ABSTRACT
The Greens—currently part of Germany's ruling three-party coalition government—are the political party most often referred to as a force for change writ large and nuclear disarmament in particular. However, once in government in 2021, the Greens agreed to extend Germany's participation in nuclear sharing and toned down their previous calls for Germany to accede to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Based on a number of qualitative interviews with leading Green politicians, this chapter documents the recent policy shift from the previous Green nuclear abolition orthodoxy to a more pragmatic course and explains it with intra-party dynamics, generational aspects, and disruptive external events. The chapter concludes that the Greens are still somewhat torn between disarmament aspirations and political pragmatism when it comes to nuclear weapons. Recent developments, including a new style of public communication by the Green leadership, however, indicate that the party might have found a third way—pragmatic abolitionism—for dealing constructively with its conflicting interests.
