An itinerary could be followed in the city of Berlin for the scenarios of the intimate relationship between the United States and Germany, and it would be easy to conclude that this is a world that threatens Ruina. It would start at Tempelhof airport, today an urban park. Between June 1948 and October 1949, the United States launched an air bridge to break the blockade that the Soviet Union had imposed on the western sector of the city. He tour He would continue in the City Council of the Schöneberg neighborhood, which then was from all over Berlin. On June 26, 1963, two years after the communist regime built the wall, John F. Kennedy pronounced his famous speech from the balcony. “I am a Berliner“He said.” I am a Berlin. “The itinerary would end before the door of Brandeburg, dividing, during the Cold war, of the city, Germany, Europe and the world. On June 12, 1987, another US president, Ronald Reagan, urged the Soviet leader:” Mr. Gorbachev, demolishes that wall. ” Two years and four months later, the wall fell.
Tempelhof, Schöneberg, Brandeburg’s door are symbols of another time. Monuments to the most appreciated of the inheritance of world superpower, today broken by the bravades of Donald Trump, the threats to retire from Europe, the complicity with the Russia of Vladimir Putin, the tariffs that are taught with the German industry and support for the extreme right.
For Europeans, Trump is an electrocho. In Germany it is something else. Because it was re -founded after zero hour From 1945 with the help and protection of the USA and with the US he learned what democracy, capitalism and prosperity were. Therefore, when from the Trump administration the country as “tyranny” is qualified – as happened last week after intelligence services classified alternative for Germany (AFD) as “right -wing extremist” -, what staggers is a pillar of one’s identity.
The Democristian Friedrich Merz, who will be invested by the Bundestag on Tuesday, took note from the same electoral night, on February 23, and proclaimed the “independence” of Europe with respect to the US.
But it is not easy to discard eight decades of transatlantic relationship. Germany, despite everything, resists breaking. Because it is difficult to assume that the USA, which still has 35,000 military in Germany and nuclear weapons in this territory, sooner or later will leave. Or because an alternative is not seen.
“What is in progress in the US is not an evolution, but a revolution. And it is a revolution without a thoughtful plan,” he describes, in his office in the Bundestag, deputy Norbert Röttgen, thinking head of democratians in foreign policy and author of Democracy and war. German politics and German identity in times of global danger (Democracy and war. German political and identity in times of global danger). The conversations with Röttgen, Europeanist and Atlantist in the tradition of the Konrad Adenauer and Helmut Kohl, and other figures of this orbit, allow us to understand how this Germany, which is that of Merz, is prepared for the new stage.
“Trump promotes a foreign policy that does not distinguish between friend and enemy, but seeks to impose his own interests,” says Röttgen, whose name sounded as Foreign Minister, although finally the designated was his colleague of bench Johann Wadephul. Is Germany prepared for a scenario in which the US is march from the country and withdraw its nuclear protection? “Of course, they are issues to deal with,” he replies. “But, for us, it is clear that our interest is to keep Americans in Europe. For this it will be essential for Germany and Europe to clearly invest in their own security, to expand the relevant capabilities, so that they contribute to a distribution of charges in NATO and in transatlantic relations.”
There is a tension, in German politics and in Merz’s own speech, between tradition Gaullista —o macronista– And the Atlantist. The chancellor In Péctore It seems to sometimes adhere to the first, a tradition that, referring to the general of Gaulle, embodies the current French president, Emmanuel Macron, and that promotes European sovereignty with respect to the US, Russia and China. But other times atlantism reaffirms. The new head of German diplomacy, Wadephul, told a group of journalists last week: “We will try everything to revive the transatlantic alliance, generate again trust and strive to be strong together.” In the coalition contract of Democristians and Social Democrats, something similar reads: “The transatlantic alliance and close cooperation with the United States continue to have a fundamental importance for us.” As if in recent months the Trump Gale and I would not have left this relationship extremely battered. “There is not one word [en el contrato de coalición] On the changes in the US, if it is not to say that the transatlantic relationship is to be reinforced, ”he recently observed in a colloquium on the government program, Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, director of the German Foreign Policy Council and another Insigne Atlantist in Berlin.
Röttgen, who in addition to Atlantist is realistic, says: “We must accept that European security is no longer an American central interest. It is a break with the American foreign policy of the last 80 years.” But, with Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine and the Russian threat on the eastern flank, NATO is the “best guarantee” for European security, he says, and “so far” Trump has not questioned “seriously” neither the alliance nor nuclear protection. “These pillars of our security are still in force,” he defends, “although politics and political will have changed.”
Macron has offered to expand the French nuclear umbrella to Germany and Merz has collected the glove and accepts to discuss it. Röttgen is skeptical: “In my opinion, for Germany and for Europe there is no better nuclear umbrella than that of NATO and the US American umbrella is not substitutable. ”
What if Trump fulfills his threat and definitively abandons Europe? “Then we will be prepared,” replies the Democristian. “But it is useless to commit suicide for fear of a possible death. Politics means to exert influence, try to model things.”
Although the US does not leave at all, nothing will be the same. Berlin monuments American They tell this story. De Tempelhof, the scene of the air bridge with which the United States and the allies rescued the Berliners at the beginning of the Cold War, to the president of the tariffs, which is considered to be scammed by the German exporter. From “I’m a Berlin” From Kennedy, to the Trump administration, whose message is that Europe is “pathetic” and Germany, “a tyranny.” From “Mr. Gorbachev, she demolishes this wall” by Reagan, Trump undoing Putin. A symbolic, and real overturning. For the Germans, the duel for the loss of older brother He has done nothing but start.
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