Trump walks alone at WWI ceremony
Macron speaks out against nationalism, unilateral approach
PARIS — In what appeared to be a direct rebuke, French President Emmanuel Macron warned President Donald Trump and other leaders Sunday that a dark new tide of nationalism, the label Trump recently embraced for his “America First” movement, ignores the painful lessons of history and threatens a fragile global order.
“Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism. Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism,” Macron said as Trump sat, unsmiling, with more than 100 other world leaders at the Arc de Triomphe, a commemoration of the moment when World War I ended 100 years ago.
“Old demons are coming back to the surface,” Macron said, citing the dangerous resurgence of the ethnic and religious hatred that led to that devastating conflict — and the cataclysmic global war that followed three decades later.
Macron’s address reflected the widespread anger and concern in Europe about Trump’s belligerent rhetoric and policies, which have put his administration at odds with America’s closest allies and challenged the alliances and institutions built to ensure peace since the end of WWII.
Trump’s go-it-alone approach on climate change, the Iran nuclear deal and trade, among other issues, was symbolized when he walked apart from the dozens of world leaders who marched together under black umbrellas down the rain-soaked ChampsÉlysées for the Armistice Day ceremony.
Aides said he had arrived separately in a motorcade for security reasons. Despite the November chill and the security cordon, a topless woman with “fake,” “peace” and other words written on her body managed to run near Trump’s vehicle.
Trump also attended a lunch Sunday with world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin. The event was closed to the press.
Europe’s unease
Trump left Paris late Sunday to fly back to Washington, skipping a three-day forum that Macron hosted with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to galvanize global action on shared challenges, including climate change.
Merkel warned against taking peace for granted.
“We have to work for it,” she said.
She also made a veiled dig at Trump’s attacks on multilateral organizations, saying “unwillingness to compromise” can have deadly consequences.
Macron’s address Sunday was an effective rebuttal to Trump’s September address to the U.N. General Assembly, where he defined globalism as the opposite of patriotism.
Europe’s liberal Democratic leaders have felt threatened by a rising tide of right-wing populist nationalism in Poland, Hungary, Russia and elsewhere, even as Trump challenged the trans-Atlantic alliance. Britain’s decision to leave the EU, followed by Trump’s election victory in 2016, cemented that anxiety.
The EU now faces unprecedented strains from a backlash to a migrant flood from Africa and the Middle East, a decadelong financial crisis that has worsened inequality in many areas and a bevy of far-right politicians who have exploited ancient ethnic divisions and fears.
Merkel was the public face of European resistance to the revival of right-wing nationalism, but she recently announced plans to resign as her party’s leader.
Macron, who tried to charm Trump last year by inviting him to a Bastille Day military parade and dinner atop the Eiffel Tower, has increasingly assumed Merkel’s role.
WWI scars and silence
As U.S. president, Trump sat front row center at the centennial ceremony Sunday. He received a handshake from Macron and a thumbs up from Putin under a temporary structure that protected them from an onslaught of rain.
But Macron’s speech was not designed to comfort Trump, who sat between Merkel and his wife Melania.
Macron recounted the suffering inflicted by WWI — more than 16 million soldiers and civilians killed, millions more maimed and wounded, and the shelling, slaughter and poison gas that laid waste to vast swaths of Europe, “the scars of which are still visible.”
The lesson of WWI, he said, “cannot be rancor and resentment against other nations, and it cannot be allowing the past to be forgotten.”
Macron did not name Trump or his “America First” stand. But he cast nationalism as a dangerous and selfish ideology, one that led to two world wars.
“By saying, ‘Our interests first, who cares about the others?,’ we erase what a nation holds dearest, what gives it life, what gives it grace and what is essential for its moral values,” Macron said.
Trump gave no public response to the speech. He posted Sunday that he had attended a “beautiful ceremony” and thanked Macron.
Macron’s speech was the centerpiece of a memorial service that commemorated the moment the guns went silent in 1918 — on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month — after four years of unremitting carnage.
Trump and other leaders did not speak at the ceremony, but Trump spoke later at a Veterans Day commemoration at the Suresnes American Cemetery just outside of Paris.
Trump, who stood in a light rain without an umbrella, said he had come to “pay tribute to the brave Americans who gave their last breath in that mighty struggle.”
The ceremony, on a hilltop with distant views of the Eiffel Tower, featured French and American flags and a bugler playing taps for more than 1,500 U.S. soldiers interred here. Before speaking, Trump wandered briefly between the spare white crosses that line the field.