This article by Jenny Farrell first appeared in the 22 February 2024 issue of Unity, the weekly publication of the Irish Communist Party.
AMIDST the German election campaign, it is worth taking a look at the country’s Green Party, which has shifted from pacifism to becoming one of the strongest advocates for militarisation. Since Russia’s response to NATO’s expansion into Ukraine, Germany has embraced unprecedented rearmament, with parties across the spectrum—excepting solely the Sarah Wagenknecht Alliance—supporting military spending up to 300 billion euros, despite NATO already outspending Russia more than tenfold.
The Greens, originally an anti-war party, have been the most enthusiastic about this militarisation. They campaigned in 2021 against sending weapons to conflict zones, but Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock reversed this within a year, claiming “arms deliveries help save lives.” Even the party’s branding has turned from environmental green to military olive, and figures like Joschka Fischer now advocate for a European nuclear bomb.
Germany’s soaring military spending, at the expense of welfare, climate protection, and infrastructure, marks what political scientist Christoph Butterwegge calls a “frontal assault on the welfare state.”
Germany’s foreign policy is marked by contradictions. While Berlin justifies arming Ukraine as a defense of international law, it ignores these principles regarding Israel. Despite accusations of war crimes and an ICJ genocide case, Germany provides unwavering military, financial, and diplomatic support to Israel. In October 2024, Baerbock suggested Israel’s “self-defense” could involve targeting civilian sites, disregarding core humanitarian law principles.
The Greens’ militarisation began with the 1999 Kosovo War when the SPD-Green government under Gerhard Schröder and Joschka Fischer supported NATO’s bombing of Serbia—without a UN mandate, violating both the UN Charter and Germany’s constitutional prohibition against wars of aggression. Fischer justified this by invoking the Holocaust with the slogan “Never again Auschwitz!”—a comparison Holocaust survivors condemned as “infamous.”
Since then, Hitler and Holocaust analogies have remained central to Green rhetoric in justifying Western military interventions. In 2022, former Green minister Jürgen Trittin likened the Bucha massacre in Ukraine—where 200 civilians were killed—to Nazi SS death squad executions that murdered hundreds of thousands.
The Greens’ alignment with U.S. neoconservatives is no accident. Leading figures—including Baerbock, Claudia Roth, Cem Özdemir, and Reinhard Bütikofer—are deeply integrated into transatlantic think tanks like the German Marshall Fund and Atlantik-Brücke, which strengthen U.S.-Germany military ties. Former Green co-leader Omid Nouripour even sits on Atlantik-Brücke’s board. Once NATO’s fiercest critics, the Greens now rank among its most fervent supporters, embracing confrontation with Russia and China.
By aligning with U.S. foreign policy, the Greens have abandoned pacifism and undermined Germany’s geopolitical position. Western policy in Ukraine is not about defending international law—especially given its disregard in Gaza—but about weakening Russia and severing German-Russian economic ties. This serves U.S. strategic interests while leaving Germany diplomatically isolated and economically weakened. Green foreign policy ties Germany to the declining U.S. empire, fueling stagnation, political instability, and moral hypocrisy. The Greens have also driven Germany’s economic disengagement from China, now labeled a “systemic rival.”
This militaristic shift is eroding Green Party support. In November 2024, the entire leadership of the Green Youth organisation resigned in protest. Yet the leadership refuses to change course. Instead, figures like Robert Habeck push for military spending to rise to 3.5% of Germany’s GDP—allocating nearly a third of the federal budget to the military, the most environmentally destructive sector.
The Greens’ transformation from pacifist activists to champions of NATO expansion and arms deliveries reflects a broader political shift in Germany. Their stance undermines social and economic stability while binding the country to US strategic interests in an era of shifting global power. The election takes place on 23 February. [Ed note: The election has taken place since this article was published, with the Greens losing 33 seats and finishing with a vote share of 11.6%]