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Germans Appalled by Threat From Trump’s Ambassador to Help Far-Right Nationalists Take Power Across Europe
Robert Mackey
June 4 2018, 9:02 p.m.


The German government demanded a formal explanation from the United States on Monday of what, exactly, the new U.S. Ambassador in Berlin, Richard Grenell, meant when he promised to use his office to help far-right nationalists inspired by Donald Trump take power across Europe.

In an interview with Breitbart News published on Sunday, Grenell said that he was “excited” by the rise of far-right parties on the continent and wanted “to empower other conservatives throughout Europe, other leaders.”

US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell makes clear he is a political activist who will use his position to promote political change in his host country (and all over Europe). https://t.co/ruo0lrGFMa
— Mathieu von Rohr (@mathieuvonrohr) June 3, 2018

Grenell was apparently not asked if that group includes the far-right Alternative for Germany — known by its German initials AfD — the largest opposition party in the German parliament, but he did praise Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, a center-right politician who is in coalition with the Freedom Party, which was formed in the 1950s by a former Nazi officer.

A spokesman for the German foreign ministry told reporters that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government had “asked the U.S. side for clarification,” as to whether the remarks “were made as reported.”

Grenell, a former Fox News pundit whose abrasive Twitter style had already alienated many Germans, tweeted on Monday that it was “ridiculous” to suggest that he would endorse candidates or parties, but stood by his claim to Breitbart that Europe, like America, was “experiencing an awakening from the silent majority — those who reject the elites and their bubble. Led by Trump.”

"… – those who reject the elites & their bubble. Led by Trump." – @RichardGrenell #kannsteDirnichtausdenken #Grenell #Trump pic.twitter.com/hUfW8VY6hd
— Pa.L. von Berlin (@pal1892) June 4, 2018

Leaving aside that Trump was, in fact, elected by a hyper-vocal minority of American voters, his envoy’s apparent willingness to cast off diplomatic neutrality and meddle in the internal affairs of European countries caused an uproar.

Sevim Dagdelen, a member of the left-wing Germany opposition left party Die Linke, suggested that Grenell had revealed himself to be Trump’s “regime change envoy.”

The leaders of Germany’s Social Democratic Party, the junior coalition partner in Merkel’s government, were similarly unstinting in their condemnation. “Europe’s citizens cannot by told how to vote by a Trump vassal,” the party’s vice chairman, Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel, wrote on Twitter. “A U.S. ambassador who meddles in democratic contests is simply out of place,” he added, perhaps hinting that the ambassador could be asked to go home.
Martin Schulz, the former leader of the Social Democrats, accused Grenell of behaving less like a diplomat than “an extreme-right colonial officer.”

Omid Nouripour, the foreign policy spokesman for Germany’s Green party, told Der Spiegel that “the American people should be able to expect partisan neutrality from their representative in Germany, because he represents all Americans, not just Breitbart and Fox News.”

Guy Verhofstadt, a former prime minister of Belgium who now leads the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, a free-market group in the European Parliament, tweeted: “We have to defend Europe against Trump. It’s not up to his ambassador to influence our elections and steer our society. We respect the sovereignty of the U.S., they have to respect ours.” Verhofstadt added the hashtag #GrenellRaus — “Grenell Out” — to his tweet.

There was, however, one political leader in Berlin on Monday who demonstrated his support for the embattled American ambassador. Israel’s far-right prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, announced at a news conference with Chancellor Merkel that he had agreed to a brief meeting with Grenell, at the ambassador’s request, before leaving the German capital.

Before he was confirmed by the Senate, Grenell — a hyper-partisan Republican activist whose farewell party in New York was attended by Donald Trump, Jr., Bill O’Reilly, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Wayne Newton and a half-dozen Fox News personalities — had promised to stay out of German politics.

When I raised concerns to Grenell about politicizing this post, he personally assured me that once he became Ambassador he would stay out of politics. This interview is awful – Ambassadors aren't supposed to "empower" any political party overseas. https://t.co/i8oOhqEk5k
— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) June 3, 2018

What was perhaps most stunning about Grenell’s stated aim to intervene in European politics on behalf of far-right leaders is how closely it mirrored, and inverted, the behavior of American diplomats in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, when those states were part of the Soviet Bloc. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, U.S. ambassadors did make a point of supporting antigovernment dissidents, but in those cases the stated aim was to promote democracy in authoritarian states.

