Europe sounds increasingly French - The Economist - 06.03.25
Michael Julien- Mar 10
- 2 min read
The continent confronts a future without Trump’s America.
“The real victim of this affair”, he concluded, is “the Atlantic alliance…If our
allies have abandoned us in difficult, if not dramatic, circumstances, they would
be capable of doing it again if Europe in turn found itself in danger.”
A European leader today responding to Donald Trump’s brazen decision to
suspend American military aid to Ukraine? In fact this was Christian Pineau, the
French foreign minister, after the Suez crisis in 1956.
Then, America forced Britain and France to pull back from their joint military adventure. Britain
concluded that it had to hug America close; France, that Europe needed to stand
on its own feet.
In response, Charles de Gaulle, founder of the modern French republic, went on
to develop France’s independent nuclear deterrent and, in 1966, to pull out of
NATO’s military command. Ever since, devotion to the Gaullist doctrine has
been as central to mainstream thinking on the left and right in France as it has
been dismissed, and mocked, by European friends as Gallic grandstanding.
No longer. Atlanticist Europeans are turning Gaullist. Mette Frederiksen,
Denmark’s prime minister, led the way after Mr Trump threatened to annex
Greenland. “Everyone in Europe can see that it will be a different collaboration
with the USA now,” she warned.
Friedrich Merz, Germany’s probable future chancellor and another staunch Atlanticist, went further, urging Europe to “achieve independence” from America. “We have all turned into Gaullists,” said
Caspar Veldkamp, the Dutch foreign minister.
Paris is quietly smug. Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, has been warning
fellow Europeans since he was first elected in 2017 about “a gradual and
inevitable disengagement by the United States”, urging them to build “Europe’s
autonomous operating capabilities”.
Which may help explain why, as discombobulating as Mr Trump’s behaviour is, the French are less floored than other Europeans by the prospect of doing without America.
The trouble with France’s case is that it has not matched its urgent speeches
with a proportionate rise in defence spending. The country has only just
exceeded NATO’s 2014 target of 2% of GDP. The problem for its allies is that
disentangling dependence on America is, in the short run, almost impossible. ■
french
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The general who got it right - Photograph: Getty Images
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