Shortly after securing election as the German chancellor last year, Friedrich Merz effectively declared the end of Pax Americana and said that indulging nostalgia for the days of dependable U.S. security assurances was futile. Since then, in the spectrum of Europe’s various postures for dealing with U.S. President Donald Trump, Merz’s lies somewhere in the middle—not quite as obsequious as NATO chief Mark Rutte, who described Trump as Europe’s “daddy,” nor as combative as French President Emmanuel Macron. “We do prefer respect to bullies,” Macron said in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, after Trump leaked a private text from the French leader.
Merz has factored in Trump’s peculiarities and appeased him with business deals. And in parallel, he has taken on the onerous task of rebuilding Germany’s dilapidated defense forces and enhancing cooperation among European allies. Merz has been committed to playing the hand that he was dealt as best he understands it. He has been trying to present Germany as the leader of a new Europe that can defend itself—but not just yet. His Trump policy hinges on keeping the U.S. president onboard and buying time until Germany and European allies are ready.
Shortly after securing election as the German chancellor last year, Friedrich Merz effectively declared the end of Pax Americana and said that indulging nostalgia for the days of dependable U.S. security assurances was futile. Since then, in the spectrum of Europe’s various postures for dealing with U.S. President Donald Trump, Merz’s lies somewhere in the middle—not quite as obsequious as NATO chief Mark Rutte, who described Trump as Europe’s “daddy,” nor as combative as French President Emmanuel Macron. “We do prefer respect to bullies,” Macron said in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, after Trump leaked a private text from the French leader.
Merz has factored in Trump’s peculiarities and appeased him with business deals. And in parallel, he has taken on the onerous task of rebuilding Germany’s dilapidated defense forces and enhancing cooperation among European allies. Merz has been committed to playing the hand that he was dealt as best he understands it. He has been trying to present Germany as the leader of a new Europe that can defend itself—but not just yet. His Trump policy hinges on keeping the U.S. president onboard and buying time until Germany and European allies are ready.
It is Merz’s show at the Munich Security Conference, but “don’t expect him to be a European Carney,” said Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, the director of the German Council on Foreign Relations, in reference to Canadian Prime Minister Mike Carney’s Davos speech, in which Carney declared a “rupture” in the Western-led world order that he implied Trump had caused.
Merz has been cautious, registering disagreements with Trump “in single sentences,” Kleine-Brockhoff said. Last month, he told the German parliament that, “as democracies, we are partners and allies, not subordinates,” in a retort to Trump’s treatment of European countries. But admonishments have been rare and mild.
Merz warned the United States that agreements should not be undermined by “daily announcements” when Trump threatened additional tariffs over Germany’s support to Greenland, despite an overarching deal agreed upon with the European Union in July. A major German steel lobbyist told Foreign Policy last month that businesses were pushing the German government and European policymakers to draw a line and push back against any U.S. violation of the deal.
At Davos, Merz invoked Germany’s past to illustrate why might being right is a self-defeating prophecy. “[W]e must never forget one thing—a world where only power counts is a dangerous place. First, for small states, then for the middle powers, and ultimately for the great ones,” he told the gathering. But Merz appeared to be much more accommodating when Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was abducted by the United States’ special forces. “The legal assessment of the U.S. intervention is complex,” he posted.
Rafael Loss, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that Merz’s responses to Trump revealed “cognitive dissonance.”
“On one hand, he is trying to engage Trump, to flatter him, to maintain German and American relations as long as possible,” Loss said. “But on the other hand, he is also aware that there are limits to that flattery and has been building coalitions in Europe, so Europe can function increasingly independently of the U.S.”
Soon after taking charge in spring 2025, Merz landed in France and, in no time, in the United Kingdom—NATO’s other nuclear powers. Experts believe that these visits were first and foremost meant to secure greater assurances that Germany can bank on French and British nukes, since it does not possess its own. “We can surmise from public statements [post Merz’s visits] that there is a desire to make more explicit assurances to Germany,” Loss added.
It is unclear whether Merz wants Germany to build its own nuclear weapons, but he has dared to lift the taboo on nuclear deterrence and admitted leaders were discussing a European nuclear shield. “These talks are taking place,” Merz said while adding they were “not in conflict with nuclear-sharing” agreements with the United States.
