At the end of 2016, as his presidency was coming to an end, Barack Obama made a final trip to Berlin. Over a private dinner, he implored his longtime partner, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, to guide his international legacy — and the broader transatlantic partnership of liberal democracies — through the predictable turbulence of a Trump presidency. Against the backdrop of the annexation of Crimea and the Russian incursion into Donbass, Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, and populist upheavals metastasizing across the continent, Merkel’s Germany seemed to be a last bastion of political stability: it was the most populous country. in the EU, the world’s fourth largest economy, a stable democracy and a recognized multilateral leader. With 12 years’ experience, the Chancellor had more government experience than any of her EU peers. In 2015, Time magazine rightly named her not only Person of the Year, but also “Chancellor of the Free World.”
Although uncomfortable with the title, Merkel reluctantly accepted the task. While many Western leaders competed fiercely for Trump’s favor, she offered him “close cooperation”, but expressly on the basis of common fundamental values such as democracy, freedom, respect for law and human dignity. She worked with Trump because – as she later said – “any German chancellor has every interest in working and talking with any American president.” But she refused to submit to his purely transactional style of politics. Offering a counter-model to Trump’s deals, Merkel saw intrinsic value in alliances and partnerships, striving to preserve them even in the face of active opposition or outright sabotage from Washington: she thus managed to keep the Iran nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Agreement Plan of Action, JCOPA) afloat after Washington’s withdrawal. She kept the EU united despite Trump’s attempts to divide and conquer. More controversially, she also shielded Germany’s dubious economic partnerships with Russia and China from growing criticism.
Throughout the Trump years, Germany’s international leadership was considerably more popular than that of the United States. At home, however, the Germans remained very reluctant to take a leading role. As soon as Trump left, Merkel happily handed over the baton to Washington. On the occasion, President Biden thanked her for “an exemplary life of revolutionary service to Germany and, I might add – and I mean this from the bottom of my heart – to the world.” Biden quickly managed to undo some of the damage done by Trump: he reentered the Paris agreement on climate change, strengthened the transatlantic alliance, and breathed new life into seemingly obscure formats like the transatlantic Quad. Before long, these tools will prove crucial to American leaders in organizing the Western response to the Russian attack on Ukraine.
However, despite his achievements, Biden has failed to completely eliminate the causes and consequences of Trump’s policies: whether gradual, intermittent or abrupt, Trump’s return to the White House demonstrates a change broader in American politics. international role: The new president is already working to downplay long-standing partnerships, threaten to ignore alliance commitments, vow to withdraw U.S. support for Ukraine and hint at annexation of a NATO partner. As the West faces the gravest threat to its freedom and security in decades, its traditional leader appears to be departing.
If they are to meet the challenge posed by an aggressive Russia and an assertive China, Europeans – and liberal democracies around the world – will need to step up their efforts. Once again, “the world America created” (Kagan) needs a guardian. However, unlike Trump’s first term, what lies ahead may not just be an interregnum, but the beginning of the end of “liberal hegemony” (Ikenberry). Structural majorities across the free world appear to be moving from liberal internationalism to nativist isolationism. A return to liberal internationalist policies in four years is hardly a given. And unfortunately there is a lack of a viable candidate to lead the West during this period of transformation.
Eight years after Obama had dinner with Merkel, Joe Biden also flew to Berlin. Observers attest to his strong working relationship with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz: In 2023, Biden gave Scholz political cover for his controversial decision to send main battle tanks to Ukraine. The chancellor returned the favor by agreeing to release a convicted murderer in Russia in exchange for the return of American political prisoners. However, unlike Merkel, Scholz has neither a parliamentary majority nor the trust of his main European partners. Additionally, his country is going through a severe recession, its infrastructure is collapsing, and its military is unprepared for a major war. It remains to be seen whether Scholz’s likely successor – Friedrich Merz of the CDU-Christian Democrats – will fare better. He will likely invest in repairing some of the most important European relationships and may be a strong supporter of Ukraine, but he too will be hamstrung by the effects of Germany’s economic dependence on the China’s misguided energy policy and decades-long neglect. the army. Moreover, his party’s almost religious adherence to the so-called “debt brake” will effectively prevent it from borrowing the money needed to secure a credible leadership role.
In other Western capitals, the situation seems just as bleak: in France, President Macron has deprived himself of a parliamentary majority. Keir Starmer in the UK has failed to capitalize on his election victory. Donald Tusk’s position in Poland is tainted by the illiberal legacy of the previous government. The Italian Giorgia Meloni herself flirts with fascism. NATO’s Mark Rutte and the EU’s Ursula von der Leyen both lack the political independence and material power needed to function as effective leaders. At present, therefore, it seems that no single state or organization can replace America. It is telling that during his farewell visit to Berlin, Biden met not only with the German Chancellor, but with the other three leaders of the Transatlantic Quad, namely Scholz, Macron and Starmer. But while Biden has used this format successfully in the past, Poland’s vehement reaction to his exclusion from the Berlin meeting effectively negated its value as a coordination mechanism. Regardless, Trump can be expected to return to his previous practice of ignoring the format.
Perhaps more promising is a new E-5 format consisting of France, Germany, Poland, Italy and Britain, which recently met at the level of defense ministers in Berlin. In a later statement, the five said they were “committed to developing ideas and leading the way to advance Europe’s defense preparedness.” The foreign ministers of the five countries then met in a similar setting with their Spanish counterpart, affirming their determination to “think and act big on European security”. German opposition leader Friedrich Merz proposed another format: a contact group of Germany, France, Britain and Poland to develop proposals for a European order of post-war. Certainly, there is no shortage of “minilateral” European initiatives vying for leadership in post-Biden Europe. Just weeks before Donald Trump’s inauguration, this seemingly uncoordinated cacophony speaks to a worrying lack of clarity in Europe on how to address the emerging leadership vacuum. The options exist, but a decision must be made.
To be viable, any institutional arrangement intended to guide the free world through the coming period of continuing uncertainty must be protected from nationalist and populist tendencies, not only in the United States, but throughout the Western world. This can be ensured most effectively through a cooperative approach, which does not depend on a single actor and its political arrangements, but is supported by a group of several key actors who are both interested in and capable of preserving the liberal order. These criteria would be met most succinctly by the E-5 group, which brings together the five countries with the highest defense spending in Europe and five of the continent’s seven largest economies. Centered around a potentially revived Franco-German axis, it links the UK to European structures, involves Poland as a defender of Central and Eastern Europe and allows Meloni’s Italy to function as a potential interlocutor with Trump .
The ultimate viability of such a system depends on the willingness of its members to act not only in their own interests, but also in a broader European spirit. For Germany in particular, this will involve potentially difficult financial and political choices. It remains to be seen whether the country’s new government will be ready to implement them, as Angela Merkel has done on occasion. The alternative, however, will likely be much more costly and upsetting in the long run.
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