Trump crosses signals, swords with Macron
“We will not protect Europeans if we do not decide to have a real European army,” Macron said on the show. “Faced with Russia, which is on our borders and has shown that it can be threatening, we must have a Europe that defends itself more alone, and without depending only on the United States, and in a more sovereign way.”
Trump should support Macron on this issue rather than criticize him. Macron wants Europe to do exactly what Trump wants it to do: pull its own weight and pay for its own defense.
Even before he was elected president in May 2017, Macron was saying he wanted to carve out an independent role for France in the same tradition as the country’s most respected former head of state, Charles de Gaulle. That meant making decisions that are best for France and its European partners, decisions that may or may not jibe with the interests of the U.S.
Some of Trump’s recent actions on the global front would seem to justify Macron’s pursuit of French and European foreign-policy independence and greater military capability. While the Trump administration has been pressured to ramp up sanctions against Russia, for example, Europe has been more reluctant to harm its own business and trading interests with an important neighbor.
Likewise, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that Trump’s hostile stance toward Iran has been dictated by special interests and backroom dealing involving his closest advisers, and that he’s being encouraged to cozy up to Iran’s regional foes — namely Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Israel. Those three countries have arguably done far more to compromise U.S. policy than Russia has.
Macron has shown that France isn’t going to just blindly follow any finger-inthe-wind foreign policy dictated by America. France and Germany, two signatories to the Iran nuclear deal that Trump abandoned, are exploring workarounds to U.S. sanctions against Iran with their European partners.
France has to do what’s best for France, and that doesn’t always mean kowtowing to U.S. interests. It’s a position that Trump should not only understand but support.