Former U.S. Ambassadors Amy Gutmann and David Cohen discuss the power of ‘knowing who your allies are’ amid Trump’s controversial foreign policy decisions
In an event at Penn, Amy Gutmann and David Cohen stressed the importance of “knowing who your allies are.”
In February 2022, Amy Gutmann, then the United States ambassador to Germany under President Joe Biden, sat in the back seat of an armored Audi A8 as it sped down the Autobahn from Berlin to Munich.
She was racing the clock to alert the German government that Russia was going to invade Ukraine — a crisis that required the preparedness and collaboration of one of the United States’ strongest European allies. Roughly a week later, on Feb. 24, Russia invaded.
“That’s the moral of this little story,” Gutmann said while recalling the tale Tuesday at the University of Pennsylvania, “which is: There really isn’t time to spare these days.”
Time is of the essence today, too, for the U.S. to build and maintain strong international alliances as President Donald Trump continues his volatile foreign policy decisions, such as straining relationships with key global partners, Gutmann said during an appearance at Penn’s Perry World House with David L. Cohen — Biden’s U.S. ambassador to Canada, and a former Comcast executive and Philadelphia power broker. Those decisions, they said, have brought into question the United States’ relationship with Europe and other allies amid global threats like Russia’s ongoing assault on Ukraine. The event, titled “Common Sense Diplomacy,” was moderated by Penn alumna and NBC News journalist Andrea Mitchell.
Gutmann and Cohen were in familiar territory as they spoke at the university’s global policy engagement hub — Gutmann was Penn’s president for 18 years (the school’s longest-serving president) and Cohen, who for decades wielded significant political influence in Philadelphia and beyond, is a Penn Law grad and served as chair of the university Board of Trustees for nearly 12 years.
Before Biden appointed them as ambassadors, his connections to Gutmann and Cohen ran through Philly. After completing two terms as vice president in 2017, Biden snagged a lucrative presidential practice professorship at Penn while Gutmann was president. When Biden later launched his presidential campaign, his first formal event took place at Cohen’s West Mount Airy home, where more than $700,000 was raised for his bid.
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During the hour-long discussion Tuesday, the two former ambassadors focused on the hardships that they said foreign policy from Trump — a 1968 Penn grad — is creating for the nation’s strongest, closest international partners.
“Having allies and knowing who your allies are is incredibly important for the United States,” Gutmann said.
She said that Germany’s support for the U.S. has become so strong that Germans are “mourning … when somebody in America, especially the chief, the president of America, calls Ukraine, the Ukrainian president, a ‘dictator’ and doesn’t call [Russian President Vladimir] Putin one, or blames Ukraine for starting a war when Putin actually was the clear aggressor.”
And on Canada, Cohen said he feels its citizens are hurt more by Trump’s rhetoric to annex the country as a 51st state than by blanket tariffs on many of the country’s exports, which have caused uncertainty in Canada and worldwide.
Canada having to defend itself against the U.S. has been a long-standing sore spot for its citizens, Cohen said, and he believes that Trump “knew how sensitive Canada would be to” suggesting the U.S. absorb its northern neighbor, and that the president and former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have a “personal antipathy.”
“Donald Trump does a lot of things wrong,” Cohen said. “One of the things he gets right is he knows vulnerabilities. He knows how to needle people and countries, and talking about Canada being the 51st state, I believe he knew how sensitive Canada would be to this.”
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The ambassadors also discussed the implications of top U.S. political figures embracing far-right parties and leaders on the international stage. Cohen said alliances between the U.S. and other countries are even more important now amid the global rise of right-wing entities.
“It’s a time for alliances to be even more important, for people to look for even more ways to work together and to preserve those alliances, and not to let a Donald Trump or a Putin or any of these other right-wing movements take over the conversation and the dialogue," he said.
In February, Vice President JD Vance met with Alice Weidel, the leader of the rising far-right German political party Alternative for Deutschland (AfD), and, to the shock of many at the Munich Security Conference, urged the country’s other political parties to work with her. Elon Musk, Trump’s billionaire adviser who leads the Department of Government Efficiency, endorsed Weidel and held an X Spaces talk with her ahead of Germany’s election, similar to his strategy to deliver a Trump win in Pennsylvania.
The AfD doubled its support in the German election, becoming the nation’s second-largest party.
“Nothing could be more horrifying for Germans to have their greatest ally since World War II — the ally that 80% of Germans will tell you immediately saved us from the Nazis, saved us from our worst selves, their greatest ally — ally with the neo-Nazi party,” Gutmann said.
The path forward, Gutmann said: “a lot of diplomacy” and “a big sea change in our politics at the top.”