President Obama urged Donald Trump to stand up to Russia when necessary as he and German Chancellor Angela Merkel vowed to address the inequities of globalization that helped propel the populist tycoon to the White House.
“What unites us is the common conviction that globalization needs to be defined humanely and politically,” Ms. Merkel said after the two leaders met for several hours on Thursday. “There is no turning back from it,” she said, adding that Germany “will continue to cooperate with the new [Trump] administration.”
Mr. Obama said that he and the German chancellor discussed ways to ease economic inequalities that have resulted from globalization and the need to preserve both the global climate-change agreement reached in Paris last year and the deal to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. They also agreed to maintain sanctions on Russia over Moscow’s intervention in Ukraine, the president said.
Mr. Obama said he hoped President-elect Trump would take a “constructive” approach to Russia that seeks cooperation on issues where the two countries agree. But he also warned Mr. Trump against negotiating agreements with Russian President Vladimir Putin that hurt people or violate international law.
The election of the Mr. Trump—the most striking upset populist victory after the Brexit vote in the U.K. in June—has left Ms. Merkel looking increasingly isolated as a prominent Western leader with a liberal internationalist agenda.
Mr. Obama, who leaves office in January, and Ms. Merkel, who is expected to run for a fourth term next year but faces a populist insurgency of her own, had planned for months to meet in Berlin this week. But Mr. Trump’s victory has reshaped the focus of their meeting on how to maintain a longtime alliance and shared worldview.
Mr. Obama and Ms. Merkel are now seeking to pre-empt the potential short-term fallout from the U.S. election on a range of Western institutions and policies, ranging from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to free trade and the fight against climate change.
The two leaders formed a diplomatic tag team after Russia intervened in Ukraine, but the international approach to Moscow is an open question under a Trump administration. Mr. Trump has praised Mr. Putin as a strong leader, whereas the Obama administration has accused Russia of engaging in cyberattacks intended to influence the U.S. election.
“Our countries share a joint responsibility to protect and preserve our way of life,” Mr. Obama and Ms. Merkel wrote in a joint opinion piece published Thursday in the German news magazine Wirtschaftswoche.
“It is in this spirit that we are working hard to ensure that international law and norms are respected around the globe—which remains a prerequisite for stability and prosperity,” the leaders wrote in the piece titled “The Future of trans-Atlantic Relations.”
They cited areas where they believed continuity in cooperation between the U.S. and Europe is critical: NATO, the fight against Islamic State terrorism and an approach to the refugee crisis that prioritizes “respect for human dignity,” as well as the Paris climate-change agreement.
Describing U.S.-European relations as “at a crossroads,” the leaders also called for a reshaping of the current approach to globalization and warned against weakening the alliance.
“Simply put: we are stronger when we work together,” they wrote. “At a time when the global economy is evolving more quickly than at any point in human history, and the scope of global challenges has never had higher stakes, such cooperation is now more urgent than ever.”
With Mr. Trump taking over in January, some allies of Ms. Merkel see Germany playing an even greater role in standing up not only to rising populist forces, but also to Russia and China and in keeping the European Union closer together in the wake of Britain’s planned exit.
“Germany now must play an even greater role when it comes to keeping Europe together,” said lawmaker Rolf Mützenich, a foreign-policy specialist for the center-left Social Democrats, who are Ms. Merkel’s junior coalition partners. “I don’t think that Ms. Merkel yearns for this role, but she has no other choice.”
Ms. Merkel hinted at the challenge that awaits her in working with Mr. Trump in her congratulatory note to the president-elect.
She said she would work closely with him based on the basis of the “values of democracy, freedom, and respect for the law and the dignity of man, independent of origin, skin color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or political views”—an unusual warning from a country scarred by its nationalist past to one of the world’s oldest democracy.
Following the news conference in the German capital, Ms. Merkel will host Mr. Obama for a dinner Thursday night.
Underscoring how close Ms. Merkel and Mr. Obama have become, Mr. Obama invited Ms. Merkel for a private, one-on-one dinner at his hotel Wednesday after he arrived in Berlin. Their aides held a separate dinner.
In an interview Mr. Obama gave to German magazine Der Spiegel and public broadcaster ARD, he praised the chancellor, calling on Germans to back her.
“She stands for great credibility and she is ready to fight for her values. I’m glad she is there and the Germans should value her. At least, I value her as a partner,” he was quoted as saying.
The display of friendship has largely eclipsed the numerous disagreements between the two leaders during Mr. Obama’s two terms, including anger in Germany at the alleged tapping by the U.S. of Ms. Merkel’s cellphone and longstanding U.S. criticism of Germany’s economic policy.
On Friday, Mr. Obama and Ms. Merkel will hold a broader meeting with the leaders of France, the U.K., Italy and Spain.
wsj
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