Feminist Foreign Policy of Germany in Historical Trends (2022-2024)

Abstract

The article analyzes the peculiarities of the formation and implementation of feminist foreign policy in Germany. Feminist and ecological trends in German foreign policy are seen as a symbol of competition between values and interests. Since the creation of the Green Party (the beginning of the 1980s), the priorities of the party’s foreign policy have been the issues of military conflicts, the arms race, the protection of human rights and democracy, migration, and Islamic terrorism. This was manifested during the tenure of the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the “red-green” coalition of Yoshka Fischer (1998-2005). A clear name for the foreign policy strategy of the “traffic light coalition” of social democrats, the party of green and free democrats has not yet been formulated. The degree of environmentalism and feminism seems minimal. The working hypothesis of the name of this strategy can be considered a liberal-relativistic strategy. The priority of “feminist foreign policy” had a global choice and concerned the attempt to translate feminism as an issue into feminism as a process of protecting women’s interests around the world. These plans collided with the harsh reality of the international environment, which was traumatized by the escalation of Russian aggression against Ukraine. An important task of German foreign policy was the combination of a feminist course with environmental attitudes. The modern world presents different attitudes towards women. This is primarily determined by religious and local civilization factors. Feminist foreign policy is about more than diplomatic etiquette. Opponents of this course are right-wing populists. In their ideal, ultra-right populists see Europe as a continent of white Christian heterosexual families, which must be protected from “feminist supremacist”, “totalitarian wokism”, “socialist globalism”. Real politics once again demonstrated that it is stronger than idealistic politics.