GMF - The German Marshall Fund of the United States - Strengthening Transatlantic Cooperation

Is there a female touch at work in foreign policy? Most powerful women would probably deny this and consider the hypothesis thinly veiled discrimination. And yet, meeting in Berlin for an Aspen Conference, we decided to speculate a bit.

Germany’s first “Madame Chancellor” is a case in point, and Angela Merkel’s solid start on the international scene lends support to our untested assumption. After all, she visited President George W.?Bush in Washington to re-launch a productive German-American relationship but uttered clear words on the need to close down the Guantanamo prison. She decided not to embrace (nor kiss, à la Gerhard Schröder) Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, and sent strong signals to Hamas.

From these initial – and rather successful – moves we may draw two general rules that seem to apply to Ms Merkel’s “female” foreign policy: firm but sober on principles, tough but patient on implementation. Nothing particularly original but significant progress from the glaring inconsistencies that characterise most of her (male) colleagues. Only time will tell whether Ms Merkel will pass the test of making coherent decisions under pressure, as well as learning from mistakes.

In the meantime, we are tempted to ask a similar question regarding another female heavyweight, Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state. A female touch at Foggy Bottom, too? It is less easy to respond, since a secretary of state, however influential, is accountable to the president (a man, for the time being). Still, a depressed US diplomatic corps has found new vigour under Ms Rice’s leadership, offsetting some of the influence gained in recent years by the Pentagon. America’s chief diplomat delivered a sensitive speech openly criticising decades of US foreign policy in the Middle East before an Egyptian audience in Cairo. Firm on pro-democracy principles, we might conclude. Since then – June 2005 – progress has been elusive but Ms Rice keeps trying: as subsequent trips to the region demonstrate, she does not dislike travelling extensively, another similarity with Ms Merkel.

The political trajectories of Ms Merkel and Ms Rice intersected in their first, rather frank official meeting: in spite of some tension and suspense, the encounter helped restore badly needed civility and collaborative spirit across the Atlantic. Overall, what appears to unite these powerful women is a sense of balance. Their experiences and instincts act as safeguards against excesses: the legacy of a radical identity transformation for Ms Merkel and the background of a realpolitik thinker turned “Bush’s foreign policy tutor” for Ms Rice, make them resolute but practical.

Thinking of precedents on both continents, the cases of both Margaret Thatcher and Madeleine Albright strongly suggest that at least one of the assumptions of old-style feminists is mistaken: women in power do not seem to have distinctive, feminine attitudes toward the use of force. In search of hints, one could read Ms Merkel’s speech at the recent Munich Security Conference, where she mentioned the “process of convergence” between the US and European security strategies, discarding, as “philosophical”, differences between pre-emption (the US way) and prevention (the European way). On the issue of Iran’s nuclear capabilities, moreover, Ms Merkel struck a harsher tone than her predecessor ever did, while reminding Americans that strength requires friends.

Let us wait and see whether the claimed convergence is solid enough to pass the Iranian test. So far, the idea that foreign policy requires consensus-building – a tenet of Ms Merkel’s diplomacy that distances her from Mr Schröder and reconnects Berlin to the best German postwar tradition – has worked well in Europe. It was first within the European Union that Madame Chancellor succeeded in sewing together the positions of diverse countries – large and small – like a crafty tailor. That test was passed at her first EU Council meeting last December.

Whether it is her female touch or just gender-blind political shrewdness, Ms Merkel’s sense of balance offers the best hope for an extrovert Germany, committed to an important role for Nato and a more effective EU. This is exactly the notion that Ms Rice has come to see as an important asset for America as well. Colin Powell, her predecessor, probably had the same feeling but lacked the political clout to follow through. This is, perhaps, the advantage of the female touch.

Marta Dassù is director of Aspen Institute Italia. Ulrike Guerot is senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.