It's a shame that Caren Miosga didn't ask in more detail: What do you mean by that, Mr. Habeck? Namely with his view, expressed several times, that he now sees political things “from outside, from the North Pole”. It's clear in a figurative sense what that means: from the outside. But from the North Pole?
Robert Habeck is no longer part of political Berlin; a year ago he resigned from his Bundestag mandate after he did not cut a good figure as the Green Party's candidate for chancellor in the federal election despite a highly ambitious election campaign. He now lives and works in Denmark, but it is still a few thousand kilometers from Copenhagen to the North Pole - for this reason it seems risky to introduce himself as a North Pole thinker in the sense of a man with an overview from a kind of higher vantage point, as was already claimed at the time in political Berlin, at that time of course without any intellectual situation in a geographical location at a pole of the world from which one can only look south anyway.
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Since Habeck moved to Copenhagen, the North Pole has been seen as a privileged observation post for the whole world, which is at least how it came across to Miosga when he asked the question “Is the political order breaking down?” was asked for an individual interview.
"There's nothing to it"
Or should, this would at least be an explanation, the North Pole perspective only mean the plot of his new book “Arctic Meltdown – the remeasurement of the world”, in which the Arctic is negotiated as a geopolitical hotspot, the race for the resources there? At Miosga, Habeck gave a preview of the book, which is currently being published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch. The author teaches as a Professor of Practice at the Copenhagen Business School in the research cluster for geopolitics, security and economics, has previously worked as an analyst at the Danish Institute for International Studies and, as a senior consultant, supports the Danish investment company Urban Partners, among other things, with expansion plans on the German market, which brings the former economics minister more than just approval so shortly after the end of his term in office.
Speaking of which and then the core of Habeck's political order considerations that evening: No, in the long term he himself has "no plans, no strategy and no desire" for a comeback as a politician. He expressly denied rumors that he wanted to found a new party with former Transport Minister Volker Wissing: “There’s nothing to that.” This was obviously one of those rumors that are spread specifically so that a denial can then be sold as top news, or so it seemed again this time. The self-management of political Berlin, the tireless aspect of it, was also a nice try for Miosga.
Get off the defensive!
The rest is quickly told: the rise of the right-wing populists, as can be seen from the outside, is a phenomenon in many European countries beyond Germany. Habeck sees the core of the development in fears of economic decline and the social question that this has given dynamism to. Conflict areas such as the heat pump (Habeck seemed to be under pressure to have to say the word, his word from back then, several times) or the pension at 63, in contrast, were only occasional topics. Nevertheless, the vocabulary of the political center is dominated by defensiveness, preserving and protecting, not pushing the political extremes forward. Can their mostly empty promises not be passed off too unquestioningly as political assets? So one could understand Miosga's objection.
Habeck's relativizing tendency to portray anti-Semitism on the Berlin Left as no longer significant when compared to society is also less analytical. This left-wing anti-Semitism problem, as it is evident throughout society, needs to be “resolved and put to rest,” according to Habeck, as if it was now about little more than a bureaucratic gesture in Berlin.
The moderator wanted to know who was affected more severely by the respective crisis: Friedrich Merz or Robert Habeck? He, Habeck, always had his people and his party behind him when criticism of his administration and his attitude of self-confidence increased. In this respect, he had it easier than the Chancellor in his current crisis, said the former Green politician. Especially since Friedrich Merz only turned out to be the person he was recognizable as from the beginning. Here and with a strangely smug insistence on previous insults towards Bundestag President Julia Klöckner and CSU leader Markus Söder, Habeck counteracted his role as elder statesman of the North Pole, which he tried to assume that evening.
“It was a good moment for me back then,” Habeck simply grinned as he turned down Miosga’s offer to apologize for his accusations at the time. On the contrary, he called his jokes from back then “the truth” that he was finally able to let out after the end of his political career. What might next obscure the view of the thinker from the North Pole?
