Can Berlin Lead in a World That Trusts Less and Remembers More?
Germany's recent defeat may reveal a deeper challenge to its global ambitions — Countries remember more than policymakers often assume.
Germany wants a larger role in world affairs. It is rebuilding its military, expanding its diplomatic reach, seeking to exercise greater leadership within Europe, and maintaining its long-standing ambition for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Yet its recent failure to secure even a non-permanent seat on the Council raises a more fundamental question: can Germany translate growing power into growing influence in a world that is becoming less willing to grant the benefit of the doubt?
On 3 June 2026, Germany failed to secure one of the two non-permanent UNSC seats allocated to the Western European and Others Group (WEOG), losing out to Portugal and Austria. In secret ballots, Portugal received 134 votes and Austria 131; Germany received 104. The result surprised many observers. Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul attributed the setback, at least in part, to Germany’s support for Israel and growing dissatisfaction with Berlin’s position on Gaza. There is merit to that argument. Yet reducing the outcome to a single issue risks missing the larger story.
The more consequential question is not why Germany lost this particular vote. It is why a country that has spent decades cultivating a reputation for restraint, responsibility, and commitment to international institutions appears to be finding it harder to convert those qualities into diplomatic support.
For much of the post-Cold War period, Germany occupied a uniquely advantageous position in international politics. Unlike the United States, it was not perceived as a hegemon. Unlike Russia or China, it was not viewed as a revisionist power. Its influence rested less on coercion than on legitimacy: a reputation for economic strength, political restraint, respect for international rules, and a longstanding commitment to multilateralism. As Europe’s leading economy and one of the United Nations’ largest financial contributors, Germany accumulated considerable diplomatic goodwill.
That goodwill generated political capital. The UNSC vote suggests it may no longer convert into support as readily as it once did.
Beyond Gaza
The temptation is to explain Germany’s defeat through the politics of the moment. Gaza undoubtedly mattered. Many governments have criticised Berlin’s response to the war, arguing that Germany’s defence of international law appears inconsistent when applied to Israel and Palestine.
Yet criticism of German foreign policy did not begin with Gaza.
Over the past decade, a recurring pattern has emerged. Germany has often urged other countries to make choices that it was itself reluctant to make when its own interests were at stake.
Russia, China, and the politics of vaccine access illustrate how that perception accumulated over time.
Russia, and the limits of retrospective advice
By February 2022, Germany was importing 55 percent of its natural gas from Russia — a dependence that had deepened even after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Between 2014 and 2022, Berlin’s share of Russian gas rose from 45 to 55 percent, despite longstanding EU concerns regarding energy diversification and security. Nord Stream 2, completed in September 2021, would have increased that dependence further.
Germany defended these arrangements for years as a private commercial matter. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told parliament in 2018: “there is no German dependence on Russia, certainly not in energy questions.” By March 2022, Economy Minister Robert Habeck was forced to concede: “The bitter news is: We still need Russian gas … it takes more than three weeks to undo the strategic mistakes of previous decades.”
In the years that followed, Germany became a vocal advocate of reducing economic dependence on hostile actors. The challenge was not the advice itself. Many governments agreed with Berlin's diagnosis. The problem was that Germany was urging others to avoid vulnerabilities that it had spent decades constructing for itself.
The resulting credibility gap became visible at the Berlin Global Dialogue in October 2025. Responding to criticism of India's continued purchases of Russian oil, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal noted that Germany was simultaneously seeking exemptions from US sanctions affecting Russian-linked energy imports. “Why single out India?” he asked.
The exchange was not fundamentally about Russia. It reflected a broader question that would surface repeatedly in discussions with countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America: if western powers could make exceptions when their own interests were affected, why should others be expected to behave differently?
China, and the limits of warnings
Germany’s relationship with China traces a similar arc. Between 2007 and 2019, Germany’s export share to China grew by 227 percent — from 3.3 percent to 7.5 percent of total exports. Companies such as Volkswagen, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz turned the Chinese market into an indispensable source of revenue and growth.
This was not an accidental outcome. It reflected a deliberate strategy pursued over decades, based on the assumption that economic integration with China was both commercially beneficial and strategically manageable.
