If only there was a German word for Berlin’s UN humiliation
If only there was a German word for Berlin’s UN humiliation
Berlin refuses to accept that its failure to win a seat on the UN Security Council had anything to do with its own double standards Read Full Article at RT.com
The UN assembly has turned its back on Germany, for the first time in the country’s modern history
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul has blamed Berlin’s failure to secure a seat at the UN Security Council on his country’s superior moral positions. If only there were a German word for that…
Germany failed to win a temporary seat on the UN Security Council for the first time in history on Wednesday, losing out to Portugal and Austria in the ‘Western Europe and Others’ group. Germany easily won all six contests that it entered since 1977, usually with the support of its European and NATO allies.
Having won every round it has entered since the mid-twentieth century, this time around, Germany could only manage to secure 104 votes, while Portugal won 134 and Austria – a non-NATO member – took 131. Despite Berlin’s long-held insistence that it deserves a permanent seat on the UNSC, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul was forced to listen as the results were read out by none other than Annalena Baerbock.
Schadenfreude: the feeling of joy in an opponent’s misfortune
As president of the UN assembly, the notoriously gaffe-prone former German foreign minister Baerbock’s smile cracked into a grimace as she read the result of the secret ballot.
While the room roundly applauded Austria, Portugal, and the other successful countries, the pushback began. Free Democratic Party MEP Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann described the result as a repudiation of Baerbock’s nagging “politics of the raised index finger,” while human rights lawyer Craig Mokhiber gloated over how neither Baerbock nor Wadephul could could “save Germany from this well-deserved humiliation.”
In a rare moment of justice at the UN General Assembly today, Germany lost its bid for a UN Security Council seat. Germany’s scandalous support for genocide in Palestine and aggression against Iran, and its repression of human rights defenders inside Germany, were all on display…
“[German Chancellor Friedrich] Merz wanted to bring our country ‘back onto the international stage’ at the start of his chancellorship, but now Germany is left without a seat on the UN Security Council,” Alternative for Germany (AfD) leader Alice Weidel wrote on X, adding that Merz has led Germany from “one embarrassment to the next.”
The governments of Christian Democrat Friedrich Merz and Social Democrat Olaf Scholz (the latter of whom Baerbock served under) shared identical foreign policies. Both professed slavish devotion to the American-led “rules-based international order” when it came to Ukraine, and a moral relativism when it came to Israel’s wars in the Middle East.
Baerbock declared the EU to be “fighting a war against Russia” in 2023, called Xi Jinping a “dictator,” and scolded the Chinese president for “taking the side of the aggressor” by refusing to join the West’s proxy war in Ukraine. The following year, she referred to Israeli strikes on Palestinian schools as “self-defense,” and argued that civilian sites lose their protection when “ terrorists” operate in their vicinity.
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