Review 2014 – A Fresh Look at German Foreign Policy

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“CRISIS, ORDER, EUROPE” · ON GERMANY’S FOREIGN POLICY PRIORITIES AND
RESPONSIBILITIES (BY FOREIGN MINISTER FRANK-WALTER STEINMEIER )
I had decided to pursue a process of selfexamination
regarding the prospects of
German foreign policy when I took on the
position of German Foreign Minister for the
second time in December 2013. We launched
this process exactly a year ago, in February
2014, when we introduced the project “Review
2014 – A Fresh Look at Foreign Policy” by
posing two deliberately provocative questions
to experts in Germany and abroad: What,
if any thing, is wrong with German foreign
policy? What needs to be changed?
In the past twelve months we have discussed,
disputed and grappled with these questions at
dozens of debates and other events. Foreign
policy experts around the world have taken
part, as have thousands of members of the
public from throughout Germany and many
hundreds of employees of the Federal Foreign
Office. We did not want to have an expert
commission answer the question of Germany’s
foreign policy responsibility and we did
not want to negotiate the answer through
an interministerial coordination process; we
wanted to have a genuine discussion together
– exploring views rather than truths, as it
were. Foreign policy does not merely amount
to clever positioning; it is, rather, a process of
negotiation. It is not only about wanting to do
the right thing; it is also about the ways and
means, the right strategy and suitable instruments
for attaining the goals we have set for
ourselves. This process often involves difficult
trade-offs and situations that are not blackand-white,
but rather require choosing among
several unsatisfactory options.
I am pleased that thanks to this project we
have come significantly closer to fulfilling the
goal we set ourselves when I took office, the
goal of “a mature, enlightened discourse on
the institutional framework within which our
foreign policy actions should be anchored, a
discourse on the level of responsibility that
we will be able to take on in the next ten or 20
years and on where the limits of our capabilities
lie”. This is not a task that can ever be
completed or entirely fulfilled. But we have
nonetheless succeeded in making the public
more familiar with foreign policy issues and
with the tools of diplomacy. I thank all those
in civil society organisations and institutions
who have supported and worked with us,
and have at times fundamentally challenged
us. And I am proud of the many members of
the Foreign Service who have taken on this
challenge themselves, and will continue to
do so in the future. In my view the dialogue
with the public is one of the key take-aways
Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier
from the “Review 2014” process; we want to
and will continue this dialogue beyond the
bounds of this project – through traditional
panel discussions, through modern online
forums, and through the successfully tested
negotiation simulations in which the tradeoffs
involved in foreign policy decisions can be
experienced most immediately. Foreign policy
does not only take place abroad: domestically,
we need to seek understanding and approval
for our actions; we need to explain, listen
and learn. Foreign policy needs to be firmly
anchored and supported at home so that it is
able to have substance and impact beyond our
borders.
The debates that took place through “Review
2014” were anything but academic. The raw
A FRESH LOOK AT FOREIGN A FRESH POLICY LOOK AT FOREIGN POLICY