page_title: Germany–United States relations
section_title: Reunified Germany
hierarchical_section_title: Germany–United States relations / History / Reunified Germany
caption_attribution_description: English: Demonstration against PRISM in Berlin, organised by the Pirate Party , during United States president Barack Obama's visit Deutsch: PRISM-Demo der Piratenpartei zum Besuch des amerikanischen Präsidenten Barack Obama
context_page_description: Germany–United States relations, also referred to as German–American relations, are the bilateral relations between Germany and the United States. German–American relations are the historic relations between Germany and the United States at the official level, including diplomacy, alliances and warfare. The topic also includes economic relations such as trade and investments, demography and migration, and cultural and intellectual interchanges since the 1680s. The nations fought against each other in two world wars. In the late 1940s the U.S. occupied western Germany and built a demilitarized democratic society. West Germany achieved independence in 1949. It joined NATO with the understanding that its safety being long dependent on the military might and strategic reliability of the U.S. Germany had outsourced its security to the U.S. and NATO. East Germany became a Soviet satellite. After Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe in 1989, Germany was reunified with American support. It became an economic and political powerhouse in Europe and a close ally of the U.S. However relations cooled after Donald Trump was elected president in 2016.
context_section_description: During the early 1990s, the reunified Germany was called a "partnership in leadership" as the US emerged as the world's sole superpower.
  Germany's effort to incorporate any major military actions into the slowly-progressing European Security and Defence Policy did not meet the expectations of the U.S. during the Gulf War. After the September 11 attacks, German-American political relations were strengthened in an effort to combat terrorism, and Germany sent troops to Afghanistan as part of the NATO force. Yet, discord continued over the Iraq War, when German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer made efforts to prevent war and did not join the US and the UK, which both led multinational force in Iraq. Anti-Americanism rose to the surface after the attacks of 11 September 2001 as hostile German intellectuals argued there were ugly links between globalization, Americanization, and terrorism.
  In response to the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures, Germany cancelled the 1968 intelligence sharing agreement with the US and UK.
  In May 2017, Angela Merkel met with US President Donald Trump. Trump's statements that the U.S. had been taken advantage of in trade deals during previous administrations had already strained relations with several EU countries and other American allies. Without mentioning Trump specifically, Merkel said after a NATO summit "The times when we could completely rely on others are, to an extent, over," This came after Trump had said "The Germans are bad, very bad" and "See the millions of cars they are selling to the U.S. Terrible. We will stop this."
caption: Protestors rally against National Security Agency's mass surveillance, Berlin, June 2013
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