For the first time in the history of the Federal Republic, Germany failed to secure a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. In New York, the General Assembly preferred Portugal and Austria for the seats reserved for the Western European and Others Group, respectively for 2027 and 2028.
An unprecedented defeat, which severely hits Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s foreign policy line just as Berlin was openly vying for a leading role on the international scene.
A new blow for Merz, and precisely in one of the areas – foreign policy – where his performance at historic lows was less criticized. For Germany, a further reputational damage in a phase of prolonged political-economic crisis that underscores how, over the course of a decade, this country has gone from being the essential pivot of every European balance to a secondary player on the international chessboard.
AMBITION AND REALITY COMPARED
Merz had started his mandate with the explicit promise to bring Germany back to the center of the global debate, transforming it into an actor capable of mediating conflicts and making itself heard in the venues that matter. The defeat at the UN Assembly polls brutally exposes the gap between these intentions and the perception other states have of Berlin.
According to several diplomatic observers, cited with barely concealed masochism by the German press, Germany currently lacks the charisma necessary to exercise the leadership role it increasingly aspires to. On the contrary: many countries do not consider it the reliable partner it portrays itself to be.
This is all the more striking when considering the financial weight Germany bears within the United Nations system. Adding up contributions to the various UN agencies and organizations, Berlin is the second largest net contributor in the world, after the United States. However, the billions paid each year have not produced the capital of sympathy and trust that the leadership of the Auswärtiges Amt (the German Foreign Ministry) expected. The irritated reaction of a CDU parliamentarian, who now proposes cutting German contributions to the UN, appears as the childish gesture of a sore loser.
A DIPLOMATIC EFFORT WITHOUT RESULT
The candidacy had mobilized considerable energies. For years, Foreign Ministry officials worked to gather support in the antechambers of New York and in numerous capitals around the world. The current Johann Wadephul personally traveled to New York last Thursday, attempting to secure votes at the last possible moment. A gesture that, beyond its symbolic value, did not produce the hoped-for results. Wadephul, who so far has appeared as a faded figure in his role, sometimes out of sync with his own chancellor only to hastily recover ground, has already declared he has no intention of drawing personal consequences from this debacle.
Moreover, notes the Neue Zürcher Zeitung in an editorial, the failure of the candidacy should be read, according to many analysts, as a structural signal and not as a mere procedural incident. The unipolar era, in which a medium power like Germany could afford to act in a substantially passive way – diligently contributing to multilateral institutions and entrusting the United States with the protection of its strategic interests – has definitively ended. The emerging multipolar world, characterized by rivalry among great powers, requires actors capable of projecting strength, credibility, and autonomous initiative. Germany is not (yet) such a case. It is rather a paradox that for years German diplomacy exalted the virtues of a multipolar world while underestimating the positional advantages the old geopolitical order granted it.
A REMINDER FOR GERMAN FOREIGN POLICY
In the background, however, also looms the credibility crisis of the UN as an institution. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 demonstrated the impotence of the Security Council: neither emergency sessions nor condemnation resolutions could stop Vladimir Putin. The veto power of the five permanent members – including Russia itself – effectively paralyzes the body in moments of acute crisis.
Washington also does not hide its disenchantment: the Trump administration long ago consequently built alternative channels for conflict management, outside the traditional multilateral framework.
But Berlin is not Washington and has a strategic interest, not just an ideal one, in ensuring that the United Nations continue to function in their essence. In an international order founded solely on power relations, a country lacking autonomous military projection like Germany would find itself in a position of grave vulnerability. And what applies to Germany applies to any other European country, including the small Austria and Portugal that today celebrate a prestigious success at the UN.
The lesson Berlin must draw from the Security Council defeat concerns something deeper than a failed candidacy: it needs to regain autonomous power capacity and recognize the contours of the new brutal world that is taking shape. Only by acting accordingly to rebuild its defense capabilities can it convince other actors to entrust it with the responsibilities it aspires to.
