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BERLIN: German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer warned on Wednesday that the United States is facing a “very explosive situation” and a possible systemic crisis after President Donald Trump prematurely declared electoral victory.
Following Trump’s remarks that he will go to the Supreme Court to prevent ballots from being counted, Kramp-Karrenbauer told public broadcaster ZDF that “this election has not been decided … the votes are still being counted.”
She said Trump could create “a constitutional crisis in the US”, calling such a scenario “something that should be of great concern to us.”
The minister, who also heads Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party, said it appeared that “the battle for the legitimacy of the result, however it turns out, has begun.”
He admitted that the relationship between Germany and the United States had faced “a severe test in the last four years” with Trump’s fierce criticism of Berlin for trade and military spending.
However, he said, “this friendship is more than a question of which administration is currently in the White House,” and said he rejected calls in Germany to “disengage from the United States.”
But Kramp-Karrenbauer stressed that regardless of the end result of the US vote, Europe would need to become more self-sufficient.
“We will have to do much more for our own interests, both as Germany and, in particular, with other Europeans,” he said.
Finance Minister Olaf Scholz echoed the sentiment, saying that given the events in the United States, Europe needed to strengthen its own “sovereignty” so that “a rule-based global order can exist.”
“That is why we must seize this opportunity to strengthen Europe,” he told reporters in Berlin.