By making it his goal to empower Trump-like nationalists in Germany and other European nations, Grenell seems to be treating democratic U.S. allies like authoritarian Cold War enemies.

Mr. Ward wrote:Ja sam mislio da kolapsi tako ozbiljnih zemalja kao što je SAD zahtevaju više vremena. Malo mi je smešna ideja da će nastupiti nekakvo vreme "posle Trampa", kada će sve ponovo biti normalno i kao nekad. Oni urušavaju politički sistem koji su gradili od 18. veka i uništavaju svoju mrežu savezništava koju su gradili od 1945, i to rade bez ikakvog državničkog rezona, potpuno neplanski, verovatno zadovoljavajući najbazičnije interese nekolicine power player-a, i naravno takmičeći se u najbednijem poltronstvu. Šta bre "posle Trampa". Ovo ima obrise revolucije, posle ovoga će graditi novi politički sistem, a kako će svet izgledati sam Bog dobri zna.

A inače mislim da samo metak može sprečiti Trampa da uzme i drugi mandat. Čovek je kao pageturner sa mekim koricama. Jednostavno moraš da vidiš šta će se dogoditi u sledećem poglavlju.

Mr. Ward wrote:Ja sam mislio da kolapsi tako ozbiljnih zemalja kao što je SAD zahtevaju više vremena. Malo mi je smešna ideja da će nastupiti nekakvo vreme "posle Trampa", kada će sve ponovo biti normalno i kao nekad. Oni urušavaju politički sistem koji su gradili od 18. veka i uništavaju svoju mrežu savezništava koju su gradili od 1945, i to rade bez ikakvog državničkog rezona, potpuno neplanski, verovatno zadovoljavajući najbazičnije interese nekolicine power player-a, i naravno takmičeći se u najbednijem poltronstvu. Šta bre "posle Trampa". Ovo ima obrise revolucije, posle ovoga će graditi novi politički sistem, a kako će svet izgledati sam Bog dobri zna.

A inače mislim da samo metak može sprečiti Trampa da uzme i drugi mandat. Čovek je kao pageturner sa mekim koricama. Jednostavno moraš da vidiš šta će se dogoditi u sledećem poglavlju.

otto katz wrote:Ako Tranpara dobije drugi mandat, to bi bilo to, doviđenja prijatno.

otto katz wrote:Ako Tranpara dobije drugi mandat, to bi bilo to, doviđenja prijatno.

KinderLad wrote:

otto katz wrote:Ako Tranpara dobije drugi mandat, to bi bilo to, doviđenja prijatno.

Da, to je onda trajna promena. Ali ono što pokušavam da kažem je promena sledi svejedno. Nikada se neće vratiti pre-2016 world sve da ponovo Obama postane predsednik. To je napisao jedan anti-brexitovac posle Brexita: sve i da se Brexit reversuje, da se nekako izglasa da se ne desi, ona zemlja od pre 23. juna 2016 has gone forever. E samo što u slučaju Amerike to se prenosi na ceo svet. Recimo anti-Trump snage su do te mere furale ovu priču o Trumpu i Rusiji da apsolutno ne vidim ne loše nego nikakve odnose US sa Rusijom ako se recimo Demokrate vrate na vlast. Šta bi to značilo za Srbiju to je tek posebna tema. Cenim da kao što su u psleratnom periodu celu državu stavili u službu suzbijanja komunističkih partija po Evropi sličn bi se i ovaj put desilo samo sa nekim drugim partijama. A to sve zajedno deinitivno nije pre-2016 world. Tako da, ta vremena su otplovila.

