Trump: Macron’s Puppet in the Pursuit of Europe’s Strategic Autonomy

Many Europeans currently feel very frustrated and indeed discouraged by what they rightly perceive as a fundamental betrayal by Donald Trump.

But there is one man in Paris who definitely sees things very differently. Remember all the occasions when Emmanuel Macron, the French President, called for Europe’s strategic autonomy?

Just a lofty vision?

Macron first presented his ideas in September 2017 in a speech at the Sorbonne, notably still during the first year in office of what we now know as the first Trump administration.

While he called on Europe to wake up, Macron’s vision was dismissed outright — not just initially, but also on a continuous basis.

It was largely viewed as a typically French performance act exhibiting a strong penchant for bombast. Macron’s wakeup call was seen as either too ambitious, too lofty or just otherwise out of place.

Message from Germany: Don’t upset the apple cart

Major EU nations — especially Germany and Italy — preferred to disregard Macron’s arguments because they were uncomfortable about engaging in anything that would potentially require higher defense outlays.

They also were not prepared to rethink their commercially comfortable — if strategically dubious — relationships with nations such as Russia and China.

Macron obviously felt very frustrated by this reaction. In his view, his fellow Europeans evidently could not see the writing on the wall. They were lacking any strategic sense of their own medium and long-term needs.

The U.S.A. forever?

Dismissing his plan as just another French scheme to punch above that nation’s weight obviously irked the man in the Élysée.

So did suggestions that there was no need to engage in any “autonomy” plan — strategic or otherwise — because the United States was not only a long-standing and solid European ally but would remain that way.

In recent years, it was particularly the Germans — notably under a left-of-center government — who thought it much wiser to convince themselves that the United States, even after Trump’s return for another term in the White House, would stand by Europe.

The art of waiting

In the end, it turns out that all Macron had to do was wait.

As recently as after his latest visit to the White House to help protect Ukraine, Macron was criticized for leaning over backwards in order to placate and charm Donald Trump.

Trump‘s long-distance puppeteer

What most people did not recognize at the time was that Macron was there in his capacity as Donald Trump‘s long-distance puppeteer.

Simply put, Macron, the cool analyst, knows his Donald better than most other people — and definitely better than all other Europeans.

Who played whom?

The irascible, childish, vain, hyper-narcissistic and completely ADD-driven 47th President of the United States dutifully played his part in letting Europe finally come to terms with the fact that embracing Macron’s “strategic autonomy” concept was a real need.

Virtually every move Trump has made in his second term so far was and is instrumental in convincing virtually all of Europe, pretty much overnight, that the “old world” had no other choice than to rapidly live up to Macron’s earlier demands about aiming for the strategic autonomy for Europe.

Without Donald Trump living up precisely to the role that fit beautifully into Macron’s grand design, most Europeans would still be thinking of Vladimir Putin as no real threat.

They would happily delude themselves that the contemporary world did not need serious investments in defense and in security.

But now that Donald Trump has pulled the rug from under all those delusions, Macron can take great credit for his earlier call.

Making up for the 1950s?

In a way, he could argue that an earlier failed French effort in the early 1950s, to establish a European Defense Community, may now be on the verge of getting repaired.

Of course, to be effective, Macron’s vision needs to extend far beyond the military and intelligence services. He knows that France’s reach and heft is limited. Only a Europe coming together in many fields of industry can give Europeans a realistic shot at securing their own future.

Who would have ever imagined that Donald Trump would so unwittingly — but effectively — turn himself into a tool of the strategic concept of France’s President?