Blinken welcomed warmly as corrective to Trump era

PARIS — European leaders may have breathed audible sighs of relief when President Biden recently visited them to proclaim the Trump era over, but they are giving his top diplomat even more effusive welcomes. As Antony Blinken toured traditional American allies last week, senior European officials treated him like the rock star he once aspired to be for simply representing the shift from former President Donald Trump.

Policy differences, some of them significant, have been largely tossed aside for what appear to have become mutual celebrations of Biden’s antiTrump persona in Western Europe.

Top diplomats in Germany and France dropped all diplomatic caution in expressing their glee that Trump is no longer in charge on the other side of the Atlantic as they welcomed Blinken to their countries on Thursday and Friday. Similar sentiments are expected from Italian officials when Blinken travels to Rome on Sunday.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas rejoiced that America “is back on our side again,” while French Foreign Minister JeanYves Le Drian hailed the end of Trump’s four years in office during which he said Europe alone was left to shoulder the burden of international responsibility and leadership.

In Blinken, Europe is encountering a Frenchfluent soulmate who spent his formative years living and attending high school in Paris and traveling in the 1970s and ’80s, a time he recalls with deep affection for most things European.

It’s far cry from his predecessor, Mike Pompeo, whose previous European experience was serving as a tank commander in West Germany in the waning years of the Cold War. And, like his boss, Pompeo regarded Europe largely as an overly dependent annoyance, and held little regard for the European predilection for multilateralism and consensus.

Pompeo prided himself on challenging longheld European beliefs and often spoke proudly of a speech he once delivered in Brussels in which he trashed the United Nations, the European Union and other multilateral institutions before an audience with a vested interest in them.

Blinken is the opposite, championing cooperation and close relationships with some of America’s longeststanding allies.

Maas hailed Biden’s election as “a genuine gamechanger for international politics, the biggest for quite a while.

“The United States are back on the international stage, and that is really something that we missed,” he said on Thursday.

A day later, Le Drian offered Blinken similarly warm remarks of relief and appreciation.

“Welcome back,” Le Drian said. “It is excellent news for all of us that America is back. It is a comeback to the values that we share, it is a comeback to the multilateralism that we built together, and it is our responsibility to continue with it intensively.”