New Delhi, June 6 -- The humiliation was complete before the vote count finished. Germany, which had campaigned for years to secure a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, walked away from the UN General Assembly on Wednesday with 104 votes - 23 short of the two-thirds majority it needed, beaten by both Austria and Portugal. The question that consumed Berlin in the days that followed was not what went wrong, but who was responsible.

Baerbock ran Germany's Foreign Ministry from December 2021 to May 2025, the period in which the diplomatic groundwork for the Security Council candidacy was either built or left unbuilt. She has answers to give.

"We must carefully analyze the reasons for this embarrassing electoral defea...