The marching orders for every flashpoint involving U.S. ambassadors can be found in the lines of the National Security Strategy, published in December. It set American diplomats the task of “cultivating resistance” to the path set by Europe’s current set of leaders and celebrated the rise of “patriotic” far right parties, seen as aligned with Trump’s MAGA movement.
It takes two to have a diplomatic fight, however, and not all European countries have taken the bait.
U.S. ambassador to the U.K. Warren Stephens has “key themes he is keen to speak on” including energy and free speech, according to one U.S. official, and is “not afraid to speak his mind.” He voiced many of those during a dinner speech while standing within arms reach of British Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy in November. These interventions have raised eyebrows inside the British establishment, but so far the U.K. government has soaked up the punches.
In Greece too, Kimberly Guilfoyle the former fiancée of Trump’s son Donald Jr., has charmed and bemused in equal measure. Despite goading the Greeks over the sale of the port of Piraeus to China, her relations with her hosts in Athens are, in her telling, exceptionally rosy.
“We see each other probably three or four times a week,” she said of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis during an event last week.
The same went for multiple government ministers, she added.
“They always take the call. It doesn’t matter if it’s the weekend, they will come over if we meet at my house, they show up.”
Esther Webber contributed reporting from London, Nektaria Stamouli from Athens and Victor Jack from Brussels.