Germany’s failure to win a seat on the 15-member United Nations Security Council for the first time since 1987 has been described as a “bitter defeat” by Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul. The loss is being interpreted as an indictment of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Janus-faced approach to foreign policy and transatlantic relations. More significant, though, is Berlin’s defeat by two European peers with priorities outside traditional Western power structures, and alliances in the Global South that make them better attuned to a shifting international power balance.

Austria and Portugal beat Germany at a canter in the secret ballot to scoop up the two non-permanent Security Council seats for Western Europe. Having rather snootily warned against “smaller” nations taking both spots, Wadephul portrayed Germany’s loss as resulting from its principled stand in support of Ukraine and, more significantly, Israel. “The fact that Germany must always assume a special responsibility for Israel in the Middle East conflict may have cost votes,” he admitted.

Commentators are eager to draw this same connection in order to portray a growing global consensus against Israel, with one declaring that the loss “has everything to do with Germany’s support for Israel’s genocide”. Yet, damaging though it may have been, support for Israel is unlikely to be the key reason for Germany’s defeat; after all, neighboring Austria takes a similarly resolute stance.

Success for Austria and Portugal may instead indicate deeper global dissatisfaction with traditional Western power structures. Austria’s constitutional neutrality and lack of NATO membership contrasts sharply with Germany’s wish to emerge as the European leader of a rejuvenated alliance. An Austrian diplomat summed up the distinction: “As a small country that is non-aligned and militarily neutral, we can play a special role, because it’s not about the rights of the political heavyweights, but the balance of rights among all states.”

Portugal’s emphasis on collaboration with the Lusophone states of South America and Africa, meanwhile, provides it with a unique viewpoint on the rise of the Global South and the nations which may well become the powerbrokers of the new order. Merz is forlornly attempting to knit together a frayed Western-led rules-based order, grounded in the increasingly dubious power and influence of NATO, that much of the world sees as already dead. Austria and Portugal are smaller, but better attuned to the dynamics of a changing global picture.

In this context, it doesn’t help that Germany appeared to take winning its seat on the Security Council for granted, making a remarkably slow start to campaigning compared with its rivals. Berlin has also slashed its foreign aid budget, further alienating potential supporters in developing nations.

All this feeds into the credibility gap perceived in Merz’s vision of German leadership in international affairs. In turn, the waning status of the transatlantic alliance and traditional Western power centers is driving the evolution of the UN itself, into a talking shop with little real influence on an international arena where states increasingly assert their interests through unilateral action.

Donald Trump complained in his address to the General Assembly last year that “all [the UN] seem to do is write a really strongly worded letter and then never follow that letter up.” When the US President openly questions the UN’s purpose, it’s clear that the organisation’s old function, and the international order it helped maintain, are losing relevance. German bitterness over the loss of a seat on the Security Council may, in itself, be the clearest indication of all that Berlin is dreaming of an old world order that no longer exists.