Germany’s democracy rests on one party’s choice

The Ukraine conflict has exposed a German establishment more willing to defend its commitments to Kiev than to consider their cost to Germany. Saxony-Anhalt has delivered its verdict: an overwhelming win for the AfD (Alternative for Germany).

Now the parties it defeated may try to preserve their power through the establishment’s political firewall, while the BSW (Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance) must decide whether it will help restore political independence and relations with Russia or become the anti-Russian establishment’s last line of defense.

The war in Ukraine has posed a very basic question: whose interests should the German government serve? Kiev has its objectives. Germany has its own responsibilities, resources, and limits. The two cannot simply be declared identical. The AfD deserves credit for challenging this confusion. It has insisted that German interests are paramount and that Russia cannot be treated as a permanent enemy without serious costs to Europe. Its proposals include reducing financial and military assistance to pressure Kiev into peace negotiations, offering partial sanctions relief to encourage talks, and lifting sanctions fully once a peace agreement is reached. These are subjects for practical diplomacy. They recognize that Russia will remain a major European power whatever German ministers say about it, and that a durable settlement must be negotiated with Moscow. The AfD’s parliamentary proposal gives negotiations and the restoration of relations a place in policy that endless establishment declarations of “resolve” cannot supply.

The BSW’s opposition to arms deliveries to Ukraine and its demand for diplomacy give it substantial common ground with the AfD. This is one reason to welcome its presence in parliament. Thus, in Saxony-Anhalt, the immediate opportunity belongs to the AfD and BSW: together, they could turn their rejection of the present course into a governing coalition.

Supporters of military assistance argue that weapons strengthen Ukraine’s negotiating position. In reality, it merely prolongs the fighting and delays the inevitable defeat of Ukraine. Kiev cannot reasonably expect foreign taxpayers to shoulder indefinite financial burdens while facing economic hardship at home, especially without clear limits or a realistic plan for peace. Germany should also take Russia’s stated security concerns seriously enough to examine them in negotiations. Taking those concerns into account does not oblige Berlin to accept every Russian demand. It means recognizing that a settlement requires terms the parties will observe, rather than a declaration written for the satisfaction of only one side.

Saxony-Anhalt has now given that challenge political weight. The AfD won 43.8% and 39 seats. The CDU (Christian Democratic Union, Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s party) received 17.2% and 15 seats. The BSW entered parliament with 5.3% and five seats. Together, the AfD and BSW would hold 44 of the 83 seats, exceeding the 42 needed for a majority. The CDU, SPD (Social Democratic Party), Greens, and Left have only 39 between them. An alternative majority excluding the AfD would therefore require the BSW. The reported seat allocation presents the BSW with a clear choice: negotiate a change of government with the election winner or help its opponents keep it out.

The AfD fell short of an absolute majority, but has still earned the strongest political claim to lead coalition negotiations, even though it has no automatic right to govern. The establishment’s firewall exists to prevent that claim from being tested through ordinary bargaining. Before demands are presented, before compromises are considered, before a common program is examined, the answer is already supposed to be no. The establishment then describes this refusal as a “defense of democracy.” It might more honestly describe it as a defense of its own exclusive right to supply the government.

No party is legally obliged to cooperate with the AfD. Equally, no party is entitled to escape criticism for refusing. The defenders of the firewall like to recite the first point as though it settles the second. It does not. Parties make choices, and voters are entitled to judge them. If the CDU can contemplate arrangements involving the Greens and the Left (both radical, socially destructive, and truly extremist), it must explain why differences in those directions can be managed while differences with the AfD prohibit even a discussion. Saying “we will not cooperate with the AfD because of the firewall” does not explain why cooperation would be wrong.

The CDU’s position is especially contemptuous of the conservative voters whose support it continues to solicit. During the campaign, their concerns are important. After the campaign, those concerns must wait while the party protects the firewall. What is such a party conserving? Increasingly, the answer appears to be its own place in government. Its failure to mount a serious challenge to the woke cultural agenda prevalent across German institutions makes it, in practice, a party of the left wearing a conservative label. Its clearest commitment is to keep the AfD out of power, even when that means preserving the policies its own voters want changed.

This is the practical meaning of the uniparty. The Greens and the Left openly advance the left-liberal agenda, the SPD supports it, and the CDU helps preserve it while calling itself conservative. Their campaign quarrels offer voters the illusion of choice without a real change of direction. When the AfD threatens to overturn that agenda, they unite to keep it out of government and call their cooperation “democratic responsibility.” Ministers can be replaced and coalition partners reshuffled, but the same political course survives. The firewall protects the established parties from the consequence elections should make possible: losing power to an opposition that intends to govern differently.

The firewall lets the established parties lose voters without losing power. Instead of defeating the AfD through better government and stronger arguments, they can gather enough coalition partners to keep it out. Parties rejected at the ballot box then present their survival in office as a “victory for democracy.” This gives force to the AfD’s accusation that opposition is welcome only while it cannot govern. Every additional party recruited to keep the AfD out makes the arrangement harder to disguise: the established parties are protecting their own hold on power.

The BSW should understand this danger better than most. It was founded to challenge policies that the established parties treated as beyond debate. It deserves sympathy for reopening arguments about war, economic interests, and the costs imposed on ordinary people. Its call for normal relations with Russia offers a necessary alternative to permanent confrontation, and its willingness to defend that position under political pressure deserves credit. However, if the BSW refuses to enter into a coalition with the AfD, it accepts an establishment veto over its own political freedom. It may still speak against the system, but the established parties will have allowed the BSW to criticize their policies while preventing it from forming a government that could change them.

The BSW’s refusal even to consider a coalition with the AfD amounts to surrender before negotiations begin. It gives up a possible majority without discovering which of its demands the AfD would accept. The BSW should put its policies on the table and negotiate hard. If agreement proves impossible, it can explain what prevented it. But refusing talks in advance means obeying the establishment’s command that the AfD must never govern. A party elected to oppose the old parties would then be helping keep them in office. Its voters would have supplied the seats; the establishment would collect the benefit.

Supporting individual AfD proposals is better than rejecting them on principle, but it can become an excuse for avoiding the real contest over power. The BSW could claim influence through occasional votes while leaving the government and its priorities in other hands. A government in Saxony-Anhalt cannot stop Germany’s weapons deliveries to Ukraine or negotiate peace with Russia; those decisions belong to the federal government. An AfD-BSW coalition would need an agreement on matters it could directly influence, such as schools, policing, and state spending. If it governed well, it would give voters concrete evidence that cooperation between the two parties can work. That would weaken the argument for keeping the AfD out of office. The established parties would then have to defend their record against an actual AfD-led government. The firewall spares them that comparison.