Serge Schmemann hosted a video conversation with three former European diplomats, Wolfgang Ischinger of Germany, Judith Gough of Britain and Gabrielius Landsbergis of Lithuania, to talk about how the Trump administration has profoundly shaken the U.S.-European foundation of shared ideals, commitment to freedom, economic ties and democratic values.

Serge Schmemann: What I’d like to ask you, as three prominent former diplomats, is to reflect on what America meant to you in your work, how you react personally to the administration’s approach to the bonds with Europe and what you believe the impact may be on the world.

Wolfgang Ischinger: My personal ties to the United States have gone far beyond the professional realm. I’ve spent a total of more than a dozen years in the country — as a high school student, as a postgraduate student at Harvard Law School, as a young diplomat and then in the early 2000s for almost five years as ambassador.

We had issues in those days, especially over the Iraq war. But I felt very confident as a German in the 1990s or 2000s that for the first time in many decades Germany was now on the right side of history, that after the years under the kaiser and then the Nazis, Germany was identifying with the West and invited to be part of the West — especially by the United States. So the German relationship with the United States until now has been something that created tremendous joy and satisfaction for Germans.

That is why I think what has happened in the West between the United States and her European allies and others has created more pain, more convulsion, more crisis in the mind of German elites than in the minds of most other European elites.

Schmemann: Ms. Gough, can you identify a specific moment or situation in which the United States was critical to your own outlook?