Party of the new order
Senior AfD foreign affairs spokespersons endorse US violence against Venezuela. The far-right party widens the common ground with conservatives as it eyes a potential AfD-CDU/CSU coalition ‘aligning Germany with a new order’.
BERLIN/WASHINGTON (own report) – Leading AfD foreign policy figures are endorsing the Trump administration’s policy of military force against Venezuela. By backing the line adopted by senior Christian Democrats, including Chancellor Friedrich Merz himself, the far-right ‘Alternative für Deutschland’ is widening the common ground shared by the parties and enabling a future coalition. AfD leaders had already demonstrated a clear desire for closer transatlantic cooperation in their many visits to the United States. They have repeatedly met with figures from the Trump administration and the MAGA movement. The AfD understands that support for US policy is indispensable to any role in a future German government. Back in the autumn we saw members of the CDU, CSU and AfD, along with conservative and far-right members of the European Parliament from other countries, voting together to bring down the so-called “cordon sanitaire”. A serious precedent was thus set by the joint push to dispense with any “firewall” against extremism in European politics. The Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy explicitly promotes the inclusion of far-right parties in government coalitions across Europe. The AfD, with its acceptance of the Washington’s blatant policy of violence against Venezuela, can now distinguish itself as a party that, in the words of an expert from the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), is “aligning the country and the continent to a new order”.
At the White House
Exchanges between the AfD and sections of the Republican Party and the MAGA movement have noticeably intensified since the autumn. In September, Beatrix von Storch, who is deputy chair of the AfD parliamentary group in the Bundestag, was received for talks at the White House, where she met with staff members working for Vice President JD Vance, among others.[1] At the end of September, two AfD members of the Bundestag (Markus Frohnmaier, foreign policy spokesman for the AfD parliamentary group, and Jan Wenzel Schmidt, member of the parliamentary group’s foreign affairs team) travelled to Washington, where they held talks with, among others, Darren Beattie, an influential figure in the State Department. In the other direction, one of US President Donald Trump’s social media campaign strategists, Alex Bruesewitz, visited Berlin at the end of October to coach the AfD parliamentary group in effective PR techniques for online campaigning. Bruesewitz declared, to the applause of AfD politicians, that they were fighting a “spiritual war for the soul of our nations” against “Marxists” and “globalists”.[2]
Accoladed by the Young Republican Club
In mid-December, around twenty AfD politicians travelled again to the United States, this time to New York, where they attended the annual gala event of the New York Young Republican Club. The organisation, whose members are Republican Party members aged between 18 and 40, is considered part of the party’s right wing and has close relations with leading circles of the MAGA movement. The reason for the AfD’s participation was the presentation of the Allen Welsh Dulles Award to Frohnmaier. The prize, named after the notorious CIA director (1953 to 1961), is awarded to individuals who, in the opinion of the New York Young Republicans, particularly embody Dulles’s “aggressive anti-Marx spirit”. The reason given for accolading Frohnmaier was that he had earned the honour through the “courageous work the AfD is doing in Germany’s repressive and hostile political climate”.[3] Shortly before the award, Frohnmaier met with Sarah Rogers, an undersecretary at the US State Department. She had been highlighting cases of alleged political censorship in Europe in a video released in early December. Her attack only concerned measures against the extreme right.
‘Civilizational erasure’
Frohnmaier subsequently reported that he had, in particular, discussed the new US National Security Strategy with Rogers. The strategy document was published by the Trump administration at the beginning of December. A key focus is on the subjugation of Latin America and the Caribbean to restore total US dominance.[4] But it also praises the “growing influence of patriotic parties in Europe”, meaning parties such as the AfD and other members of the Patriots for Europe (PfE) alliance in the EU. Trump’s new strategy announces efforts directed at “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations”. It calls for opposition to forces that have dominated Europe to date, including those who accept refugee rights. The paper states that current migration policies will lead to “civilizational erasure” (german-foreign-policy.com reported [5]). The similarities between the AfD and the MAGA movement form a basis for further and deeper cooperation going forward. Frohnmaier has even announced that he invited US State Department officials and members of Congress to an event to be held in Germany around the same time as the Munich Security Conference.[6]
Great powers in action?
As the AfD increasingly cosies up to the MAGA movement and the Trump administration, it is taking an important step towards becoming acceptable for a coalition role. Without having to abandon its substantive far-right positions, the AfD has demonstrated a willingness to engage in transatlantic collaboration that is considered indispensable for potential coalition partners – specifically the CDU-CSU. At the same time, the AfD is shaking off the stigma of being solely fixated on Russia in its foreign policy. The US strikes on Venezuela have now given the party another opportunity to demonstrate its closeness to the Christian Union parties. Just like Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul, Frohnmaier has refrained from calling out the illegality of the United States’ policy of violence. He has also claimed that the Venezuelan people are not shedding any tears for Maduro, so anyone who now turns “against the US” is reacting ‘hyper-morally’.[7] “Great powers do what great powers have always done,” explains Frohnmaier. The task for Germany is now to “learn to deal with this better and respond to it.”[8] AfD foreign policy expert Matthias Moosdorf also rejects the restraints of international law: “the decisive factor” is “what great powers actually do”[9] Researcher Jacob Ross from the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) is quoted as saying, with reference to the power play of major powers, that the profile now presented by the AfD is a party “aligning the country and the continent to a new order”.[10]
Strengthening foundations for a coalition
The willingness shared by the majority in the CDU and CSU to refrain from any criticism of the United States’ politics of military might widens the common ground between Germany’s far-right and the conservative centre-right. In November, conservative and far-right parties in the European Parliament, including the CDU/CSU and AfD, voted together for a massive watering down of the Supply Chain Directive, which Social Democrats and Greens had hoped to make an effective legal instrument. This voting alliance broke the “cordon sanitaire” or “firewall” for the first time on a really significant policy decision. In a parallel development, small and medium-sized enterprises in the German economy decided they could publicly engage in dialogue with the AfD (german-foreign-policy.com reported [11]). And even before the federal election, Friedrich Merz as the CDU leader had pushed through an anti-refugee motion in the Bundestag with a majority enabled by AfD support. The foundations for a possible future coalition have been laid and the common ground is steadily expanding.
[1] See: „Kein Platz für Brandmauern“.
[2] James Angelos, Sascha Roslyakov: Trump adviser to Germany’s far-right AfD: “We are in this together”. politico.eu 06.11.2025.
[3] Kilian Pfeffer: Die AfD sucht Anschluss in den USA. tagesschau.de 13.12.2025.
[4] See: Die Unterwerfung Lateinamerikas.
[5] National Security Strategy of the United States of America. November 2025. S. dazu Der neue Transatlantikpakt.
[6] Hussein Waaile, Sarah Marsh: German far-right lawmaker calls for US-German nationalist alliance at MAGA gala. reuters.com 14.12.2025.
[7] The Pioneer: Das Briefing. 05.01.2026.
[8] „Wir müssen zur Kenntnis nehmen, dass es eine regelbasierte Ordnung nie richtig gab“. welt.de 05.01.2026.
[9], [10] The Pioneer: Das Briefing. 05.01.2026.
[11] See „Kein Platz für Brandmauern“ (II).