Merz has loosened Germany’s tightly knit purse strings and agreed to up defense spending to reach 5 percent of Germany’s GDP and procure a variety of equipment from the United States, including F-35 fighter jets and hundreds of Tomahawk missiles. Merz favored the reform of Germany’s debt brake and offered the German defense industry a budget of 650 billion euros ($771 billion) over five years, the largest among European allies.
Kleine-Brockhoff said Merz’s policy differed from his predecessor, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who back in 2022 announced Zeitenwende—or the historic turning point in Germany’s defense and security policy—owing to the threat from Russian President Vladimir Putin. But Merz ushered in a second Zeitenwende to respond to Trump, “when it was no longer deniable that the U.S. was changing course in a direction detrimental to our interests,” Kleine-Brockhoff said. Several U.S. nukes and nearly half of the 85,000 U.S. soldiers deployed in Europe are based in Germany. But Trump’s policy of retrenchment and retreat has broken trust; Germans no longer really believe that they can rely on the United States, were Russia to attack.
There is no indication that Merz wants to or can afford to cut off defense or trade ties with the United States. In fact, business deals are inducements that Merz and other Europeans hope will keep Trump onside. Energy purchases from the United States spiked last year as it replaced Russia as Germany’s largest liquified natural gas exporter—comprising around 96 percent of such imports.
But as Washington weaponizes all kinds of dependencies, Merz is looking for alternatives. This month, Merz went on a tour to the Gulf to secure alternative gas supplies, and he is actively pushing the Europeans to bridge the gaps in key defense capabilities that they have thus far banked on the United States to fill.
“There is growing awareness that defense purchases from the U.S. come with strings attached. There are risks. In some cases, you have to accept risks, because there is no alternative. But in others, Germany is trying to pursue a more European path,” Loss said.
Under Merz, Germany has announced an investment of 35 billion euros ($42 billion) in space awareness systems to reduce reliance on U.S. satellites for intelligence and surveillance. (Ukraine has heavily depended on U.S. reconnaissance in its war with Russia, and Trump has often threatened to cut it off, even doing so temporarily in early 2025.)
In the economic realm, Merz has pushed the EU to diversify trade and look for newer markets. He pushed for free trade agreements with the group of South American countries known as Mercosur and India, not only to expand business but also to make up for losses expected from Trump’s tariffs. On Feb. 12, at an informal retreat in the Belgian countryside, he was hoping to drive consensus on a slew of reforms to make the EU more competitive.
Merz’s formula to save Europe rests on enhancing European security and its competitiveness as well as maintaining unity among allies. But if that sounds too good to be true, then there are plenty of holes in his plan.
Economic pressures at home and his plummeting likability are major challenges. German aversion to joining the army and anything to do with war and weapons is the most difficult barrier for the chancellor, who has set the ambitious goal to turn the Bundeswehr into the “strongest conventional army in Europe.”
And despite Germany’s economic heft and control over the European Union, allies don’t always agree. For instance, while he led the campaign to confiscate frozen Russian assets to aid Ukraine, Belgium—where more than 180 billion euros of the 200 billion ($237 billion) of frozen Russian assets in the EU’s jurisdiction are held—vetoed the proposal. Belgium was worried that it would be left alone to pay the bill at a later date.
And even though he walked alongside Macron at the informal retreat and jointly addressed the press, Merz is frequently at odds with the French way of doing things. For instance, France is pushing for a European preference when it comes to public procurement policy, but Merz has reservations. The leaders also disagree on the Mercosur deal—Merz sees the Latin American member nations as potential new markets, but Macron’s response was driven by protests from French farmers who feared losing domestic markets to Brazilian beef. And while France is advocating Eurobonds or joint debt to revive European economy, Merz opposes these strategies.
There are also fears that giving Trump an easy pass also has the downside of potentially strengthening the German far right’s continued rise. Trump’s National Security Strategy document called Europe’s far-right groups “patriotic European parties” and vowed to support them. Nevertheless, Merz appears to have chosen a strategy that prioritizes managing Trump.
In his first meeting with Trump at the White House, Merz brought with him a copy of the birth certificate of Trump’s grandfather, who was born in Germany. However, Trump’s German ancestry is not what is keeping together a tense alliance. Germany and Europe are dependent on the United States, and Merz knows it. Until Germany and other European allies turn a corner and can take care of their own security, pride will have to take a backseat. Some experts say that that mammoth task could take up to a decade or more, but Germany has set a date to be war-ready by 2029.
