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A Disastrous Year in German-American Relations
Stephen F. Szabo
Senior Fellow
Dr. Stephen F. Szabo is a Senior Fellow at AICGS, where he focuses on German foreign and security policies and the new German role in Europe and beyond. Until 2017, he was the Executive Director of the Transatlantic Academy, a Washington, DC, based forum for research and dialogue between scholars, policy experts, and authors from both sides of the Atlantic. Prior to joining the German Marshall Fund in 2007, Dr. Szabo was Interim Dean and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and taught European Studies at The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He served as Professor of National Security Affairs at the National War College, National Defense University (1982-1990). He received his PhD in Political Science from Georgetown University and has been a fellow with the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the American Academy in Berlin, as well as serving as Research Director at AICGS. In addition to SAIS, he has taught at the Hertie School of Governance, Georgetown University, George Washington University, and the University of Virginia. He has published widely on European and German politics and foreign policies, including. The Successor Generation: International Perspectives of Postwar Europeans, The Diplomacy of German Unification, Parting Ways: The Crisis in the German-American Relationship, and Germany, Russia and the Rise of Geo-Economics.
2025 will surely go down as the worst in German-American relations since World War II. To be sure, there have been many deep disagreements since the formation of the German-American partnership in 1949. Adenauer and Kennedy did not trust or understand each other, but Adenauer knew that the United States was vital to West Germany and its reentry into the European community of nations. The Schmidt-Carter relationship was perhaps the worst in the postwar period. Schmidt famously said that trying to pin Carter down was like nailing jelly to the wall, and the feelings were reciprocated by Carter and Brzezinski. The Reagan-Schmidt relationship, while short, was tempestuous over the euro missile decisions of the early- to mid-1980s that led to Schmidt’s loss of power. The split over the Iraq War between Gerhard Schröder and George W. Bush was deep, leading Condoleezza Rice to label the relationship as poisoned.
However, these deep divisions and difficult personal relationships could also be matched by close partnership between leaders such as Eisenhower and Adenauer, Kohl and Reagan, and, most importantly, George H. W. Bush and Helmut Kohl during German unification at the end of the Cold War. While Barack Obama was seen as a welcome relief by the Germans after the tempestuous Bush-Cheney years, the relationship between Obama and Merkel was cool, professional but distant. Obama famously complained about European free riding and left the Ukraine crisis to Merkel to work out while his secretary of state talked of a pivot to Asia. The Biden administration was the most Atlanticist since that of George H. W. Bush but is now seen as a respite from longer-term change.
However, the second Trump presidency is in a class of its own in terms of the damage and the long-term costs that have been inflicted in just one short year. In contrast to the previous rifts, there will be no going back from this one. A recent public opinion poll conducted by the Pew Foundation and the Körber Stiftung shows a precipitous drop in German confidence in the United States. While the poll numbers in the Bush years were bad, nothing matches what has happened to the German image of America and American leadership that has occurred in the past year. The active involvement in German politics by the Trump administration and its support for forces that the United States has opposed since the Nazi period, as evidenced by the recent National Security Strategy, is unprecedented. While American administrations had their preferences about German elections and vice versa, there has been nothing like the attempts of the Trump team to undermine the governing coalition and actively support the opposition Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. The reckless dismantlement of the American diplomatic, intelligence, and military infrastructure will have long-term costs to American strategic culture and its relations with U.S. diplomatic and intelligence partners. The personal networks of Atlanticists, which has gotten Bonn then Berlin and Washington through crises, is now severely weakened. Gone are the John McCloys, James Bakers, and Robert Zoellicks to be replaced by JD Vance, Richard Grenell, and Stephen Bannon. Even such a long-time Atlanticist as Friedrich Merz has now openly said that there is no going back and Germany and Europe have got to find their own path.
To be sure, President Trump represents trends that have been building in the relationship for years—most notably, of course, over the burden-sharing issue on defense spending, which goes back over multiple generations of leaders. There was also the increasing American shift toward Asia and the rise of China as a strategic priority. Generational change and the ethnic diversification of the American public have resulted in a dilution of the transatlantic relationship. Europe, and especially Germany, are to blame for not taking advantage of the time they had to develop their own defense capabilities and should have done more to decouple from American defense and trade markets. Germany under the leadership of Angela Merkel pursued geoeconomic policies that made it vulnerable to Russian energy, Chinese markets, and American resentments.
Under the right kind of leadership, a more stable and realistic transatlantic relationship can be shaped out of the legacy of the Trump years.
While the Trump wake-up call was long in the works, statecraft in Washington could have eased the transition more effectively without unnecessarily alienating European leaders and publics at the expense of core American strategic interests. The U.S. stake in European defense has always been based on core American interests, not a gift based on altruism. American strategy since the First World War has been to prevent the domination of Europe by a single hegemonic power. European recovery after the Second World War was fueled by and benefited the American economy and has made Europe America’s most important investment and trading partner since. The secret to America’s successful hegemony has been that American statecraft has given Europeans and Asians a stake in the international strategic and economic order. The United States has been able to promote band wagoning, not balancing. The abrupt shift to an openly nationalistic America First policy will result in America losing allies and Europeans balancing American power in the future. The Trump administration should have taken a lesson from the Soviet experience: After imposing its power on Eastern Europe through brute force, when the liberation of Eastern Europe came, it came very rapidly and resulted in balancing against Russia.
Toward a new European order
As Charles de Gaulle understood, nations that forfeit their national defense to other others forfeit their sovereignty and autonomy. They open themselves up to the kinds of blackmail and coercion the Europeans are now experiencing from Washington and Moscow. However, there may be limits to the damage that has been done. While American foreign policy may not be overtly pro-European, there is still support both in the Congress and among the public for a productive transatlantic relationship and an American military presence in Europe. Even Trump while again threatening Greenland and Denmark has spoken about the need for more immigrants from Scandinavia to the United States. Under the right kind of leadership, a more stable and realistic transatlantic relationship can be shaped out of the legacy of the Trump years. Both Brussels and Washington are facing a major strategic challenge from China that can only be addressed effectively together. While Russia remains dangerous and conducts an ongoing hybrid war in Europe, its weakness has become increasingly apparent in its inability to subdue Ukraine. Except for its nuclear arsenal, Russia does not pose a serious conventional threat to the European Union. It is time for Europeans to take the lead in NATO and appoint a European SACEUR. NATO needs to stop talking about a war with Russia in 2029 and fight the one Putin is currently waging in Europe. The costs of Putin’s disastrous war in Ukraine will become increasingly evident as the Russian economy spirals downward and Russian isolation becomes ever more dysfunctional. Europe can maintain a credible and robust conventional defense that should provide security for its citizens.
At the domestic level, the rise of right-wing nationalism is in many respects similar to what has been experienced in the United States but is still less virulent and robust than the American model. At best, so-called European populists can poll in the lower to mid-20 percent range while in the United States the number is closer to the lower- to mid-30s. Even among right-wing European populists, Trump is unpopular. European parliamentary systems have an advantage over the presidential system in the United States as they can avoid the kinds of radical changes based on the whims of one individual. Europe will be benefiting from an inward-turning America in terms of brain drains and investments going into renewable energy and universities as the United States loses this crucial edge. There will be areas of convergence in other areas like immigration, which Europe is already moving to limit in order to undercut the appeal of nationalist parties. Given signs that the Trump administration is losing popular support for many of its policies, it is important to keep lines open to Americans of all political factions and develop new generations of leaders on both sides to repair what can be repaired and to reshape a vital relationship in a new context.
