The more pragmatic part of the Left Party is preparing to accommodate the SPD and the Greens in defense policy in order to make a red-green-red alliance possible.
Dietmar Bartsch, one of two top people in the election campaign, has put his party's absolute no to all foreign deployments of the Bundeswehr into perspective.
He told the FAS that, in the event of any negotiations, “each foreign deployment will have to be decided in detail” in order to then “reach clear agreements” in a coalition agreement.
Konrad Schuller
Political correspondent for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung in Berlin.
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The former chairman of the left-wing predecessor party PDS, Gregor Gysi, made a similar statement.
He explained to the FAS where compromise lines could lie and said that one could "discuss blue helmet operations in the real sense", that is, about deployments "without a shooting order and only for conflict prevention".
Like Bartsch, Gysi comes from the GDR ruling party, the SED, in which everything military was highly valued.
Even among Left Party members from the West German peace movement, the front against foreign deployments is beginning to crumble.
The deputy party chairman and defense political group spokesman, Tobias Pflüger, indicated that after the failure of the NATO mission in Afghanistan, an agreement with the SPD and the Greens had become easier.
"After Afghanistan, it is not only clear to us that the missions abroad can and must no longer continue."
With regard to future negotiations, he suggested that the left would then not lump all current operations together.
Pflüger said that “for example” the engagement in Mali “had to be explicitly ended”.
On the left, it is said that such formulas indicated the possibility of continuing other missions.