“They’ve learned nothing and forgotten nothing,” French Foreign Minister Talleyrand is claimed to have complained about the Bourbon monarchs exiled after the French Revolution.
If President Emmanuel Macron’s senseless trip to Beijing and the anti-American overtones of his musings on Europe’s “strategic autonomy” are any indication, similarly few lessons have been learned by France’s current leaders from the past 14 months.
Predictably, Macron didn’t persuade Xi Jinping to sentence Russia’s war with Ukraine. And although he was accompanied by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, the “Jovian” leader couldn’t resist the temptation to place himself in the highlight, as if speaking for the entire European Union.
Nobody should fall for this: Macron only represents his weak parliamentary majority and his oversized ego, not Europeans on the whole.
On the presidential plane home, Macron asserted that Europeans shouldn’t “just follow America” and “get caught up in crises that are usually not ours” – namely, they’re expected to assist defend Taiwan from possible Chinese aggression.
Repeating US President Joe Biden’s mistake after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine when he ruled out US boots on the ground, Macron essentially assured Xi that France wouldn’t lift a finger at Taiwan if China accelerated the invasion.
Along with bypassing the growing cohort of European voices that express solidarity with Taiwan – resembling the governments of Lithuania or the Czech Republic – Macron’s undercut Von der Leyen’s recent warnings against “Beijing’s military show in the South China Sea and East China Sea,” which she says “directly affects our partners and their legitimate interests.”
In reality, it even undermined the message of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to Beijing during his last visit, which was to induce China to NO try to vary the establishment by force.
In one other unsolicited jab at the US, Macron called for Europe to be less depending on the US dollar to stop the continent from becoming a “vassal” of Washington.
Speaking as if US aid to Ukraine or Finland’s (and Sweden’s) accession to NATO played no role in Europe’s security, Macron called for Europe’s “strategic autonomy” as a approach to avoid siding with the US on necessary geopolitical issues.
The idea of ”strategic autonomy” coined by Macron is a textbook example of “motte and bailey”, perhaps the oldest trick in the demagogue’s toolkit. In rhetoric, “motte and bailey” involves the combination of two vaguely related propositions: the reasonable and simply defensible (“motte”) and the more extreme, controversial (“bailey”).
A radical version of “strategic autonomy” or “bailey” is to argue that Europeans must act independently of the US on necessary current issues and ignore Washington’s interests. This, after all, is unacceptable for the countries on NATO’s eastern flank – including Lithuania, the Czech Republic and Poland – whose survival will depend on American security guarantees.
Right when pressed at this point by as a journalist, Macron immediately retreated to the motte, arguing that Europe’s strategic autonomy might be seen in its efforts to secure semiconductor supply chains, sourcing critical raw materials, subsidizing its green transition and revitalizing its defense industry base for Ukraine’s defence.
These are actually worthwhile goals. Nonetheless, their implementation doesn’t require Europeans to act “autonomously” in relation to the United States – quite the opposite.
Since the founding of NATO, Americans have been asking Europeans to speculate more of their defense capabilities, including strengthening the defense industry through government contracts. Generally, the interests of Europe and the US coincide on the subject of supply chain security and protection from extortion by our adversaries.
Macron’s loose speech about an expansive, Baileyian version of Europe’s strategic autonomy may very well be an excellent approach to get the French president into the highlight he craves. Nonetheless, spreading such ideas publicly can be the easiest approach to prevent an actual rift between the US and Europe.
The French may enjoy the luxury of pondering their alliance with the United States is optional. Only a few European governments – perhaps with the exception of Viktor Orbán’s Hungary – share this view.
Dalibor Rohac is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC. Twitter: @DaliborRohac.