Oops, he’s done it again.
In an interview on his way back from a state visit to China, French President Emmanuel Macron set foreign policy circles alight by saying that Europe should avoid being America’s follower — including on the matter of Taiwan’s security.
Coming after chummy photo-ops with Chinese President Xi Jinping and as China was unleashing a simulated attack on Taiwan, which the U.S. has pledged to defend, the comments set off a firestorm of reactions, with everyone from Senator Marco Rubio to former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul weighing in.
But for people who have followed Macron for years, the episode had a strong feeling of déjà vu.
Once again, a bombshell interview prompted a global outcry, followed by attempts to “clarify” or re-translate the French leader’s thinking. It was a repeat of when Macron told The Economist, back in 2019, that NATO was experiencing “brain death,” and of when he insisted on offering Russian President Vladimir Putin “security guarantees” months after his invasion of Ukraine.
Here we go again.
In the hours after the interview with POLITICO and Les Echos was published, a cast of Macron interpreters surfaced to explain that his comments had not only been mistranslated (they were not), but misunderstood by an Anglo-Saxon media ill-equipped to understand his pensée complexe.
“Macron is much closer to the European center of gravity on China than the numerous scandalized comments on his comments would suggest,” wrote Benjamin Haddad, a lawmaker in the French leader’s party.
The question is: Why does this keep happening? If it is truly a matter of the president’s words being warped and misunderstood by biased foreign media, then the frequency with which it happens is truly worrisome — and unlikely.
Much more likely is that Macron knows exactly which words will set the international alarm bells ringing, and employs them to appeal to a domestic audience that enjoys the spectacle of France flipping off the United States.
He could use the distraction. For the past few weeks, Macron’s government has been under siege at home, beset by protests against his plan to raise the legal age of retirement to 64 from 62 currently. The president’s government narrowly survived a vote of no confidence on March 20, and the president’s own approval rating has tanked.
But his comments about China, the United States and Taiwan, no matter how newsworthy, are unlikely to have any effect on that situation. In France, as in other democracies, foreign policy takes a back seat in the minds of voters to economic and social issues. On Tuesday, his comments were not the top story in most French media.
So there’s little to no upside for Macron on the home front. But there is a very large and still growing downside for him on the international stage, where his comments are not only sparking furious criticism from U.S. lawmakers, but also bringing uncomfortable scrutiny to his favored concept of “strategic autonomy.” The Americans are questioning France’s steadfastness as an ally, when they are doing the heavy lifting in arming Ukraine against Russia, but can now doubt whether Macron sees a Communist Chinese invasion of democratic Taiwan as a matter of any strategic interest to Europe.
At the heart of his comments on Cotam Unité, France’s equivalent to Air Force One, Macron said that France was winning the argument about strategic autonomy on the European stage. It was natural that Europe shouldn’t follow the U.S. lead on Taiwan because the bloc’s priorities were focused on bolstering security and prosperity in its own neighborhood.
But as critics were quick to point out, France’s role in promoting autonomy even in Europe has been questionable. With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, most European leaders agree the bloc faces its most serious security challenge in decades, as losing Ukraine could embolden Moscow to chip away at the EU’s eastern flank.
Yet France is no leader when it comes to supporting Ukraine. According to data compiled by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, as of late February, France was ranked 10th in terms of its overall aid commitments to Ukraine, behind Norway and the Netherlands, and 23rd when the aid was measured as a share of gross domestic product — hence a growing furor among Central and Eastern European powers over the Taiwan comments.
Sure, these critics are saying — feel free to make us autonomous from the United States. But will France extend the same security guarantees to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as NATO does?
The data on Ukraine aid suggests this is unlikely. Indeed, when it comes to the core military component of the strategic autonomy dream, France is far from putting its money where its mouth is in terms of Europe sticking up for itself without American help. The Kiel Institute calculates Paris has made military commitments to Ukraine of only €700 million, versus €43.2 billion from the U.S. and €6.6 billion from the U.K. In that context, Macron’s concept of strategic autonomy really doesn’t appear to reach far beyond France’s immediate neighborhood.
As with any repeat performance, there are signs the audience for Macron’s foreign policy bombshell interviews, even in France, is growing tired. Referring to the backlash over his Taiwan comments, the Le Monde daily wrote: “When misunderstandings occur with such frequency, a certain practice of foreign policy is to be questioned.”
