Germany: Government begins unveiling its anti-Trump coalition

During an official visit to Japan, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas unveiled the first hints of Berlin’s new plan for countering Donald Trump’s nationalist policies: a network of countries with a shared belief in the rules of the postwar order.

On the day European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker reached a surprise deal on trade with Donald Trump, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas was standing in front of a wood-paneled government building 11,000 kilometers (6,800 miles) to the east. Maas was in Japan on his first trip to Asia as foreign minister, and expectations were high. “We share the same values,” said Maas, who is a member of the center-left Social Democrats, as his host, Japanese President Shinzo Abe, nodded. “In the current geopolitical situation, it is good to clearly emphasize this once again.”

But the guest from Germany brought more with him in his suitcase than just friendly words. In Tokyo, Maas presented the Japanese leader with his idea for a new alliance between states. It could fill the geopolitical vacuum created by Trump. In the coming months, a network of globally oriented states is to be created that closely coordinates its foreign, trade and climate policies. “We need an alliance of the multilateralists,” says Maas — which is to say, an alliance that stands for the global rules and structures of the postwar order that Trump rejects. “It’s better to bend than break” would be the wrong maxim in these times,” Maas argues.

The outlines of the German government’s new anti-Trump strategy are currently being sketched out. The German Foreign Ministry has been doing preliminary work on it for some time now. Maas’s predecessor, Sigmar Gabriel, had already assigned the task of redefining the relationship with the U.S. in the period following the Republican president’s election. In the planning division, papers had to be constantly revised to reflect the U.S. president’s latest tweets.