the White House. Security and European policy is just as clearly determined in London – coordinated by the Cabinet Office – and in the French presidential system. In Germany, however, it is better to ask whether what is being said is a coordinated governmental line or “just” that of a particular ministry. Let me give you two recent examples:

Last year there was a major intra-government argument, in public, on whether or not to invite the Syrians to visit Berlin. The entire world witnessed this spectacle, in which the USA played an active role and which I am sure did nothing to improve Germany’s standing in the Arab world.

In spring 2009 Berlin announced the appointment of an Afghanistan representative to work together with his/her US opposite number, Richard Holbrooke, and the other Afghanistan coordinators. This positive announcement was later somewhat spoiled when it transpired that this decision (by a single ministry) had met with resistance from the Federal Chancellery and other ministries due to lack of prior consultation. So was an Afghanistan representative appointed or not? Did the German Government know what it wanted?

Such cases are seen in Brussels, Washington and other capitals as being typically German. People outside Germany sometimes smile at the inability of the Berlin coalition to agree on a foreign and security policy position; indeed, in Brussels, this particular German failing has been given a specific European policy term. The fact is that our partners often use this chronic German indecision to their own advantage, for example calling Chancellor Merkel if a German ministry decision is not to their liking. In this way German ministers are played off against each other, and in this way Germany sometimes weakens itself when attempting to help shape foreign policy in a responsible way at the European and international level. This is by no means just a coordination problem between the Federal Chancellery, the Federal Ministry of Defence and the Federal Foreign Office – more and more ministries are now involved in security policy decision-making, for example regarding energy policy, international environmental policy, development policy or the fight against terrorism and piracy.

Can the next German Government afford to continue with this “amateur dramatics”?

Of course not! While it is completely normal for ministries to argue in public about health or budget policy, this public process has to be limited where it weakens or indeed undermines Germany’s effectiveness in international organizations, where important German interests are at stake. Foreign policy differences of opinion between ministries must therefore not be thrashed out in the “Bild Zeitung” – an official foreign and security policy line must be discussed and determined internally beforehand. Berlin must speak with one voice in the EU, the UN and NATO – and it must do so regularly and systematically and not just coincidentally. This is what Germans, as well as our partners, at least those well disposed to us, expect.

So if it is high time to professionalize German Government foreign and security policy decision-making, how do we go about it?

There have been many ideas about how to solve this problem. Three examples:

In May 2008 the CDU/CSU Bundestag parliamentary group presented a “security strategy for Germany” proposing, among other things, the creation of a national security council. This paper was completely rejected by the coalition partner and disappeared into the drawer.
Eleven years ago, in the Coalition Agreement between the SPD and the Greens, an arrangement was made to upgrade the Federal Security Council (BSR) – sadly, that arrangement was never implemented.
As early as 1993, as part of a major Government-mandated study by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) ("Internationales Umfeld, Sicherheitsinteressen und nationale Planung der Bundesrepublik"), Lothar Rühl and Hans-Georg Wieck, among others, made concrete suggestions regarding the BSR and the German Government’s foreign policy decision-making. But their proposal for a multi-stage expansion of the BSR, for example, never got off the ground. The BSR has remained basically an arms-export approvals committee to this day.

Why have these – and other – important proposals all failed, and why is it seemingly more difficult in Germany than elsewhere to create and establish effective decision-making structures?

Basically for two reasons – first, because of the coalition partners’ specific interests (the smaller partner preferring to negotiate with the larger on equal terms in coalition talks rather than in the Cabinet or the BSR with the Chancellor presiding), and second, for reasons of political status (at the end of 1998 one of the newly appointed ministers rejected concrete proposals for implementing the Coalition Agreement, saying he would not be dictated to on foreign policy by civil servants).

This second issue – political status – is not just a German problem; other governments also have to deal with it. But the fact is that since Helmut Schmidt all Chancellors have preferred to take their foreign policy decisions in smoke-filled rooms, with their trusted advisers, rather than in the more formal atmosphere of the BSR or indeed the Cabinet.

In the future, however, Berlin will be able to afford such informal procedures even less than in the past. Those who believe that, in today’s complex security policy environment, in which more and more life-and-death decisions must be taken, they can be responsible for deciding on German foreign policy without consulting the other ministries concerned, do not deserve a ministerial post – period.

The first issue – coalition policy – is different, as it involves the immanent conflict between the Chancellor’s power to set policy guidelines on the one hand and the political practice of the Coalition Agreement and coalition negotiations, as well as the ministers’ responsibility for their respective department (Article 65 of the Basic Law), on the other. This is indeed a specifically German issue.

The need to maintain a coalition must not, however, be used as an excuse for major deficits in organizing foreign policy decision-making processes. The upgrading or expansion of the BSR, the Cabinet body responsible, is long overdue. Equally, it is by no means impossible to reconcile the conflict of interests I have just described. To do this there are several options, one of which was already considered during the 1980s: The creation of a State Secretary at the Federal Chancellery to coordinate foreign policy and the BSR; he or she would also deputize for the Head of the Federal Chancellery. This key post would – following consultation with the Chancellor, of course – be reserved for the coalition partner. This, along with relevant rules of procedure and veto rights, would ensure that the Government’s foreign policy decision-making took place in an orderly fashion in the BSR, while at the same time remaining in line with coalition policy. Why should this not function at the Federal Chancellery, if it has worked so well in recent years at the Federal Press Office between the Government Spokesman and his deputy?

Of course effective Government decision-making on foreign policy requires more than just formal – bureaucratic – structures, i.e. above all fundamental trust among the coalition partners and the shared political desire to truly forge and implement a coherent foreign policy. It is therefore important that, with a view to the coalition talks after the 27 September elections – regardless of how the coalition government will be composed – ministries and parliamentary group leaderships already draw up concrete proposals to this end. When forming the next government, the foreign policy decision-making process should be swiftly improved. The fact that both major parties have long seen the need for more professional procedures – the CDU most recently in its 2008 parliamentary group paper, and the SPD in the 1998 Coalition Agreement – gives me cause for hope. Smaller coalition partners, such as the FDP, are also likely to find the above suggestion quite attractive.

N.B.: The 2008 CDU/CSU proposal failed in particular because the coalition partner, the SPD, was not involved beforehand and felt challenged by it. For that reason such suggestions should in future only be jointly presented, and implemented, by the coalition partners.

Should the next government bring itself to implement such an initiative, some people in Washington and Brussels would quickly stop ridiculing Berlin’s indecision and the discrepancies between various ministries’ positions on foreign and European policy. Berlin would then – finally – have a “one-stop” foreign policy, and that would be good for Germany.