As concerns over supply chains, technology transfers, and geopolitical competition intensified, Berlin increasingly warned countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America about the risks of excessive dependence on Chinese investment and supply chains.
Some of those concerns are well founded. Yet Germany’s own experience complicated the message. Berlin was asking others to exercise caution toward a model of economic engagement from which German industry had long benefited.
The question, therefore, is not whether Germany’s warnings are justified. It is whether countries view Germany as a credible messenger after decades of pursuing a similar strategy itself.
The advice may not be wrong. But in international politics, the credibility of the messenger often shapes the reception of the message.
Vaccines, and the politics of memory
Diplomatic legitimacy is rarely lost in a single moment. More often, it is weakened through the accumulation of experiences that gradually alter how a country is perceived. The third case is less remembered but structurally the most revealing. The COVID-19 pandemic illustrates this dynamic.
In October 2020, India and South Africa proposed a temporary waiver of intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines at the WTO — a measure backed by over 100 low- and middle-income countries. Germany — home to BioNTech — led EU opposition to the proposal, with MSF naming it “the EU’s leading TRIPS Waiver opponent.” A German government spokeswoman argued that manufacturing capacity, not intellectual property, was the binding constraint — even as MSF identified at least seven African pharmaceutical companies that could have produced a COVID-19 vaccine within six months given access to the relevant technology.
The waiver eventually adopted in June 2022 was narrowed to patents only, limiting its practical effect. For many countries, the lasting memory was straightforward: when a global crisis emerged, the rhetoric of international solidarity appeared narrower than advertised. Whether that judgement was entirely fair is less important than the fact that it became part of how many governments and societies interpreted subsequent appeals to shared responsibility.
Credibility in a Multipolar World
This is not a hypocrisy argument. Governments routinely protect domestic interests; that is what governments do. The more precise claim is structural.
Germany's diplomatic influence was built less on coercion than on credibility. For decades, Berlin benefited from being seen as a country that generally argued for rules, institutions, and multilateral solutions rather than narrow advantage. That reputation became a source of influence in its own right.
The effectiveness of that model depended on legitimacy. Countries did not need to agree with Germany on every issue, but they generally believed Berlin was applying the same principles to itself that it expected from others.
When that perception weakens, influence becomes harder to sustain. Individual inconsistencies may be explainable. Repeated inconsistencies begin to look like a pattern. And when patterns emerge, other states adjust their assessments accordingly.
In a more multipolar international system, they increasingly have the ability to act on those assessments. China offers alternative sources of finance and investment. Middle powers possess greater room for manoeuvre. Countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America are more willing to pursue relationships that serve their interests, even when those choices conflict with Western preferences.
In this environment, accumulated credibility deficits—each individually defensible, collectively corrosive—begin to matter in measurable ways.
International politics is often described as a realm of short memories. In practice, states frequently remember episodes that shape their understanding of reliability, reciprocity, and fairness long after the immediate crisis has passed.
The late Namibian President Hage Geingob captured part of this shift in a widely circulated exchange regarding Chinese engagement in Africa. Responding to German concerns about China’s growing presence, Geingob defended Namibia’s right to determine its own partnerships, arguing that African states did not require external instruction regarding their national interests.
What made the exchange notable was not the disagreement itself. It was the confidence with which it was delivered.
Twenty years ago, such conversations often occurred behind closed doors. Today, leaders increasingly challenge European assumptions in public. The issue was not China. It was agency.
Countries that once operated within a largely Western-defined international order now possess more options, more partners, and greater confidence in exercising independent choices.
The Paradox of German Power
The UNSC vote may ultimately matter less because of the seat Germany failed to win than because of what the result revealed.
The outcome does not necessarily mean that countries are turning against Germany. Nor does it mean that Berlin’s influence is collapsing. Germany remains one of the world’s most important economic and political actors.
What the vote may indicate, however, is that Germany’s reputation can no longer be treated as a self-sustaining asset.
