The next four years are going to be a “rough ride.”
That’s Germany’s foreign minister, Sigmar Gabriel, responding to a question about the new American presidency of Donald Trump.
The United States has been a close ally of the nations of Europe for a long time — since World War II with Western European countries and with the rest of the continent since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
Now those ties are fraying, chiefly because of the president’s “America First,” anti-Muslim attitude, as well as his volatile, unpredictable temperament.
President Trump has called the NATO military alliance “obsolete” and caused European officials to wonder whether the U.S. would honor the treaty’s requirement to defend another member that’s been attacked. He also has criticized German Chancellor Angela Merkel for her welcoming attitude toward war refugees and dismissed the value of multilateral institutions such as the United Nations and the European Union.
Veteran foreign correspondent Diaa Hadid tweeted Thursday that the new tension between the U.S. and Europe was “a fight nobody needed and few wanted.”
No one in Europe seems to have any idea where their relationship with the U.S. is headed. The continent’s leaders are paralyzed by a “mounting sense of anxiety and puzzlement over how to proceed” with Trump, The New York Times reports.
More telling still: Europeans appear to be abandoning — only two weeks into Trump’s presidency — an open-minded, wait-and-see stance toward the administration, with their views hardening into a conviction that the president is a menace to their peace, prosperity and values.
In fact, the continent that gave rise to and, thanks to U.S. intervention, ultimately defeated Nazism has decided the parallels between the new Trump administration and the long-gone Nazi regime in Germany are real and worrying. The BBC has suddenly decided to replay its acclaimed documentary series “The Nazis: A Warning from History.” The doc’s narrator, Samuel West, made clear in a Thursday tweet that the British network’s programmers surely have the American president on their minds.
The BBC are repeating THE NAZIS: A WARNING FROM HISTORY. Can’t imagine why. Anyway, BBC4 tonight, 11pm, me narrating https://t.co/TSyuvvD8F7
— Samuel West (@exitthelemming) February 2, 2017
The documentary focuses on “how a cultured people could have allowed Hitler’s rise to power.” Europeans for the most part do not see Trump as the next Hitler, but the American president’s demagogic campaign style and conflict-rousing approach to foreign affairs certainly have echoes.
“In the Trump world there are no sunny uplands, just darkness and hatred,” former French United Nations official Francois Heisbourg told the Times. “And in a continent that has had its share of hatred, this resonates.”
On Thursday at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., President Trump addressed talk about a reportedly heated conversation he’d had with Australia’s prime minister. He said he’s having a lot of conversations with world leaders in which he’s making clear the U.S.’ policy and objectives.
“Believe me, when you hear about the tough phone calls I’m having, don’t worry about it,” he said. “Just don’t worry about it.”
Europeans are worried about it. They know the president wasn’t directing those soothing comments at them.
— Douglas Perry
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