In an era defined by a distinctly jagged sort of diplomacy, Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul and Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil have departed for Washington. Their errand is a heavy one: to coax a recalcitrant United States into maintaining its commitment to Ukraine, while simultaneously attempting to erect some modest fences against American overreach.
The relationship, once the ironclad center of the West, is becoming increasingly difficult to defend. The past week alone has provided a sordid display: the high-handed US intervention in Venezuela and the Trump administration’s bizarre, atavistic designs on Greenland have placed a decades-old alliance under a strain that feels very much like a snapping point.
The Rhetoric of Rupture
Lars Klingbeil, the Vice-Chancellor, has begun to use the language of “dramatic upheaval.” He speaks of a transatlantic bond—once the boringly reliable furniture of German foreign policy—now entering a state of “dissolution.”
It is a grim realization. For years, Berlin has sheltered under the American umbrella, treating the alliance as a permanent feature of the moral landscape. Now, faced with the spectacle of a Washington that treats sovereign territory like a real estate portfolio, the Europeans are belatedly rediscovering the concept of “sovereignty.”
A “Den of Thieves”
The dilemma is stark and, for the German government, rather humiliating. Without the American nuclear shield, Europe stands exposed; without American logistics, the defense of Ukraine is a fantasy. This dependency creates a wretched irony, captured by the CSU’s Markus Söder: one cannot simply allow oneself to be bullied by one’s protector.
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, usually a man of cautious syllables, has gone so far as to warn of a world regressing into a “den of thieves”—a Räuberhöhle—where smaller nations are treated as the mere chattels of a few predatory superpowers. Chancellor Friedrich Merz has echoed this, insisting that Europe must refuse to be a “plaything” (Spielball) on the global stage. Yet to be more than a toy, one must possess a certain weight, and Europe’s military and strategic heft remains embarrassingly light.
The Arctic Absurdity
The mission for Wadephul and Klingbeil is therefore a study in walking on eggshells. They must attempt to charm a US administration that has largely abandoned the vocabulary of “shared values” in favor of “raw interests.”
The absurdity reached its zenith with the Greenland question. Wadephul was forced to state the obvious: that Greenland is part of Denmark, a NATO member, and therefore not for sale. It is a testament to the strangeness of our times that a German Foreign Minister must travel to Washington to explain the basic tenets of Westphalian sovereignty to the leader of the Free World.
In Marco Rubio, Wadephul may find a counterpart who still speaks the old language of alliances. But they both know that the ultimate arbiter is an unpredictable occupant of the Oval Office, for whom “partnership” is merely a synonym for “leverage.”
