US Election: Don’t Set America On Fire – Germany Cautions Trump, As UK Stays Silent
It’s ‘Time For A Cool Head’
German Foreign Minister, Heiko Maas says
United States (US) President, Donald Trump, must refrain from pouring oil on the fire of a tense situation in his country.
The Germans are leading European calls for Trump to end his claim that the American election was fraudulent.
They also urged the President and his followers to stop “pouring oil” on the tense situation in the US and noting that “decent losers” were vital to upholding democracy.
According to German foreign Minister; “America is more than a one-man show. Anyone who continues to pour oil on the fire in a situation like this is acting irresponsibly. Now is the time to keep a cool head until an independently determined result is available.”
“In order for the result, which has not yet been determined, to be accepted, everyone must first show restraint. Decent losers are more important for the functioning of a democracy than radiant winners.”
Maas said he expected that once the election result was settled, “the USA will probably not return to the international stage with full energy for the time being”, but he added: “The world needs the USA as a force for order, not as a factor of chaos.”
Germany is probably the leading European power with the most invested in a return to US multilateralism of the kind offered by Joe Biden.
In the United Kingdom (UK), Ministers continued to refuse making comments on the election, or Donald Trump’s claims that it was fraudulent.
The UK will face a dilemma if Trump refuses to concede defeat and Biden claims victory, since it is traditional for the UK to congratulate the victor.
Britain could continue to evade the issue until all legal challenges are exhausted, or if the Republican leadership desert Trump in the face of overwhelming evidence that he has been legitimately defeated.
The UK shadow justice minister David Lammy said: “Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab’s silence as Donald Trump attempts to undermine the American people’s right to free and fair elections is a national disgrace. We must have the courage to stand up for democracy whoever attacks it. No exceptions.”
The EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell expressed concern about the fraud allegations and urged the US to return to the Paris agreement on the climate crisis and the nuclear deal with Iran.
Jean-Yves Le Drian, the French Foreign Minister, said he had faith in the US institutions validating the result, adding that even if Biden was elected, the US and the EU “will not return to the status that prevailed before, to a kind of good old days in the transatlantic relationship.
“The world has moved in four years. Europe is trying to become a power unto itself, instead of relying on US support.”
He described the US election as “a historic vote, in terms of the tension and the size of the turnout”.
The Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, declined to back Trump’s fraud claims, but suggested the US would not be in a position to lecture others on democracy after this.
“If things happened in Hungary, like over there, then here, I don’t know, the sky would have fallen. It’s unimaginable,” the Hungarian leader said.
Hungary has a cool relationship with the Democrats, since some of its leading foreign policy figures have been critical of the trend to authoritarianism in the country. – The Guardian
