Germany’s kowtowing to warlords

Minister of Economics Habeck in Qatar

(14 April 2022) mb. The German Minister of Economics, Robert Habeck, travelled to Qatar aiming to the buy gas.

Actually, the Green Party, to which he belongs, rejects gas as an energy source in principle and that of Russian in particular. Even before the election of the new Bundestag (September 2021), his party colleague and current Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock spoke out firmly against the commissioning of Nord Stream 2. This project is now dead anyway due to the sanctions that also Germany has imposed on Russia – and it is very much a question of whether Russian gas from Nord Stream 1 will continue to flow in the future. By expropriating Gazprom’s German subsidiary, Germany no longer has a business basis to buy gas from Russia.

Now the Greens have achieved their goal. They say that one should not do business with a country like Russia, because freedom of speech is suppressed there, it is not a real democracy, and now it has also started a war with its neighbouring country.

Therefore, gas from Qatar.

And what about democracy and human rights here? From 2015 to 2017, this country, chosen by the Greens as a business partner, helped bomb Yemen as part of the Arab Military Alliance. 300,000 civilians have died there to date. The UN calls it the world’s biggest humanitarian catastrophe. Before that, Qatar participated in the attacks against Libya and Syria, which were contrary to international law.

So, with what argument do you refuse Russia’s economic cooperation and aim for it with a country that is actually waging massive wars of aggression? Before the Bundestag elections, the Greens campaigned for a value-oriented feminist foreign policy. What about it now?

Qatar is a fully-fledged dictatorship, the Emir its absolute ruler and in power by inheritance. There are neither parties nor parliaments nor elections. The Sharia determines the law. We know what that means for women: when they are raped, they might go to prison for extramarital sex. They are not allowed to work, rent a flat or marry without permission from their male guardian. If they refuse sexual obedience in marriage, they can be cast out without financial protection. What about feminist foreign policy now?

And homosexuality? That is punishable at best by flogging or stoning, at worst by death. Just consider how Russia was attacked in the media for rejecting the propaganda of homosexuality towards children!

So Germany has no qualms about entering into a “long-term energy partnership” (Habeck) with such a regime. A regime that assists in bombing other peoples and violates everything the Greens propagate. And now, Germany is part of causing a famine in Yemen by supporting sanctions against Russia.

Is this how we have to understand value-based feminist foreign policy? Or what other goals are the Greens pursuing? Who put them in charge of what?