Germany fears Donald Trump will divide Europe.

Print edition | Europe
IN THE aftermath of the G20 summit on July
7th and 8th, German politicians traded blows
over who was at fault for riots by anti-
globalisation activists that smashed up parts
of central Hamburg. But a big global event in
the heart of a city with a strong anarchist
tradition was always bound to prompt
protests. Officials’ deeper reasons for anxiety
were different: Donald Trump and his
attitudes towards Russia and Poland.
To some in Berlin, the president’s meeting
with Vladimir Putin was a “Yalta 2.0”, a 21st-
century equivalent of the summit in 1945 at
which Americans and Russians divided
Europe. Angela Merkel saw Mr Trump’s
“back-slapping and face-pulling” display
before the Russian president (as the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , a daily, put it)
as undermining her efforts to confront Russia
over Ukraine. An internal memo by the
German foreign ministry summarising the
G20 noted: “The summit went very well for
Russia…As long as the US breaks rank, Russia
can swim in the mainstream.”
All of this plays into
Mrs Merkel’s fears
that the multilateral
order that has served
her country so well is
under threat. “Others
were isolated—an
experience that Putin
visibly enjoyed,”
reported the memo. It
also observed
disconcertedly that
conservative Russian
think-tankers like
Andrey Kortunov and
Fyodor Lukyanov
viewed the summit as
a “rebalancing” in
global relations: from
the old battle between
developed and
developing economies to a new one between
globalists and nationalists.
Still, Berlin had largely priced in a
rapprochement between Messrs Trump and
Putin. A more unsettling development was Mr
Trump’s visit to Warsaw before the G20,
where the president’s speech echoed the
ideologies both of Mr Putin and of Poland’s
populist-nationalist Law and Justice
government. The foreign-ministry memo
described this as an “astonishing tectonic
shift” in American foreign policy.
Most striking of all was Mr Trump’s venue: a
summit of the Three Seas Initiative. Launched
by Poland and Croatia, this new central
European project recalls the “Intermarium”
proposed by Jozef Pilsudski, the father of the
country’s second republic, which lasted from
1918-39. Pilsudski dreamed of allying states
on the Baltic, Black and Adriatic seas to
oppose domination either by Russians or
Germans. Warsaw presents its revival as a
bid to improve north-south transport and
energy links in the region, to complement
better-developed east-west ones (see map).
But Berlin suspects something more hostile.
Consider the backdrop. Germany is already
concerned about China’s “16+1” initiative
with central and eastern European states, a
series of investment projects that the Chinese
expect will build influence in the region. The
Germans are also putting pressure on the
Polish government over its illiberal attacks on
independent newspapers, judges and NGOs.
And they are fending off Polish criticisms that
their proposed “Nord Stream 2” gas pipeline
from Russia to Germany will make Europe
more dependent on Russia.
So Mr Trump could hardly have done more to
aggravate German officialdom. He endorsed
the Three Seas Initiative. In meetings with the
Polish and Croatian presidents he guaranteed
a supply of American liquefied natural gas
(LNG) and backed a corridor linking LNG
pipelines in the two countries. Poland opened
its first terminal on the Baltic sea at
Swinoujscie in 2015, and the first American
cargo arrived there last month. In Warsaw,
Mr Trump encouraged the rapid completion
of a Croatian LNG terminal at Krk, on the
Adriatic.
Though sensible, this looks to officials in
Berlin like a bid to divide Europe and weaken
Germany’s leverage over its neighbours. They
are contemplating responses. One would be a
new European infrastructure fund, to test
whether Poland and its allies merely want
more foreign investment or whether the
Three Seas Initiative is actually about
geopolitical balancing.
In years past, Germans developed a vision of
a cohesive EU run from Brussels, steered
mostly by Germany and underwritten by
American power. Now they fear a future in
which strongmen in Washington, Moscow and
Beijing divide Europe and push around the
pieces. Germany led the G20 meeting
confidently, but it feels increasingly insecure.

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