Merkel has backed herself into a crazy political dead-end. She is identifying an open-door immigration policy as the foundation of her kind of liberalism—even as, in reality, large-scale immigration is helping destroy liberalism across the countries of Europe, and even within Germany itself. Warning that a Trump-led United States might not espouse values of democracy, freedom, the rule of law, and equal human dignity amounts to a passport for Germany out of the U.S. alliance.
Ominously, the U.S.-Germany rift coincides with the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union—an exit that will greatly weaken London’s clout versus Berlin. Britain will need to renegotiate access to the EU market; Germany will have power to approve or refuse. The post-1945 vision of a secure and liberal Germany joined in an intimate partnership to the United States and the United Kingdom will fail. In its place: a Germany more distant from its former English-speaking allies, more vulnerable to an aggressive Russia, more polarized and afflicted by extremism in the wake of Merkel’s welcome of almost 2 million Middle Eastern and North African migrants. It’s not all Donald Trump’s fault. But he has in every way already made the situation gravely worse.
Even if the new Trump administration walks back the president-elect’s campaign-season musings about not honoring America’s NATO commitments; even if we can all somehow overlook that Trump was aided to the presidency by a Russian intelligence operation; even if the Trump shock inoculates French voters against voting for the even more extreme (and Russian-financed) National Front in 2017 presidential elections—even hoping all this, the U.S.-led alliance to defend Germany and European democracy has already been horribly damaged. All who cherish this friendship that has preserved the peace of the continent must wonder whether maybe this time, Field Marshall Slim’s reassurances are misplaced: Things really are as bad as the first reports suggest.
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