After having experienced years of American unilateralism, U.S. allies in Europe no longer believe that President Donald Trump will offer them much, reported The New York Times.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision earlier this week of declining to attend the Group of Seven (G7) Summit that initially scheduled at the White House later this month was the most obvious evidence, said an article published Tuesday in the newspaper.
Merkel cited the unabated pandemic as the reason, but a senior German official noted that it was not the case, said the article.
"She believed that proper diplomatic preparations had not been made; she did not want to be part of an anti-China display; she opposed Mr. Trump's idea of inviting the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin; she did not want to be seen as interfering in American domestic politics," the official was quoted as saying, adding the chancellor was shocked by Trump's unilateral decision to pull out of the World Health Organization.
Likewise, French President Emmanuel Macron, said the article, believed that Trump had damaged European security through his unilateral abandonment of the Iran nuclear deal and nearly every arms control agreement with Russia.
"As so often in the past, on issues like unilateral American withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal or the Paris climate accord or the Open Skies treaty or the sudden ban on air travel from Europe, Mr. Trump ignored the views of allies or did not consult them at all," it said.
Trump's opposition to all these international institutions and agreements is "outrageous for Europeans like Merkel and Macron who have multilateralism in their DNA," the article quoted William Drozdiak, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, as saying.
