By Michael Backfisch, Berlin

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The world is burning. The geopolitical axes are shifting. The international order is perforated. The law of the jungle rules. The strongest take what they can get. US President Donald Trump accuses the former close ally Europe of ‘parasitising’ at the expense of the Americans. Russia wants to bomb its way into a pro-Moscow government in Ukraine - despite all the ‘peace’ talks staged by Trump. China is tightening its manoeuvre belt around Taiwan. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has peaceful demonstrators who took to the streets after the flimsy arrest of his fiercest rival beaten down. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is fuelling the de facto expulsion of the Palestinians by once again bombing the Gaza Strip.

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Let's say it like it is: The international community no longer exists. It's just a work of fiction. Old certainties are lost. Trump is increasingly “Putinizing” himself: he is spreading the Kremlin leader's narratives about the Ukraine war and trying to transform the American Republic into an autocratic state.

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Against this background, Europe is peddling off and looking for direction. French President Emmanuel Macron and the British Prime Minister are pushing ahead, while Germany is struggling for a new government.

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Europe urgently needs a strong Germany. This is a challenge for the chancellor, but also for the new foreign minister.  The new one should have a special knack for Europe. The Community may have to be completely reinvented. Without the paralysing principle of unanimity, which can be overturned at any time by the blockers on duty - Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán or his Slovakian counterpart Prime Minister Robert Fico. In the 1990s, there was at least the Schäuble-Lamers paper of a ‘two-speed Europe’ with a ‘core Europe’ at the top.

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In any case, the newcomer must seek to close ranks with France. Both Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) and her successor Olaf Scholz (SPD) have left Macron behind. His Sorbonne speech in favour of a sovereign Europe in 2017 and the subsequent appeals met with a wall of silence in Berlin. That is now taking its revenge.

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The newcomer must be principled — but without a megaphone, please. What is required is the ability to conduct delicate diplomacy, which, according to experience, takes place primarily behind closed doors. In the past, Germany has waved too much the banner of a “value-based foreign policy.” But the world cannot be influenced by the high seat of moral superiority. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) has tried to drum in Moscow or Beijing with clear edge rhetoric for compliance with human rights. That was good for the domestic gallery in Germany. But what effect has it had in the world?

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Today, it is not about public preaching, but about clever representation of interests. Germany's top diplomat should be politically fireproof, have a maximum of antennas for dialogue and a reality-proven sense of alliances and coalitions. If you could wish for a hybrid candidate, it would be a mix of America's diplomacy legend Henry Kissinger and Secretary of Defense Boris Pistorius (SPD). Among the currently named candidates for the foreign office job, no one meets these requirements. To this day, German foreign policy is a vacancy. This must change quickly.

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