BERLIN, Germany - Guido Westerwelle's image as foreign minister isn't just eroding abroad, but also at home. Inside the Foreign Ministry, German diplomats are hoping they will soon have a new boss. Chancellor Angela Merkel is also reportedly disappointed in the top diplomat, who doesn't seem to have grown into his role.
Christian Hacke(right photo) has already passed judgment on Guido Westerwelle's role in history. Hacke is one of Germany's leading political scientists. He is the director of the political science department at the University of Bonn and has written a standard work on German foreign policy. But Hacke now has nothing but cold disdain for Germany's current foreign minister.- "Look at Germany's foreign ministers, from Konrad Adenauer and Heinrich von Brentano to Joschka Fischer and Frank-Walter Steinmeier," he says. "These were solid, well-informed men, who mastered the core principles of diplomacy: enhancing Germany's image and representing its interests in the world."
- By contrast, the professor contends that Westerwelle who was a protege of former Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher has embraced a "neo-German Wilhelminism," which he displayed in particular when he abstained from the United Nations Security Council resolution on an establishing a no-fly zone over Libya. Hacke says that Westerwelle engages in self-righteous grandstanding while, at the same time, cowardly running for cover. "He is the vainest, most narrow-minded and stubborn foreign minister since von Ribbentrop."
It is a monstrous allegation. Joachim von Ribbentrop (right photo)was Hitler's foreign minister from 1938 to 1945. In Hacke's opinion, the consequences are perfectly clear: "Westerwelle must go because he can no longer properly represent German interests and because we have to feel ashamed of him."- Most German diplomats probably wouldn't compare the foreign minister to von Ribbentrop, but many would agree with Hacke that Westerwelle should go.
- Westerwelle is widely seen as a failure, both in the Foreign Ministry and among foreign diplomats in Germany. It's a similar story at Angela Merkel's Chancellery. Hardly anyone understands why he wants to remain in the government until the end of the current term.
- Westerwelle hasn't found his footing since he took office as Germany's chief diplomat in October 2009. At first, he showed an almost demonstrative lack of interest in his new job. Then he gave the impression that he appointed his delegations according to private and political preferences. Most recently, he made decisions in the Libya conflict that isolated Germany on the foreign policy front and created a rift within Germany's governing coalition.
No other German Foreign Minister has been as unpopular as Westerwelle. Consequently, he will have to resign from one of his positions in May. Curiously enough, though, he will only be forced to step down as the leader of the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP) yet still be allowed to retain his more important government office.- Ever since it has been clear that Westerwelle will not remain at the helm of the FDP, his image in the Foreign Office has taken a dramatic turn for the worse. Many of his staff members never had a very high opinion of their boss, but he still enjoyed a certain amount of political clout as party chairman and vice chancellor. That also added some luster to the office of foreign minister.
- All that has come to an end now. For months, the confident diplomats have suffered as the Foreign Office has become increasingly irrelevant under Westerwelle. In their view, their ministry has been relegated to the status of a venue for the doings of a political has-been, seriously tarnishing their own image as the elite of the ministerial bureaucracy.
- Whatever the occasion from diplomatic receptions to trips abroad and chance encounters the normally highly reserved staff members of the Foreign Office don't hold back on their negative comments about the foreign minister. "He hasn't learned," says a veteran diplomat, "and he never will."
- The extent to which Westerwelle's reputation has been damaged could be seen at the meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Berlin last week -- an event intended to serve as a stage for a grand appearance by the foreign minister. Instead, Westerwelle's counterparts from around the world felt compelled to emphasize that their German colleague was not isolated.
- Westerwelle emphasized this more vehemently than anyone else. He said that there were no disagreements between Germany and France. However, his French counterpart, Alain Juppé, apparently wasn't prepared to go quite that far to bend the truth. He merely said that the differences were "not dramatic."
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton showed how it was possible to criticize her German counterpart without directly attacking him. At a memorial service held last week at the American Academy in Berlin for the late US diplomat Richard Holbrooke, she recalled the lessons that the US special envoy had learned from the Balkan wars that it was better to intervene early in humanitarian crises than too late."We need to remember his plea for principled interventionism," she said. That is about the most elegant way possible of expressing disapproval of Germany's policies on Libya.
Source:SPIEGEL
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