[Iowa-dx] Fwd: "War and Peace and the Greens of Germany"

[hhart@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu]

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 B=C3=BCtikofer 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 B=C3=BCtikofer from the 'pragmatic' wing, are vying for
influence with each other and with prominent former ministers in the
form of J=C3=BCrgen Trittin and Renate K=C3=BCnast, 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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