The top German diplomat pointed to the "failure of the US as an important power" in the Western "community of values" and called for opposition to the policy pursued by the White House.
In his opinion, Washington's current isolationist course negatively affects global affairs.
Angela Merkel suggests Donald Trump has made the U.S. hard to count on https://t.co/8r4hb7Zunx pic.twitter.com/qAexDzAh8W
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) 30 мая 2017 г.
Gabriel stressed that with US President Donald Trump entering office, the balance of power in the international arena has changed. "The West has become a bit smaller," he said.
Earlier, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Europe should not rely on others any longer, and that the EU countries should decide their own destiny.
"We Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands," she stressed, adding that Germany and other European countries would do their best to stay on good terms with the US and the post-Brexit UK. We have to fight for our own destiny," she said.
German media attributed Merkel's remarks to the unsatisfactory outcome of the negotiations between the German and American delegations at the recent G7 summit in Italy.
In an interview with Sputnik, expert Dmitry Ofitserov-Belsky of the Moscow-based Higher School of Economics, for his part, said that the statements made by Merkel and Gabriel are connected with the uncertainty of US foreign policy.
"This can be explained by the fact that there is no transparency related to the US policy. Trump has already been in power for quite some time, but no decisions have yet been made on what Washington's foreign policy will be," Ofitserov-Belsky said.
He referred to a struggle that pitted Washington's "highest halls of power" with President Trump in a bid to force him to adopt the foreign policy course pursued by predecessors.
"Trump is not giving up, and there is no certainty [about US foreign policy]. In this vein, the statements by Sigmar Gabriel and Angela Merkel aim to encourage Washington to take a more or less predictable position on the matter as soon as possible," Ofitserov-Belsky added.
In addition, he noted, it is necessary to take into account the fact that Merkel had made her statements during her pre-election campaign.
"She [probably] wanted to capitalize on her positioning herself as the leader of Europe. [It seems] that she wanted to make it plain that the US is no longer a staunch ally of Europeans as it was before and that only Germany can unite the whole of Europe and become its leader," Ofitserov-Belsky concluded.
"The US side and the Europeans should tackle their relations by themselves, this is not our concern," Peskov told reporters.
He noted that although Russia is part of Europe, the country had always relied on itself alone throughout the centuries.
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