Having a strong opinion is seemingly becoming a luxury, which many can't afford. Whether you're looking at autocratic leaders censoring minority voices or so-called "cancel culture," forcing individuals to look left and right before opening their mouths, personal views carry greater weight than perhaps they used to.
Add to this the looming shadow of widespread disinformation and full-on threat of propaganda, and you've easily got a perfect storm — especially for anyone who's even remotely in the public eye.
However, despite living in an age of Facebook jail and Twitter bans we perhaps forget that there are views that don't necessarily always need to be expressed; where attempts at having an exchange on certain opinions is futile at best and perhaps insulting when taken too far.
An ambassador expelled
Growing up, my father used to frequently have to tell me that "this simply isn't the time and place" for debate, referring to his rather measured approach of exchanging opinions as "diplomacy."
Perhaps some in the actual world of diplomacy would do well today in heeding his advice, as their views and assumptions appear to cause more harm than do good.
The exact details behind the expulsion of Germany's ambassador to Chad are somewhat unknown; Jan-Christian Gordon Kricke is supposed to have made some kind of incendiary remark last week about the country's timeline of returning to civilian rule, which has been pushed forward to 2024.
Swiftly, he was forced to leave the country over the weekend — to which Germany reacted with tit-for-tat diplomacy, handing marching orders to Chad's ambassador to Germany, Mariam Ali Moussa.
Whatever Ambassador Kricke's comments may have been — and whether he, in fact, may objectively have been right in his assessment — plays no role in these diplomatic circles, where a snide remark or even a side eye can destroy years of cooperation and peace.
I suppose that the governments of both Chad and Germany would agree that the state of affairs between them at this moment is an undesirable situation for both parties — one, which could have been avoided with a bit more diplomacy, ironically.
Poster-boy of German diplomacy
What's done is done, and now's perhaps the best time to learn lessons from this unfortunate series of events, one might think — or at least to reconsider one's relationship with strong opinions in this context.
However, the German Foreign Ministry doubled down on what was a fait accompli and published a Tweet praising its diplomat's work:
"Ambassador Kricke carried out his mission in N'Djamena in an exemplary manner and has been an advocate for human rights and the rapid transition to a civilian government in Chad," it said.
This, by the way, came just hours before Berlin dispatched two other representatives — Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and Economic Cooperation and Development Minister Svenja Schulze — to the Sahel region on an unrelated trip.
Wishing them a "Gute Reise" to Mali and Niger against this background would almost be sadistic.
Recalibrating the moral compass
But back to Chad and Germany, the Foreign Ministry on Twitter further commented on the recent developments between the two countries by saying: "We regret that it had to come to this."
The funny thing with "regret" is that it lives next door to "remorse." However, in Germany there appears to be a Berlin Wall between the two. The response of Germany's Foreign Ministry shows everything but regret. If anything, it has undertones of someone giving themselves a pat on the shoulder simply for standing up for themselves.
But does a world power like Germany really need to do that? Berlin may indeed want to promote better human rights and civil liberties across the world, and that is certainly an honorable thing. But the German Foreign Ministry seems to forget that the higher the moral ground, the steeper the fall.
Chad, meanwhile, is indeed facing a political situation which is to no one's liking, least of all to that of 17 million Chadians who cannot even dare to voice their opposition to the prolonged military rule they have had to endure. In October, at least 60 people were killed during pro-democracy rallies after government forces opened fire on protestors.
Between a rock and a hard place
There is no one — not even the military junta, which clearly has allergic reactions to bad press reviews — who would believe that this is a desirable state-of-affairs. Between pro-democracy camps and violent jihadists, Chad's military junta knows well that it's always one step away from playing the overture to a losing game.
But as Chad under the leadership of the military government is grappling with its fight against militant Islamism, with a serious refugee influx from various parts of nearly the entire continent, with endemic poverty and famine resulting in nearly half of the country living below its poverty line, and with its economic woes amid global inflation skyrocketing, it would not be a stretch to refer Ambassador Kricke — and his superiors in the Foreign Ministry — to my father's words and tell them that "this simply isn't the time and place."
Edited by: Benita van Eyssen