It was a long time coming. Sure, U.S. President Joe Biden was among the Western leaders of the G7 when they convened at a German castle called Schloss Elmau in June 2022, and President Donald Trump growled his way through a gathering of the larger G20 in Hamburg in July 2017.
But not since November 2016, when President Barack Obama embarked on a farewell tour of Europe and had dinner with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, had a U.S. president made a bilateral visit to Germany.
It was a long time coming. Sure, U.S. President Joe Biden was among the Western leaders of the G7 when they convened at a German castle called Schloss Elmau in June 2022, and President Donald Trump growled his way through a gathering of the larger G20 in Hamburg in July 2017.
But not since November 2016, when President Barack Obama embarked on a farewell tour of Europe and had dinner with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, had a U.S. president made a bilateral visit to Germany.
For sure, the COVID-19 pandemic got in the way. American leaders don’t seem to travel as much as they used to. Yet, excuses aside, it was curious that Biden’s lightning visit to Berlin last week was both his first and last as the “leader of the free world” (a term that some Germans still cling to). Even that trip was fraught, having been postponed by a week as Biden attended to the aftermath of Hurricane Milton in Florida.
The trip was supposed to be somewhat longer, but the grandeur was retained—a military welcome by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, at his Schloss Bellevue residence, followed by the conferring of the country’s highest honor. Then came the work in earnest: political talks with Germany Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
All of them were supposed to convene with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the U.S. Ramstein Air Base to discuss his “victory plan” to win the war against Russia, as part of a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group. When Biden postponed his visit, the meeting was rescheduled, too. But desperate for political progress and for more weapons deliveries ahead of a long winter of combat, Zelensky still went to Germany on a trip that also included visits to London, Paris, and Rome—and left seemingly empty-handed.
Macron and Starmer synchronized their trips with Biden’s, but for all the rhetoric of steely determination, developments on the Ukraine front are seemingly scant. Although he wasn’t mentioned by name, all eyes were on Trump with just under three weeks from the U.S. presidential election.
Ukraine is the issue around which future U.S.-European relations will hinge, irrespective of whether Trump or Kamala Harris prevail. As Norbert Röttgen, a member of the Bundestag, said in a TV interview, “If Russia wins, the West as we know it will cease to exist.” His party, the opposition center-right Christian Democratic Union, has adopted a policy of sending Ukraine long-range Taurus missiles if Russia continues to attack key infrastructure. That is a position the ever-cautious Scholz has refused to take.
The second curiosity of the Biden-Scholz relationship is that both leaders have given far and away the most amount of help to Ukraine, and yet both are accused (with some justification) of dragging their feet, of handing Zelensky just enough so as not to lose the war but not enough to drive Russian forces out of occupied land.
Despite Biden’s previous absence from Germany, he and Scholz have become close, as both were keen to demonstrate. Biden described Germany as “the closest and most important of allies” (words that wouldn’t have delighted Brits still wedded to their notion of the “special relationship”). He praised Scholz, a leader who “rose to meet the moment” and thanked him multiple times. On the ropes domestically, his authority draining away, Scholz smiled a wide smile.
Their relationship didn’t start that way. When the newly elected chancellor arrived at the White House in February 2022, he was told in public by Biden and in private by intelligence chiefs that Russian President Vladimir Putin was about to invade Ukraine. Scholz and his own security apparatus had taken a more credulous view of the Kremlin leader, only to be forced to row back incredibly quickly a few weeks later.
His fabled Zeitenwende speech, which signaled a new harder approach on Russia, also marked a turning point. Scholz and Biden have largely been in lockstep since, both in their courage and their hesitation in regards to both Ukraine and Israel. The most important area of divergence remains China, where Germany’s trade dependency continues to guide a political relationship that is far more benign.
As Biden said his goodbyes, attention now turns to Trump. Indeed, they have been for a long time, even before Biden was persuaded by his own party not to seek reelection and a Trump victory was as good as baked into Berlin’s thinking.
All precedent suggests that if Trump does win, Germany and Europe are in for a desperately rocky ride.
It’s worth briefly dwelling on the past. Over that fateful farewell dinner in Berlin eight years ago, Obama pleaded with Merkel to stay on as chancellor. She had already served three terms and was keen to hand over the mantle. According to aides, Obama pointed out that with Trump about to succeed him in the White House and with the United Kingdom in the throes of chaos after its Brexit vote, Europe needed stability and a wise hand on the tiller.
It had taken Merkel some time to warm to Obama and vice versa. She had found his easy charisma a little alienating. Matters were made worse when Merkel found out through research by Der Spiegel on the Snowden files that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) had been bugging her mobile phone for since 2002. The fact that she was just one of 122 world leaders in the surveillance database system known as Nymrod didn’t lessen the fury. Germany was supposed to be one of the United States’ staunchest allies. In an angry phone exchange with Obama, deliberately shared later with Der Spiegel, she said, “This is like the Stasi.” From that low point, relations improved rapidly, but tensions remained, not least of which was due to Germany’s reluctance to meet the agreed NATO target of at least 2% GDP spending on defense.
From the outset, Trump loathed Merkel. During his first election campaign, he routinely insulted her. “They picked person who is ruining Germany,” he said after Time chose Merkel as its Person of the Year in 2015. What particularly upset him was the magazine calling her “chancellor of the free world.”
In March 2017, Merkel flew to Washington, D.C., for her first meeting with Trump. She prepped assiduously, according to the New Yorker. She studied a 1990 Playboy interview that had become a set text on Trumpism—or the nearest thing anybody could find—for policymakers. She read his 1987 book, The Art of the Deal. She even watched episodes of his TV show, The Apprentice. The meeting started badly. She offered him a handshake in the Oval Office in front of the cameras. He didn’t take it.
Trump’s manner was not designed to endear. But that didn’t mean that all his criticisms were invalid. His misgivings about Russia and the Nord Stream gas pipeline were legitimate. His concerns about China and Germany’s trade dependency were equally legitimate. He wasn’t the only one to criticize defense spending—from George Bush to Obama and even now, this has been the standard view in Washington.
About 18 months into Trump’s presidency, Merkel concluded that it would be impossible to develop any kind of meaningful relationship with him. The best she could hope for was to manage the problem. Trump dispatched a longtime hawk and Fox News shock-jock commentator Richard Grenell to Berlin as U.S. ambassador. Grenell went immediately on a warpath, denouncing Germany on a regular basis and vowing to “empower conservatives” across Europe. Grenell is now being touted as possible national security advisor if Trump wins, an appointment that would be seen as a direct act of confrontation.
If Harris were to win, relations would remain on a more even level, but the difficulties would not be dispelled. The United States wants Europe to be more self-sufficient in its defense and tougher on China. Germany has a long way to go toward achieving those ends. Moreover, Washington is already looking to a future beyond not just Biden but also Scholz.
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