Richard Grenell: Germany's Angela Merkel and the tragic evolution of the Western European alliance

Angela Merkel has been Chancellor of Germany for 16 years. She will visit the White House Thursday for the last time as a leader because she is stepping down in September.

Yet, Merkel always struggled to explain why exactly her country had a budget surplus while not meeting their financial commitments to NATO’s defense. She also failed to make clear why exactly Germany was ignoring European concerns that she was feeding the beast of Russia with the Nord Stream 2 pipeline partnership.   Clinton, Bush and Obama all believed that the increase in the number of democracies in the world was inevitable and irreversible, yet they stood by while Germany drifted towards a Swiss style neutrality.  As U.S. ambassador to Germany during the Trump administration, I spent much of my time trying to convince the largest country of America’s European allies that some of their political positions were incompatible with a Western-facing Alliance. U.S. Embassy Berlin and the many Foreign Service Officers serving there and in the five consulates located in Hamburg, Dusseldorf, Munich, Frankfurt, and Leipzig helped coordinate U.S. responses to Chinese and Russian espionage; technology theft; unfair trade deals; differing threat assessments from Iran, Russia and China, energy security and NATO obligations.