What is wrong with French President Emmanuel Macron? The French head of state after his visit to China to persuade his counterpart Xi Jinping to achieve peace in Ukraine got nervous their European and North American allies.
In another of his small remarks, angering trade unionists and ordinary French citizens who marched across the country again this Thursday against pension reforms, he has now suggested: Europe must avoid blindly following Washington In the escalating confrontation with China over Taiwan.
After a three-day state visit to China, Macron exposed his cherished ideal of strategic independence For the EU to become a “third pole” or bloc, separated from the US and China, in an interview with Politico and French journalists, which at the Elysée later. edited and partially censored.
France seemed to assume it would be the leading force of the alliance.
France is one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and the only nuclear power in the EU with a large military force capable of operating internationally. But critics called out Macron’s comments weakened deterrence against Chinese aggression y: undermined support for the United States to Europe after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
alien crises
During his visit, Macron brokered lucrative trade deals for French companies and urged President Xi to “bring Russia to its senses” over Ukraine. Xi has said he supports peace talks between Kiev and Moscow, but said he does not want to lean on the Kremlin.
Macron said it was the “biggest risk” facing Europe being “trapped in crises that are not ours, This is a theme that Macron has repeatedly raised. With Donald Trump in the White House in 2019, Macron warned that Europe could no longer depend on the US to protect its NATO allies.
“The paradox would be that, overcome by panic, we believe it we are just USA fansMacron said: “The question that Europeans must answer is… Is it in our best interest to accelerate the crisis in Taiwan?” No, the worst would be to think that we Europeans should become followers of this issue and to follow the example of the American agenda and China’s overreaction.”
He argued that if the US and China started a conflict, “we would not have the time or the means to fund our strategic autonomy and would become vassals instead of a third pole.”
Macron’s visit coincided with talks between the president of Taiwan and the speaker of the US House of Representatives in California last week. Angered by the meeting, China launched military exercises near Taiwan, simulating a “siege” of the democratically-ruled island.
Sources close to Macron said he was relieved China waited until he had left Chinese airspace before launching the drills, seen by some as a possible invasion attempt. China considers Taiwan its territory, which the Taiwanese government rejects. The US has promised to defend the island if it is attacked.
Pierre Huskey, one of the French journalists who interviewed Macron and the former China correspondent, wrote on his Twitter page:
Censorship or editing?
Emmanuel Macron has sparked controversy over censorship force the Politico website to remove the comments “Candid” about Taiwan and Europe’s strategic autonomy from an interview during a visit to China.
Politico was one of three media outlets to interview Macron on the presidential plane as he flew from Beijing to Guangzhou in southern China on French Air Force One.
Diplomacy of Macron
The French president has been criticized in the past for telling Moscow cannot be “humiliated”. Any peace agreement with Ukraine. The French president believes that Europe should not allow itself to be drawn into “crises that are not its own”.
As with his verdict on NATO’s “brain death” in 2019, Emmanuel Macron unleashed a storm on his return from China among his allies, who accuse him of undermining transatlantic solidarity.
Emmanuel Macron plays in the Beijing game suggesting that France will remain neutral and on the sidelines in the scenario of a crisis in the Taiwan Strait,” commented Antoine Bondaz, a specialist at the Strategic Research Foundation (SRF).
These few sentences caused outrage in the Western world, where many remember that if the United States did not get involved in Europe to defend Ukraine, Vladimir Putin would would win the war.
|: They shocked the French strategic circles that remember that France has many interests in the region and that the Taiwan Strait is a major security issue for it in the Indo-Pacific regionthat you can’t ignore when the storm comes.
Emmanuel Macron’s behavior in China repeats his attempts against Vladimir Putin in Moscow. By February 24, 2022, he tried to dissuade Vladimir Putin from interfering, then tried to reason with him, and finally believed he could remove China from Russia.
Now he would like to lead Xi Jinping on the “path of peace” in Ukraine, although Beijing uses the dossier An attempt to weaken the US and divide transatlantic partners.
From China to the Netherlands
Macron communication disaster, except, of course, China, happy. this is how Emmanuel Macron’s state visit to China ended.
Came from China and left for Holland. Macron is cultivating a new ally to back his plan to reindustrialize the Old Continent. He arrived with his wife Brigitte on a two-day visit where he was honored by Dutch kings Willem and Maxima at a dinner and a seminar with Mark Rutte and seven members of the respective governments of the two countries. .
The last state visit of the French president was on Jacques Chirac day, 2000.
Emmanuel Macron knows well the dean of European leaders, Mark Rutte, who has been re-elected three times since 2010, a centrist like him. The two men regularly take each other out to dinner to informally discuss current issues. Rutte did not hide his last displeasure The scale of public expenditure allocated to pensions by France (15% of GDP).
“It’s been a year since the beginning of the war that positions have been approached, in particular, regarding the so-called “European sovereignty” and in particular the economic and industrial dimension,” it was noted in the presidential environment.
Post-Covid reindustrialization
Emmanuel Macron was due to attend a round table this Wednesday with industry leaders on semiconductors and quantum technologies, the emerging technology of supercomputers, a change that Europe should not miss.
The move should lead to an “innovation and sustainable growth agreement” between the two countries, a defense deal (although The Hague has opted to buy American F-35 fighter jets) and a joint declaration on energy.
As for nuclear power, which divides Europe, the Netherlands says it is willing to develop new reactors in addition to renewables, possibly an opportunity for France. “No one would have thought five years ago that we would discuss this,” they admit from the Dutch side.
But Macron was booed in The Hague when he spoke on Tuesday and again this Wednesday. Dutch police also arrested two protesters when they were running towards the president of France In the immediate vicinity of the University of Amsterdam. The pension crisis in France haunts him.
Paris, Correspondent
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