A 30-year veteran of the U.S. Embassy deplores Trump’s assault on a relationship to which she dedicated her career. ------ For decades, the relationship between Germany and the United States was more than a strategic alliance. It rested on a sense of friendship, shared democratic values and trust painstakingly built across generations. That relationship is now changing. Under Trump, many Germans have come to see the United States not as a dependable friend, but as an increasingly hostile power whose worldview is fundamentally at odds with their own. To explore that transformation, I invited Martina Kohl onto the latest episode of The Diplomacy Podcast. Now a lecturer at Humboldt University in Berlin, she spent three decades in the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy in Germany, first in Bonn and later in Berlin. Kohl was one of the local employees who provide U.S. embassies with contacts, cultural knowledge and institutional memory as American diplomats rotate in and out every three years. She organized encounters between American experts and Germans at schools, universities, conferences and civic organizations across the country. She stayed so long because she considered herself a committed transatlanticist who believed in the alliance and the values it represented: democracy, open societies, the rule of law and international cooperation. Public diplomacy, she said, is long-term work — planting seeds, developing relationships and building trust that may take years to bear fruit. Toward the end of her embassy career, however, the work became increasingly difficult. Programs grew more political, the tone changed and the line between explaining U.S. policies and promoting an ideological agenda began to disappear. “When the tone changes and the policy becomes more polarized and, to a certain extent, extreme, then you do cross that line to propaganda,” Kohl said. She views the Trump administration’s attacks on Europe, its embrace of “might is right” and retreat from democratic values as a repudiation of much of what U.S. public diplomacy promoted for decades. As a German conscious of how quickly democratic institutions can erode, she is particularly troubled by what she sees happening inside the United States. German public opinion reflects that estrangement. In a YouGov survey this summer, 74 percent of Germans said the United States had become more of a force for bad under Trump, 69 percent considered it a less trustworthy ally and 72 percent said it had become less friendly toward Germany. “The American century is over,” Kohl said. “Europe is becoming, hopefully, more independent and also more sure of itself.” To hear our conversation, watch or listen to the episode above — or on one of these platforms: YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts. As always, my guest’s opinions don’t necessarily represent my own views. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nicholaskralev.substack.com
