German Chancellor MERZ said on Thursday the post‑World War II era of an
'unconditional' transatlantic friendship between the United States and Europe
'may be over', at least for the foreseeable future. He pointed to a change in US
political attitudes and a new reassessment of the transatlantic alliance that
until recently would have been hard to imagine. MERZ has previously been
critical of the Trump administration; his remarks echo former chancellor Angela
Merkel's 2017 comment that the reliable postwar international order had 'to some
extent ended'.