The power she actually held
Annalena Baerbock was federal foreign minister from 8 December 2021 to 6 May 2025. Richtlinienkompetenz sat with the chancellor. Export licences are inter-ministerial. She still owned the diplomatic daily file on Ukraine, China, and the feminist guidelines.
That limit is the first fact. The second is that a values paper, a China strategy, and a campaign-integrity file still move welfare. The live score has to read those instruments as they were enacted, not as a brand of “feminist foreign policy” that erases export practice.
What went wrong, and what is proven
The 2021 campaign file is the integrity start: CV inaccuracies and plagiarised passages in a book. She stayed the candidate. It is a completed campaign act, not a criminal judgment. It still strengthens institutional-corruption as distrust of presentation.
The Kabul airlift began as she took office. Local partners were left. A later inquiry criticised planning that sat across Merkel’s last cabinet and the new traffic light. Feminist foreign-policy guidelines promised a rights lens; arms-export practice toward Gulf partners sat uneasily beside that brand. After 7 October her Gaza line emphasised Israel’s right to defend itself more loudly than access corridors. Rights groups documented the gap.
Taurus is a split file: she publicly favoured delivery; Scholz refused. Recording her advocacy is fair. Recording her as the export authority is not. China industrial dependence continued even after the 2023 strategy named a systemic rival. ICJ intervention against South Africa’s case is a completed litigation act. Israel-bound licences during the Gaza war sit on the same humanitarian-access ledger as the public line after 7 October. A Green collapse in the 2024 European election is a completed political cost while she was still in cabinet.
What improved, and how far
She was among the loudest German voices for heavier Ukraine weapons earlier than the chancellery’s calendar. Temporary protection, candidate status, and accession talks are collective. The China strategy is a completed foreign-office text. Nord Stream 2 opposition as incoming minister matched a later halt she did not solely cause. Climate diplomacy at COPs is a dated representational act. UNGA election is a completed UN act after she left the Auswärtiges Amt.
Shared responsibility, and what the score does not say
Scholz, Friedrich Merz, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, von der Leyen, and the chancellery’s export cell are not extras. Treating her as author of Zeitenwende, or as a bystander on Kabul, would be the same error in opposite directions.
The score does not say she plagiarised a statute. It does not say Taurus flew. It does not convert a feminist guideline into a delivered rights outcome. Confidence is high on published strategies and on her Taurus interviews, and only medium where Scholz’s veto and export-control law sit between the foreign office and a welfare indicator.