Italian PM Conte calls for review of Russia sanctions in EU pic.twitter.com/tBrvTalSIj

— Ruptly (@Ruptly) June 5, 2018

Trump Is Choosing Eastern Europe

The real meaning of the mini-crises sparked by his ambassador to Germany

Thomas Wright
11:28 AM ET


Over the past week, the recently appointed U.S. ambassador to Germany, Ric Grenell, has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. On June 3, Breitbart published an interview with Grenell, in which he said: “There are a lot of conservatives throughout Europe who have contacted me to say they are feeling there is a resurgence going on. I absolutely want to empower other conservatives throughout Europe, other leaders. I think there is a groundswell of conservative policies that are taking hold because of the failed policies of the left.”

The statement was just the latest in an unusual series of moves by Grenell. He spoke at a lunch for Jens Spahn, Germany’s minister of health and a prominent critic of Chancellor Angela Merkel; he has also been photographed with Spahn on several occasions. In a breach of protocol, Grenell asked to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Berlin’s airport. (Netanyahu only gave him a meet-and-greet after meeting with Merkel.) Grenell also hosted a lunch honoring Austrian Prime Minister Sebastian Kurz, and praised him by name in the Breitbart interview. To put Grenell’s activities in context: This would be like Emily Haber, the newly appointed German ambassador to the United States, kicking off her tenure by promising to empower American liberals, meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at Dulles before meeting Donald Trump, holding a lunch honoring the Mexican president, and hanging out with Senator Jeff Flake, a vocal critic of the president.  

Grenell is early in his tenure, and may yet turn things around. But the Breitbart episode is a symptom of a broader problem. With rogue ambassadors, a president who praises Vladimir Putin, a bureaucracy that supports NATO, and an ongoing trade war, nobody really understands Trump’s policy on Europe.

Enter Wess Mitchell, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Europe, who laid out the administration’s long-anticipated Europe strategy in a speech at the Heritage Foundation on Tuesday. Mitchell, a well-regarded expert on central and eastern Europe, is the author of three books on foreign policy, including a forthcoming history of the Hapsburg Empire. The main message of his thoughtful, well-written, and strategic speech: The United States views Europe through the lens of a strategic competition between Western civilization and a Russian and Chinese alternative. Mitchell effectively announced a pivot in America’s Europe policy away from western Europe and toward the East (his natural stomping ground) and the South. In fact, Mitchell criticized western Europe for failing to take strategic competition seriously, particularly on defense spending and confronting Iran.

In Mitchell’s speech, he favored engaging central and eastern Europe nations even when disagreements arise because “criticism bereft of engagement is a recipe for estrangement.” “Engagement,” he said, “is not just diplomatic—it is also about winning hearts and minds of publics for whom the memory of 1989 and NATO enlargement is increasingly distant.” Reasonable people can differ over whether such a strategy might give countries like Hungary a free pass on democracy. Mitchell is also hamstrung by Trump’s refusal to authorize actions to deter Russian political warfare. But the commitment to engagement that he expressed is to be welcomed. That section of his speech, including calls for pushing back against China’s efforts to make eastern Europe its “playground,” was promising. The problem, however, is in what is left behind in Mitchell’s pivot—the big three nations of western Europe: Britain, France, and Germany.

One would have to go back to the Suez Crisis of 1956 to find a time when the special relationship with Britain was in worse shape, for instance. Rhetorically, the Trump administration supports Brexit. In practice, it has pursued a predatory policy in response to Brexit, designed to exploit the government’s need for new trading arrangements. Essentially, the Trump administration is using Britain’s need to join the World Trade Organization as an individual state to force it to accept painful concessions in a number of trade and services sectors, exploiting the fact that it has less leverage outside the EU. Meanwhile, in bilateral trade talks, the Trump administration is pushing Britain to accept the U.S. regulatory framework, or at least opt out of the EU single market and customs union. This will benefit U.S. economic interests in the short term, but make it much tougher for London to reach an agreement with the rest of the EU.

The Trump administration, then, is treating Britain as an easy mark, not as a vital strategic ally. The State Department has been entirely absent from this part of the relationship, with the Commerce Department and the U.S. Trade Representative running point. Meanwhile, Trump has routinely offended the British people, retweeting a member of the British Nationalist Party and criticizing the mayor of London for failing to prevent terrorist attacks. All this makes it more likely that Jeremy Corbyn, an avowed critic of the United States and NATO, will win the next election, plunging U.S.-British relations into further crisis.

