It’s 9 a.m. on a Sunday morning, early spring, and we’re waiting for the kids to hit the soccer field. Some of us hold coffee cups.
We all woke up early to take our fourth and fifth graders to this district in the southeast of Berlin, where they will play against Köpenicker FC soon.
The conversation turns to school and the recent vacation, as I ask my fellow moms and dads about the US election, explaining that I’m working on an op-ed for the CNN.
Do they follow US politics? And what do they think about it?
“I’m very worried,” says Jörg, who has been at our club forever and whose 18-year-old son Miguel is our son’s coach.
Jörg works shifts for a local train company and whenever his schedule allows, he tells me, he watches the late-night political talk shows that often discuss the possibility of a second term for Donald Trump.
“To me,” he continues, “Trump looks like the leader of a cult. His supporters would follow him in everything he did. It’s scary”.
If Trump is elected, Jörg is convinced he will withdraw American troops from Europe and stop aid to Ukraine.
“I’m scared too,” says Eda, who teaches politics at a Berlin high school, and Piero agrees.
Piero is an Italian urban researcher and speaker who has lived in Berlin for many years. Both Piero and Eda follow US news closely, as does Jörg.
Piero says that many things about this election remain incomprehensible to him. He is scared by the Biden x Trump rematch.
“Democrats failed to build a successor when there was still time,” he says. “I just don’t understand that.”
Six months before the vote, this conversation on the football field very well reflects the German view of the US elections.
Conversations don’t necessarily revolve around this naturally outside of Berlin’s political bubble. After all, we already have enough to worry about: the war in Gaza, Ukraine, finding a plumber in an economy increasingly marked by labor shortages, and surviving after a period of high inflation.
But when I ask about it, I often find that American politics is on people’s minds. The election is like a distant storm that may or may not bear down on us, and many people monitor its path.
War on Europe’s doorstep
US elections have always been heavily reported in Germany, but this time there is an added sense of tension.
Since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Germany and Europe’s long-standing security dependence on the United States has been at the center of political debate.
European countries began to wake up. Germany has increased its defense spending, is building its defense industry and has spent billions on military and financial aid to Ukraine.
Still, without US support, Ukraine’s – and therefore Europe’s – situation would be dire. The US is both our salvation and a vulnerability. And people feel it.
At a campaign rally earlier this year, Donald Trump recalled how he once told a European leader that he would “encourage” Russia “to do whatever it wants” with any NATO member country that didn’t pay its “bills” – that is, if they did not fulfill their defense spending promises to NATO.
Despite the obvious, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has recently begun publicly downplaying the importance of the US elections for Germany and Europe.
Asked about the future of NATO if Trump wins, at a press conference in late April, he said he was “quite confident” that NATO would remain stable “for decades to come.”
“There will always be new presidents,” Scholz said casually, referring to the United States.
It was a pretty obvious attempt to allay the concerns of German citizens, like my fellow soccer moms and dads, but if you ask me, it’s pointless.
I also think it unlikely that the chancellor’s exaggerated composure reflects his true thinking.
When I talk to German government officials, I notice a very different mood. Many are busy preparing for the known – and the unknown.
Preparing for the “Trump storm”
It’s a Monday night, in an office with a vast labyrinth of uniform corridors in a large government building in Berlin.
A high-ranking government official, looking rather tired, sits down in an armchair to discuss how Germany is preparing for the outcome of the US elections, for both possible outcomes, as he highlights several times.
He asked not to be identified to discuss sensitive matters.
First, he says, there are efforts to try to meet and build relationships with people close to Trump, Republican senators, representatives and governors.
In September last year, Germany’s own Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, went on a long trip, landing, among other places, in Texas, where she met with Governor Greg Abbott.
Many other German diplomats and officials are also visiting the US, especially the south and center of the country, to connect.
Secondly, he says, the government is trying to make the German business world aware that things could get difficult, especially if Trump wins.
