Interview: Ambassador John B. Emerson on the Future of the United States’ Relationship with Germany

This interview was contributed to Forum—the edition’s portfolio of thematic content—by GJIA’s Dialogues section.

After the past four years of the Trump administration generated increased tensions between the United States and much of the Western world, newly inaugurated President Joe Biden has been tasked with restoring these damaged relationships. Among the most important of these alliances is the one with Germany, the largest economy in Europe and the de facto leader of the European Union. In this interview with GJIA from early December 2020, former US Ambassador to Germany John B. Emerson, who now chairs the American Council on Germany, discusses the decline of US-German relations under former President Donald Trump, as well as the dubious path that his successor faces to repair one of America’s most critical friendships.

GJIA:

As the ambassador to Germany during most of Barack Obama’s second term in office, you had a front row seat to many of the differences between German and US politics. I do not think any difference, however, has been quite as stark as the different directions each country has gone in their response to the COVID-19 pandemic. So, in your opinion, how has Germany been able to craft such an effective response—one of the best in the Western world—while the United States has struggled immensely?

JE:

First and foremost, there was a difference in leadership. Germany has a scientist as its chancellor. Angela Merkel was trained as a physicist. She believes in science. She understood the potential gravity of the situation, and Germany began to immediately take steps to protect its people by developing and disseminating vast amounts of tests and by implementing an isolated shutdown approach that allowed it to contain the virus much more effectively than many other countries, not to say they did not have their issues as well. The other thing is, in terms of the medical response to the virus, Germany was able to learn some lessons. I have friends here in the United States who were severely impacted or infected by COVID-19 in the early days and were in the hospital, and a lot of the lessons that they heard from Germany were used to help save their lives. For one thing, Germany was one of the first places that discovered that you needed to put patients on their stomach and flip them periodically, particularly if they were intubated. Fundamentally, it was rapid response recognition, testing, and tracking that helped Germany stay on top of this. From our standpoint, we had a leader who was more concerned about the politics of COVID-19 than managing the crisis. Initially he said, “Well, this is not really a problem, it is going to go away, it is a hoax, a Democratic hoax, it is going to go away in the spring when the weather gets warmer,” and so on. Politicizing the wearing of masks in this country was not helpful. Even though we have four percent of the world’s population, we are now the world leader in terms of COVID-19 deaths and infections, which is pretty stunning given the high quality of our scientific research and of our healthcare infrastructure.

All that being said, the recent wave has hit Germany particularly hard—so one has to ask whether parts of the county let their guard down. And clearly Germany and Europe have had greater challenges in the distribution of vaccines than we have had in this country. So again, Germany’s response has not been perfect.

GJIA:

Yesterday, December 9^th, was actually the worst day so far in the pandemic for the United States. We reported over 3000 deaths from the coronavirus.

JE:

Yes, this is a 9/11 every day. When you consider the lives we lost in 9/11, a 9/11 every day is what we are experiencing during this period of time. As an increasing number of Americans get vaccinated and continue to mask, however, those numbers should begin to come down.

GJIA:

We have...