In Germany, while Ambassador Grenell is getting all the attention for now, the antipathy between the Trump administration and the German government runs deep. Trump has described Germany as “bad, very bad” on trade, and accused it of using the EU as a vehicle to dominate Europe. He is known to personally dislike Merkel. Trump administration officials have relentlessly pounded Germany on its defense spending. A recent Politbarometer poll found that only 14 percent of Germans believe the United States is a reliable partner, compared to 36 percent for Russia and 43 percent for China.

On the surface, the relationship with France appears to be in better shape. However, the sweeping nature of Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and his imposition of tariffs on steel and aluminum meant that President Emmanuel Macron got absolutely nothing for supporting Trump. Instead, France is now reassessing its policy toward America, asking if support means its national interests will be ignored and whether it needs to find and exploit sources of leverage.

Beyond the big three, the Trump administration has radically changed the U.S. position on European integration. In private briefings, multiple Trump administration officials have said they are adopting a new approach to the EU. Past administrations, they believe, have been too supportive of European integration, which has turned out to be a source of instability, they believe. The Trump administration would let Europeans make their own decisions. Yet the president has commented repeatedly on their politics, while Ambassador Grenell actively intervenes in their domestic debates and the Commerce Department tries to influence Brexit negotiations. Even setting all that aside, the shift in policy toward the EU is clear. At best, the United States is neutral; viewed less charitably, it is hostile.

American conservatives are inherently skeptical of the EU because they are ferociously protective of their own sovereignty and find it hard to imagine why anyone would choose to pool their own with that of others. This is nothing new. But previous Republican administrations were still broadly supportive of European integration. The Trump administration’s shift appears to have occurred without much consideration of its impact on vital U.S. interests.

For instance, an overwhelming majority of economists, including those who opposed the creation of the euro, believe that the breakup of the euro zone could precipitate an international financial crisis more severe than the Great Recession. If a debtor country were to leave, its banks would collapse and it would fall into deep economic crisis since its debts would be denominated in euros. But its assets would be in its new currency, which would likely have depreciated dramatically. This contagion would spread through Europe and then across the world, likely leading to additional financial collapse. The United States needs the euro zone to succeed because it cannot tolerate its failure—this is why the Obama administration engaged in quiet but sustained diplomacy to prevent a Greek exit. No one in the Trump administration has explained how the United States could cope with a euro zone collapse.

Or consider the matter of sanctions enforcement. The United States relies on EU member states to ensure effective sanctions on Russia and Iran. If the EU fell apart, Europe would no longer maintain a united front on sanctions on Iran or Russia. The reason why skeptics of sanctions on Russia, like Italy, Greece, and Hungary, have stayed on board is because of EU solidarity.

The United States cannot be strategically competitive in Europe without deepening its relationship with western Europe. Mitchell’s warning, that criticism without engagement risks estrangement and that the United States must win the hearts and minds of generations who have forgotten 1989, applies there too. The Trump administration would do well to cast aside ideological debates about the nature of sovereignty and instead focus on protecting America’s strategic interests in all of Europe—preventing the disorderly collapse of the euro zone, countering negative Chinese influence in Europe, ensuring that Europe and the United States work together to maintain an edge in new technologies, facilitating a smooth and negotiated Brexit, and preparing NATO for political and information warfare.

On June 5, 1947, George Marshall gave the commencement address at Harvard University announcing the Marshall Plan to bolster the war-ravaged economies of Europe. At the Heritage Foundation yesterday, Mitchell did not mention the anniversary and instead said that economics and trade were the purview of other departments and that State would only “play a supporting role.” The legacy of Marshall, Dean Acheson, and George Shultz, all former secretaries of state who understood the importance of foreign economic policy, was cast aside. But what was true then—that economics and geopolitics are inextricably linked—is even truer in today’s globalized world. An economically savvy State Department could build a common transatlantic front to negotiate with China from a position of strength. But, with its key western European alliances in disrepair and no positive economic agenda, the Trump administration’s Europe strategy still does not take geopolitical competition seriously enough.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/06/trump-is-choosing-eastern-europe/562130/