America has turned its back and left Nato brain dead, says Macron
Pushing for ever greater military integration won’t solve Europe’s dangerous over-reliance on America
NATO is experiencing “brain death” and America’s lack of willingness to defend its members has placed Europe “on the edge of a precipice,” Emmanuel Macron has warned.
The alliance “only works if the guarantor of last resort functions as such”, said the French president. “I’d argue that we should reassess the reality of what Nato is in the light of the commitment of the United States,” he told The
Economist. He said the signs were that
America under the presidency of Don- ald Trump was “turning its back on us”, as it demonstrated starkly with its unexpected troop withdrawal from north-eastern Syria last month, forsaking its Kurdish allies.
“What we are currently experiencing is the brain death of Nato,” said the French president in the interview conducted at the Elysée Palace on Oct 21.
When asked whether he believed in the effectiveness of Article 5, the principle that if one Nato member is attacked all would come to its aid, he said: “I don’t know, but what will Article 5 mean tomorrow?”
Europe is now dealing, for the first time, with a US president who “doesn’t share our idea of the European project”, he is cited as saying. At the same time, Europe is facing the rise of China and the authoritarian turn of regimes in Russia and Turkey. Internally, it is facing Brexit and political instability.
This toxic mix was “unthinkable five years ago,” Mr Macron argued. Europe stands on “the edge of a precipice”, he cautioned.
“If we don’t wake up ... there’s a considerable risk that in the long run we will disappear geopolitically, or at least that we will no longer be in control of our destiny.” Mr Macron defended
France’s controversial decision to unilaterally block EU enlargement in the western Balkans, arguing that it was “absurd” to open up the EU to new members before reforming accession procedures, although he said that he would be prepared to reconsider if such conditions were met.
Albania and North Macedonia were blocked from beginning membership talks by France in October.
Beyond market expansion, Europe must start thinking of itself as a strategic power, said the French president.
That should start with regaining “military sovereignty”, and reopening a dialogue with Russia despite suspicion from Poland and other countries that were once under Soviet domination.
Angela Merkel yesterday rejected Mr Macron’s view, saying that such comments were not necessary. “I don’t think that such sweeping judgments are necessary, even if we have problems and need to pull together,” said the German chancellor.
Is Nato really “brain dead”, as Emmanuel Macron has suggested? That may be a touch too strong, but there is an element of truth to much of the French president’s caustic commentary. With an increasingly antagonistic Turkey (incredibly still a Nato member, despite its closeness to the Kremlin and other opponents of the West) and confusion over how to stand up to the destabilising tactics of President Putin, the 70-year-old alliance faces troubling times.
This has only been compounded by Donald Trump’s lukewarm enthusiasm towards Nato. Mr Macron was harsh but fair in his criticism of how the United States handled its decision to withdraw from northern Syria, for example. “You have no coordination whatsoever of strategic decisionmaking between the United States and its Nato allies. None.”
But while the French president’s assessment of the state of Nato may have much to commend it, his ideas on how to turn the situation around are deeply flawed. The answer to US ambivalence is, he says, for Europe to fill the gap by taking on a greater strategic presence. It’s not an original idea. The concept of “European Strategic Autonomy” is something of a buzz phrase du jour among EU strategists who have had enough of living in the US shadow. Mr Macron himself, among others, has repeatedly floated the idea of an EU Army.
The reality, however, is that many of the European members of Nato have more strategic thinkers than deployable frontline tanks. And while Brexit won’t change Britain’s strategic value as a security ally for Europe, it will certainly complicate efforts to turn the EU into a substitute superpower.
Without London, the Paris-berlin axis will dominate Brussels more than ever but in security terms Germany is a microcosm of the EU – an economic superpower but a military pygmy. Apart from Britain and Poland, only
Greece and Turkey spend more than the bare minimum on defence – but the Turks and Greeks do that because they distrust each others’ intentions, not to contribute to the common cause.
Besides a lack of firepower, there are serious political questions about Mr Macron’s intentions, too. Continental Europe can hardly be said to speak with one voice. On everything from opening borders to resetting relations with Russia, achieving consensus across the bloc on foreign and security policy is likely to be just as difficult as it currently is for Nato, if not more so.
Instead of conning themselves into thinking they can do without their trans-atlantic ties, European members of the alliance need to start work on strengthening these links.
A good place to start would be next month’s Nato Summit in Watford. These gatherings have in the past been used by Mr Trump to take European leaders to task for their over-reliance on US resources and materiel. But what many Trump-haters fail to register is that a broad consensus in Washington – including a number of likely future presidents – shares, to varying degrees, Trump’s irritation with European fecklessness on defence.
They have a point. The German defence ministry – headed by Chancellor Merkel’s favoured successor Annegret Krampkarrenbauer – recently announced that it will only meet Nato’s two per cent of GDP spending target by 2031. Seeing the French president advocating European integration over simply stumping up their fair share is unlikely to improve the mood.
Europeans comfort themselves that when Mr Trump is gone things will return to normal, but that is an illusion. A less abrasive occupant of the White House might upset them less but future US presidents are no more likely to listen to them than the current one if they don’t start paying their way.
Seeking to lessen the reliance on America by widening the Atlantic won’t make Europeans more secure. Huddling under the tricoleur simply cannot provide the same security offered by the stars and stripes. Attacking Mr Trump makes many Europeans feel good but it doesn’t make us safer. Mr Macron has diagnosed what Europe gets wrong but his cure is a dangerous illusion.
Mark Almond is director of the Crisis Research Institute, Oxford