MAINZ, Germany \u200cDec 9 (Reuters) – German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Tuesday rejected a blistering \u200dattack on \u200cEuropean democracies by the Trump administration, which issued a strategy paper last \u2060week declaring that the continent faced “civilizational \u200cerasure”.<\/p>\n
The U.S. National Security Strategy, made public last week, caused shock across Europe, with a broadside that accused European governments of “subversion of democratic processes” and said U.S. policy should \u2060include “cultivating resistance” within the European Union.<\/p>\n
The language of the document echoed previous criticism of Europe from \u200bleading figures in the administration including Vice President J.D. \u200cVance, and highlighted the growing strains \u2060between European capitals and Washington.<\/p>\n
“Some of it is understandable, some of it is comprehensible, and some of it is unacceptable to us from a European \u200bperspective,” Merz told reporters on a visit to the western German state of Rheinland-Pfalz.<\/p>\n
“I see no need for the Americans to now want to save democracy in Europe. If it were necessary to save it, we would \u200bmanage that \u200don our own,” he \u200bsaid.<\/p>\n
Leaders including Merz have acknowledged that Europeans need to rebuild militaries that have withered after decades of neglect, leaving them heavily dependent on the U.S. military for their own defence.<\/p>\n
But they have to tread a careful line between responding to the exceptionally harsh language from the administration and avoiding alienating their strongest ally.<\/p>\n
“The \u2060question of what this means for our security cooperation is obviously the most important question,” Merz said. “It confirms my \u200bassessment that we in Europe, and therefore also in Germany, must become much more independent from the U.S. in terms of security policy.”<\/p>\n
Merz said Trump, whose grandfather came from Germany, was expected to visit \u200cnext year. “The invitation is there, of course,” he said.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Reuters TV, writing by Kirsti Knolle and James Mackenzie; Editing by Ludwig Burger and Hugh Lawson)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MAINZ, Germany \u200cDec 9 (Reuters) – German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Tuesday rejected a blistering \u200dattack on \u200cEuropean…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339323,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-339322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}