GREECE: German diplomacy without diplomats

dw.com

The German government urgently needs to draw the right lessons from the public diplomacy disaster that its Greece policy has become in Europe, argues Thorsten Benner.

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Extract:

It is striking that none of the protagonists in Germany's Greece diplomacy is a diplomat. Three top politicians called the shots during the crisis summit weekend: Finance Minister Schäuble, Chancellor [Angela] Merkel and Economics Minister [Sigmar] Gabriel.

The one-page Schäuble memo with the seemingly innocent title "Comments on the latest Greek proposal" that was put forward in the name of the German government on July 10 was written by technocrats at the finance ministry who (like their minister) were overwhelmed by emotions after months of fruitless and frustrating wrangling with their Greek counterparts. Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and the professional diplomats at the German Foreign Office did not play any meaningful role in deciding which message and tone Germany projects to the rest of Europe and the world - despite the fact that the Foreign Office is responsible for the overall coherence of German EU policy and has professional expertise on public diplomacy. ...

While Steinmeier was busy with the complex final stretch of the Iran negotiations in Vienna, he would have certainly been able to offer a helpful perspective on the Schäuble memo that was leaked to the general public by a Green MEP. A professional diplomat would have easily detected some of the cardinal public diplomacy sins committed by the authors and handlers of the memo.

First, the writers overlooked that the political context had completely changed from earlier in the week, with the French government now throwing all its weight (and political advisors on the ground) behind the new Greek reform proposals and rejecting a Greek exit from the eurozone. Any push for a Grexit would now be seen as going against France and jeopardizing the European project. Still, the Schäuble paper prominently included a "temporary" Grexit option.

Second, the German government did not mount any public diplomacy effort to explain the content and intent of the memo. As a consequence, it left the interpretative hegemony to instant critics on Twitter and beyond who were quick to read the worst intentions into the memo.

Third, while the memo was meant as a negotiation tool to put pressure on a recalcitrant and unreliable Greek government, it was wrong to unilaterally put it forward as a German document rather than as a joint paper with other countries sharing the German view. After all, 14 countries sided with Germany during the eurozone meeting, but the unilateral move obscured this fact.

Fourth, ideologically motivated revenge acts that are supposed to placate critics on the German home front can easily backfire. This is the case with the memo's proposal of a "transfer of valuable Greek assets of 50 billion euros to an external fund like the Institution for Growth in Luxembourg, to be privatized over time and to decrease debt." One of the most ludicrous aspects of this proposition is the fact that the Institution for Growth is controlled by the German government through its Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (which itself was an instrument of the European Recovery Program that helped Germany back on its feet after the war). It did not take critics long to uncover the irony in this self-serving proposal, making it easy to caricature Germany as dead set on undermining Greek sovereignty for debt repayment.

Buck stops with Merkel

Ultimately, the buck of political responsibility for this diplomatic disaster stops with Merkel. During a TV interview on Sunday, she argued that in the current crisis she's not worried about "popularity and beauty prizes" but about making the right policy choices. Fair enough. At the same time, winning back the "ugly German" prize comes with real political costs. The reaction to the Schäuble memo should serve as a warning shot for Germany to adopt a broader Europe policy in which diplomatic professionals function as a counterweight to emotionalized technocrats and politicians. As Europe's default leader, Germany will unavoidably be in the line of fire from multiple critics. But it undermines Germany's power if it is seen as vengeful, self-righteous, and mostly caring about its own economic advantage in the eurozone rather than meaningful structural reforms in corrupt southern economies and the social dislocation caused by austerity.