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by: MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press
Posted: Jun 25, 2021 / 03:23 AM HST / Updated: Jun 25, 2021 / 03:52 AM HST
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, listens as French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, right, speaks at a news conference at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris, Friday, June 25, 2021. Blinken is on a week long trip to Europe traveling to Germany, France and Italy. (Photo of AP / Andrew Harnik, Pool)
PARIS (AP) European leaders may have breathed a sigh of relief when U.S. President Joe Biden visited them last week to announce the Trump era, but they are giving his top diplomat even more effect.
As Antony Blinken travels with traditional American allies this week, senior European officials treat him like the rock star he once sought for the simple transition representative from former President Donald Trump.
Policy differences, some of them significant, have been thrown in many parts for what appears to have been a mutual celebration of Biden’s persona against Trump in western Europe.
Top diplomats in Germany and France exercised all diplomatic caution in expressing their satisfaction that Trump was no longer in power on the other side of the Atlantic as they welcomed Blinken to their countries on Thursday and Friday. Similar feelings are expected from Italian officials when Blinken travels to Rome on Sunday.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas rejoiced that America was on our side again while French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian honored the end of Trump’s four-year tenure if where he said Europe was the only one to bear the burden of international responsibility and leadership.
At Blinken, Europe met a French-fluent soul who spent his formative years living and studying in high school in Paris and traveling in the 1970s and 80s, a time he remembers with deep affection and love for most things in Europe.
This is far from his predecessor, Mike Pompeo, whose former experience in Europe served as a tank commander in West Germany in the relentless years of the Cold War. And, like his boss, Pompeo treated Europe as an overly dependent on annoyance, and underestimated Europe’s predilection for multilateralism and consensus.
Pompeo prides himself on the challenge of what Europe has long believed in and often hails a speech he once delivered in Brussels where he broke the United Nations, the European Union and other multilateral institutions before an audience with interest in them.
Blinken is literally the opposite, championing cooperation and close contact with some of America’s longest-running allies.
Sharing a beer with Maas before a group of German children exchanging students in a restored 1920s Berlin hall, Blinken told about a teenage road trip he and friends from Paris to Hamburg, where they did not successfully follow The Beatles in the history of rock music. That didn’t happen, he said wryly.
However, I have extremely warm and strong and long memories of being in Germany and having a very close friend, he said, before announcing that he and Maas were in violent agreement on most issues.
Maas, who had a well-known testy contact with Pompeo, could hardly contain his excitement at having a new interlocutor, one he had spent a lot of time in the course of four joint events in less than two days.
From the first phone conversation we got after Tony took over the secretary of state’s office, to the end of the phone call I couldn’t help myself from telling Tony, I still had to get used to the fact I can talk to the American foreign secretary and always have the same point of view because it was different before, ‘said Maas.
Maas hailed Biden’s election as a real game-changer for international politics, the biggest in a while.
The United States is back on the international stage and that is really something we missed, he said on Thursday.
A day later, Le Drian offered Blinken similarly warm statements of relief and appreciation.
Welcome back, ”said Le Drian. Great news for all of us that America is back. It is a return to the values we share, it is a return to the multilateralism we have built together and it is our responsibility to continue it intensively. This is what France and the Europeans fought for alone for four very long years.
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