8/24/2023 0 Comments A watershed moment for germanyThe vice president even swung through Brussels on his way back to Washington and extended that commitment to the European Union, reassuring worried Europeans who had noted its absence from any of the remarks by American officials in Munich.Ĭonversely, a string of European officials-from NATO’s Jens Stoltenberg, the EU’s Federica Mogherini to Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel and her foreign and defense ministers Sigmar Gabriel and Ursula von der Leyen-assured their audience that they had heard the message that Europe needs to bear a larger part of the burden of its own defense.īut Europeans (including me) also noted that while Pence and others said they spoke for Trump, the POTUS Twitter feed, and indeed the president himself, were focused on rather different issues: a campaign rally in Florida, immigration in Sweden, and the trustworthiness of the media. Yes, Europe got assurances from three cabinet members of the Trump administration-Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, and Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly-that the United States still stands by NATO. But we will look back on it as the moment in which we fundamentally reassessed not just the division of our responsibilities, but the reliability of our allies. Not a divorce moment, nor even a parting of the ways. But it should be clear that the February 2017 meeting was a watershed moment for the family, and for the alliance. In this at least, last weekend’s conference was no different than usual.
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