German U.S. observers and diplomats widely expect Trump to impose new tariffs on European goods imported into the U.S. and think he may try to force European companies to cooperate more closely with the U.S. in containing China.
But even during a second Biden term, things could get more difficult, the official says. He also expects Congress to remain volatile even if Biden wins.
Third, Germany is raising the question of what will happen if Trump is elected, in meetings with its close European allies such as Poland and France, the official says.
“If Donald Trump is re-elected, we have to try to remain united in the European Union, and Poland, France and Germany will have to lead the way,” he says.
If Europe manages to “stick together”, its chances of extracting concessions from Trump could be better than many analysts currently think, he adds. After all, the US also depends on the European market.
It is an optimistic view, based on the assumption that Trump will act rationally, as a negotiator, if elected. But what if this assumption is wrong? What if Trump tries to take the US out of NATO or create a “sleeping NATO”, a NATO that exists in name only?
Even if Biden is re-elected, or Trump proves to be more rational than feared, American democratic backsliding over the last decade has already had a profound impact on the way German society views America – and will likely continue to do so, regardless of the outcome. election result.
American dream no longer exists
Back on the soccer field, my conversation with Eda turns to sports. Eda is wearing a Dallas Mavericks jersey. Later that day, the Mavericks will play the LA Clippers, and Eda is a huge NBA fan.
She has never been to the US, but says she promised to go if the Mavericks reach the final, no matter how expensive the tickets are.
Like many of our generation – between Generation X and Millennial – Eda and I really like American culture. Despite all the ups and downs in US-German political relations, we agree that America has remained a great dream.
We were politically socialized during George H. Bush’s presidency; in fact, the first time I went to a rally when I was a little girl was to protest the first Gulf War.
But we also remember the euphoria when the US elected Barack Obama to be its first black president.
Obama was revered as a star in Germany, and many of the other parents on the soccer field remember vividly when he arrived in Berlin in 2008, how traffic stopped as 200,000 people gathered at the Siegessäule, the Victory Column, to see him. it.
U.S.-German relations have never been just about trade, military cooperation, or the nuclear umbrella. It was also America’s soft power, its political-cultural allure, that led generations of Germans to see it as a natural partner.
Europe’s far right is watching the US closely
In the last decade, however, this feeling has changed. For many Germans of the younger generation, the US has become a kind of dark force that fuels anti-democratic movements, rather than the light that emanates from the beacon of freedom.
On a Friday afternoon, Schahina Gambir calls me. She is a representative of the Green Party in the Bundestag. Gambir was born in Kabul in 1991 and grew up in a rural area in northern Germany.
She is a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, but also works on human rights issues.
The US elections, she says, will obviously have an impact on Europe’s security. But they will also be felt in German society.
“The debates in the US resonate here and could move Europe even further to the right,” she says.
“Right-wing networks in Europe have links with right-wing networks in the USA. US conspiracy theories spread here and fueled, for example, the anti-vaccine scene here in Germany.”
As a young woman, she says, she is also worried that the US debate over abortion rights could influence Europe.
“The United States was one of the first countries to legalize abortion in 1973, it was a model for others. Now, they’re backpedaling,” she says of the overturning of Roe vs. Wade by the US Supreme Court.
“I worry that the rights that we consider established may be questioned, here too, as they are in the United States,” says Gambir. Not just the right to abortion, she adds, but also the rights of queer communities and people of color.
At 32, Gambir remembers the Obama years. She traveled to the USA, her sister lives in New York and loves it. Many of today’s German teenagers and university students, however, only know the US as Trump’s country, a once-great democracy on a slippery slope.
Another Trump presidency would not only jeopardize Germany’s security, but it would also manifest this US vision for another four years.
That day on the football field, our children easily won the game. Eda and her son leave very satisfied.
Later, she texts me: The Dallas Mavericks lost. She adds a crying emoji.
*Editor’s Note: Anna Sauerbrey is the international editor of the German newspaper Die Zeit. The opinions expressed in this article are her own.
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