Putin Couldn't Have a Better Ally

In just four months, Donald Trump has done more for Vlad Putin than the Russian strongman has managed to accomplish in years of scheming and struggle.

It must have been music to the Kremlin's electronic ears over the weekend as the leader of the free world, Germany's Angela Merkel, stated the obvious - America is no longer Europe's reliable partner. Europe now needs to go its own way. The pact that has held Europe and America together for 70-years has come unglued.

Even before Trump was inaugurated, Merkel voiced her reservations about the president-elect.

The opening line in Der Spiegel says it all: "Doubts are growing inside Angela Merkel's Chancellery that the incoming American president will mature and become a statesman. The chancellor is preparing for frosty trans-Atlantic relations while at the same time trying to pull Europe together."

Think about that. Angela Merkel doubts that a 70-year old man "will mature and become a statesman." Hmm. If he's not mature at 70 it sounds like a safe bet that he won't become mature later on.

The hour-long video didn't exactly put the German chancellor in a cheerful mood. The footage was from Donald Trump's recent appearance in Pennsylvania during his so-called Thank You Tour and Angela Merkel, as she told the national executive committee of her center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), watched the rally in its entirety. She recommended that her fellow party members do the same. "It is interesting to see the thought environment he inhabits," she said.

Trump retaliated by giving Merkel the cold shoulder when she made her mandatory pilgrimage to the White House in March. She seems to have gotten her fill of the grandiose boor last week as Trump lectured first the NATO leaders and then the G7 summit.

Reaction to Merkel's latest assessment was predictably quick in coming.

Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haas, a veteran US diplomat, described Merkel's comments as a "watershed" in relations between the two allies. "(It's) what the US has sought to avoid since World War II," said Haas.

But Trump's supporters have taken Merkel's comments as a sign of the president's success. Bill Mitchell, a conservative commentator dubbed Trump's "most unrelenting social media surrogate" by US media, took the opportunity to lampoon Merkel.

"Merkel, hero of the left and train wreck of Europe says, 'she cannot rely upon Donald Trump.' Awesome. He opposes your raging stupidity," Mitchell said in a tweet.

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David Frum, senior editor of the US news magazine The Atlantic, said that Trump's behavior as caused a rift between Germany and the US has effectively served Russian interests.

"Since 1945, the supreme strategic goal in Europe of the USSR and then Russia was the severing of the US-German alliance. Trump delivered," Frum said.

Agreeing with Frum's comments on its benefits for Moscow, Ian Bremmer, founder and director of the consultancy Eurasia Group, said that the "most important postwar relationship," the transatlantic alliance, is "now unraveling."

"There's not been a statement like this from Germany in generations," Bremmer said.

When it comes to the American president and his aides, stupidity and ignorance are never in short supply. From Der Spiegel:

U.S. President Donald Trump voiced significant displeasure over Germany's trade surplus on Thursday during a meeting with European Union leaders in Brussels. "The Germans are bad, very bad," Trump said, according to meeting participants.
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According to a report in the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, many EU officials were appalled by how little the Americans appeared to know about trade policy. The guests from Washington seemed not to be aware that EU member states only negotiate trade treaties as a bloc. According to the paper, Trump's chief economic advisor, Gary Cohn, claimed during meetings, for example, that different customs tariffs are in place between the U.S. and Germany than between the U.S. and Belgium.

For years, Germany has exported more than it imports and Trump has criticized the country's trade surplus before - in an interview with the German tabloid Bild prior to his inauguration, for example. In that interview, too, he voiced particular frustration at the number of German cars he sees on the streets of New York. "I would tell BMW if they think they're gonna build a plant in Mexico and sell cars into the U.S. without a 35 percent tax, it's not gonna happen. It's not gonna happen." It was a clear threat to slap punitive tariffs on German automobiles.

It's fair to say that the editors of Der Spiegel don't think better of Trump than Germany's chancellor as the magazine's recent editorial, "It's Time to Get Rid of Donald Trump," made plain.

Donald Trump is not fit to be president of the United States. He does not possess the requisite intellect and does not understand the significance of the office he holds nor the tasks associated with it. He doesn't read. He doesn't bother to peruse important files and intelligence reports and knows little about the issues that he has identified as his priorities. His decisions are capricious and they are delivered in the form of tyrannical decrees.

He is a man free of morals. As has been demonstrated hundreds of times, he is a liar, a racist and a cheat. I feel ashamed to use these words, as sharp and loud as they are. But if they apply to anyone, they apply to Trump. And one of the media's tasks is to continue telling things as they are: Trump has to be removed from the White House. Quickly. He is a danger to the world.

The fact is that every nation, whether America's friend or adversary, is affected by the schism opening between the cornerstone of modern Europe, Germany, and the United States.

The Guardian columnist, Suzanne Moore, has high praise for chancellor Merkel.

Angela Merkel – or “leader of the free world” as she is now to be known – did not wait long to see the back of Donald Trump before she made it clear that things have changed. She told a rally of 2,500 people in Munich ...that the EU must now be prepared to look after itself, that it could no longer depend on the UK or America. “The times in which we could completely depend on others are, to a certain extent, over … I’ve experienced that in the last few days. We Europeans have to take fate into our own hands.”

This is a truly dramatic statement from a leader who doesn’t do drama. She is not going to be holding Trump’s hand any time soon. He may be relieved to hear that, but then the underestimation of Merkel as a dowdy physicist has often allowed her to run rings around egotistical male leaders.

Watching her at the G7, her statesmanship, her ease, her ability to broker deals and relationships is ever more impressive. More and more I hear people say they that they like her. Even those on the left respect her though she is a centrist. While Trump shambled around Europe with his goon display of ignorance of other languages, cultures or even basic manners, Merkel was in her element. While he was trailing behind in a golf cart as he lacked the stamina to actually walk anywhere at all, she strode out with the other leaders.

And look where she is now, unlike our prime minister, able to oppose Trump directly and to say his America is not a friend of Europe.

What an extraordinary woman. There are no problems, she says, only “tasks” to be solved, as she sits rapidly texting in meetings. Refusing to see herself as a female leader, she prefers to think of herself as part of a class of political heavyweights. Increasingly she is in a class of her own and watching her, one thought comes to mind: this is what strong and stable actually looks like.