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07/24/2026 July 24, 2026 Foreign Minister Wadephul draws international law and traffic offense analogy in satire show interview The show airs as Wadephul returns from
07/24/2026 July 24, 2026 Foreign Minister Wadephul draws international law and traffic offense analogy in satire show interview The show airs as Wadephul returns from a trip to Africa this week Image: Soeren Stache/dpa/picture alliance German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul has taken the bold but risky move of appearing in a feature interview on public television's premiere weekly satirical comedy the "heute-show," roughly like the US "Daily Show." Wadephul speaks at some length to young anchor Fabian Köster in an elevator in a playful interview that's nevertheless focused on entirely serious topics. It spans NATO relations and Donald Trump and Greenland, Russia's war against Ukraine, the low popularity of government he serves in, the war in Iran and Nicolas Maduro's abduction from Venezuela.
"We're not conducting some kind of foreign policy interview here," Wadephul said at one point with a chuckle after a trickier question, only for Köster to immediately reply "doch!" or roughly "oh, but we are!" When the topic turned to the US military operation to kidnap Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Wadephul was asked whether "international law can rub up against the boundaries of Realpolitik." "Yes, if you're honest, yes, that's the case," Wadephul said. "But to be honest, we're familiar with this in the rule of law. If you think of yourself in road traffic, for instance, have you always kept to everything 100%?" Köster said he liked the analogy but noted that "a stop sign is something slightly different" than the abduction of a head of state.
"In the law it's written that you can't drive faster than 50 km/h in a built-up area, but nevertheless sometimes people drive faster. And it's the same, fundamentally, in international law. And you have to deal with that. The laws are there to provide an orientation, but they are never dogmatically upheld 100%," Wadephul said. Asked whether it was "embarrassing" for Germany to only speak up against breaches of international law if "the right countries" are offenders, Wadephul said it was important to note that there were gradations of color. "There are differences," he said. "If you, like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, have been waging five years of war against Ukraine and killing thousands upon thousands of people — including your own people — or if you took this one step against a person in power in Venezuela, who did not exactly keep to international law himself: There really is a difference." Chancellor Friedrich Merz had faced criticism amid the US operations in both Venezuela and Iran for comments suggesting the situations were "complex." Wadephul expanded on this saying they were politically complex but perhaps simpler from a purely legal perspective, still without explicitly saying they were breaches of the law.
The BriefWire