Germany's post-Cold War influence rested on a particular international environment: economic integration generated leverage, multilateral institutions enjoyed broad legitimacy, and Western leadership remained the dominant frame through which international politics was organised. Germany performed exceptionally well within that system. Its restraint looked like principle; its prosperity looked like competence; its multilateralism looked like conviction.
That system has changed.
A more fragmented international system places greater emphasis on consistency, reciprocity, and credibility. Countries possess more choices than they once did. They are also more willing to evaluate partners based on observed behaviour rather than stated intentions.
Berlin's response to this changing environment has been to expand its material weight.
The Merz government has accelerated that effort. A constitutional amendment passed in early 2025 removed debt limits on defence spending. Berlin has pledged nearly €650 billion over five years toward military modernisation, with the stated goal of building Europe’s strongest conventional army. Germany hit NATO’s 2 percent of GDP target for the first time since 1991 only in 2024.
The logic is coherent: credibility must now be backed by capacity. But there is a paradox embedded in it.
Germany is acquiring the instruments of a traditional great power at precisely the moment when the form of influence it historically exercised is under the greatest pressure. A Germany that behaves more like a conventional security actor may strengthen NATO, reassure allies, and enhance its geopolitical relevance. It is less clear that this trajectory restores the legitimacy that once made Germany's voice unusually persuasive beyond Europe.
In UN corridors, across parts of Africa and Asia, and among states that had no particular reason to align with Berlin, Germany's influence often rested less on power than on the perception that it was defending a system rather than advancing itself.
The Zeitenwende debate has focused on whether Germany can build hard-power capacity quickly enough. The prior question—whether military strength can compensate for diminishing diplomatic legitimacy—has received considerably less attention.
Germany’s challenge is not simply to become more powerful. It is to persuade others that greater German power serves more than German interests.
In a world that trusts less and remembers more, that may prove the harder task.
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Suggested reading
Ian Manners, Normative Power Europe: A Contradiction in Terms?
Nicola Degli Esposti, Assessing Western Discourse on ‘Chinese Neocolonialism’ in the Global South
Tobias Bunde, Zeitenwende as a Foreign Policy Identity Crisis
A superb look into the external causes of the shifting influence in German foreign policy. Well presented and written.
I would add to that, as someone who navigated the field of diplomacy for decade and a half, that there is an internal dimension as well.
Starting with the Scholz government back in 2021, and the appointment of Annalena Baerbock as FM, German foreign policy suffered a loss of coherence felt on the operational and direct engagement levels. German diplomats are some of the most capable I have dealt with, and one of the core strengths of its diplomatic engagement rested on the strong institutional memory.
Baerbock’s tenure created a fracture in this mechanism, and the over weighing of the immediate politically advantageous position as opposed to the consistent long term policies crafted through the foreign relations apparatus created the dissonances you mentioned in your piece.
This internal incoherence made its messaging on the diplomatic (rather than political) level less consistent, and therefore less predictable.
The shift in positions of the German government on issues of global concern depending on which way the wind was blowing meant that, for a position within the UNSC for example, they are more vulnerable to pressure and could not be consistently relied upon to support stated positions. This reflects across other fields as you laid out, and connects strongly to the unreliability factor you highlighted.
This problem can and may be rectified rather easily because the German foreign relations system is strong, deep, and well developed, and requires that the leaders rebalance their engagement with it to leverage its strengths.
Well written.
You capture the logic of German power projection very well.
Your description of a loss of credibility for Germany on the international stage is pretty accurate. As you described, this is because Germany's rhetoric and actions do not align, but also has to do with the decline of Germany's image as an efficient and economically strong nation.
The economic situation is indeed worsening and Germany’s approach to the migration crisis in 2015 has led to irritation in many European capitals.
Therefore it is increasingly difficult for Germany to set an agenda in Europe and even to coordinate with states that have traditionally good relationships with the country.
On top of that, the population in Germany is very polarized as a direct result of the developments in the country. Under such circumstances, reforms are very difficult to implement and Germany desperately needs some. Thus, it is not surprising that the „Zeitenwende“ has not delivered many results.
In short, the combination of path-dependency, economic decline, a loss of reliability and social cohesion, and the false belief in the „End of history“is the cause of Germany‘s decay.