Why Germany would be especially happy to see the
back of Trump
John
Kampfner
The competence embodied in Merkel provokes loathing
from the US president
@johnkampfner
Sat 15 Aug
2020 19.00 BST
Donald
Trump has declared war on Germany. In a manner of speaking. Europe’s most
important country, potentially America’s most valuable partner, has in the mind
of the president become an adversary. Of all Trump’s many foreign policy
disasters, this is perhaps his most significant.
In late
July, it was announced that retired army colonel Douglas Macgregor, a decorated
combat veteran, would become the next ambassador to Berlin. Macgregor is a
regular contributor to Trump’s favourite channel of information, Fox News. He
has variously suggested that the US border guard should shoot people if they
tried to enter illegally from Mexico; described eastern Ukrainians as
“Russians”; defended Serbia’s actions against a “Muslim drug mafia” in Kosovo;
and criticised Germany for giving “millions of unwanted Muslim invaders”
welfare benefits rather than providing more funding for its armed services.
Most
painfully for his new hosts, Macgregor seems to have sided with the far right
in talking down Nazi crimes. He described the concept of Vergangenheitsbewältigung
(coming to terms with history), which has underpinned culture and politics
since the war, as a “sick mentality that says that generations after
generations must atone sins of what happened in 13 years of German history and
ignore the other 1,500 years of Germany”.
If the
Senate’s foreign relations committee confirms Macgregor’s nomination, he will
replace another Fox shock-jock commentator. No sooner had Richard Grenell
arrived in Berlin in 2018 than he went on the offensive, vowing to “empower
other conservatives” across Europe. By that, he did not mean Angela Merkel’s
coalition, but nationalists surrounding her, such as in Hungary and Poland. A
number of German MPs called for Grenell to be declared persona no grata. Merkel
resisted, but the affair spoke volumes for the collapse in ties.
Trump
rewarded Grenell for his work, promoting him to acting director of national
security in Washington. In a further demonstration of pique, he announced last
month the withdrawal of nearly 12,000 troops from bases in Germany.
From the
outset, Trump loathed Merkel. She represents everything he is not. On the
international stage, she respects interlocutors who do their preparation and
don’t spring surprises. She disdains his visceral vulgarity. The leader who let
in a million of the world’s most destitute in 2015 refuses to be cowed by a
bigot and bully.
She
couldn’t be accused of not trying to get along. In March 2017, two months into
his administration, she flew to Washington for their first meeting. She prepped
assiduously. She studied a 1990 Playboy interview that had become a set text on
Trumpism for policymakers. She read his 1987 book, The Art of the Deal. She
even watched episodes of his TV show, The Apprentice.
It started
badly. She offered him a handshake in the Oval Office in front of the cameras.
He didn’t take it. Her studied lack of emotion and her deeply analytical mind
were anathema to him. Her aides say she learned to explain complicated problems
to him by reducing them to bite-size chunks. He read this as high-handedness.
Trump has a
track record of misogyny and some cite this as the reason for his dislike.
Others put it down to a narcissistic resentment of praise conferred on others.
When she was chosen as Time magazine’s person of the year in 2015, he said:
“They picked the person who is ruining Germany.” What particularly upset him
was the magazine calling her chancellor of the free world. “What Merkel did to
Germany, it’s a sad, sad shame.”
Yet this
same woman, who from a young age dreamed of driving across the American plains
and adored Ronald Reagan for freeing the world (and her native GDR) from
communism, is by instinct a staunch Atlanticist.
She has
found the setbacks hard to take. Arguably the single worst incident came before
Trump. It was the revelation in 2013, courtesy of Edward Snowden, that the
National Security Agency had been bugging Merkel’s personal mobile phone for
years. She was incandescent when told, for once losing her famous impulse
control. In an angry phone exchange with President Barack Obama, deliberately
shared with the media, she told him: “This is like the Stasi.”
Successive
US administrations have expressed frustration. The Nord Stream gas pipeline,
chaired by former chancellor Gerhard Schröder, has underlined Germany’s
dangerous energy dependency on Russia. It contradicts Merkel’s otherwise
consistently tough approach towards Vladimir Putin. She was instrumental in
ensuring that the EU imposed sanctions after the annexation of Crimea and
invasion of eastern Ukraine. Berlin no longer praises China as the gift that
keeps on giving and belatedly sees it as a strategic competitor, but Merkel
balks at strong criticism of it. As for defence, the failure of Germany to meet
the agreed Nato target of spending 2% of GDP on defence has been a source of
irritation.
But nothing
comes close to the current situation.
The German
foreign policy establishment is clinging to the hope that Trump will be
defeated in November. A Biden presidency would not remove all the tensions, but
it would signal that the US was moving back towards the diplomatic mainstream.
The country that personifies the mainstream would have reason to celebrate.
• John
Kampfner’s latest book is Why The Germans Do It Better: Notes From a Grown-Up
Country
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