Experts urge close German-US relations despite Trump

FILE: President Donald Trump (Photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)

BERLIN — Several prominent German foreign policy experts are urging the incoming German government not to turn away from the United States despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s unilateral “America First” stance.

The group of leading experts has published a manifesto in the weekly Die Zeit saying the “success and security of Germany and Europe is based on the system” of a liberal, international order and multilateral institutions, which Trump is fundamentally questioning with his power-based, nationalist politics.

They wrote Thursday that because of America’s current course, Germany, which recently held national elections and is still in the process of forming a new government, and the European Union have more responsibility than ever to preserve and strengthen the international system, which in the long term has to include the U.S.