by Elodie Bagnol and Biodun Iginla, The Economist Intelligence Unit News Analysts
Transatlantic ructions
Allies aghast at Emmanuel Macron’s dismissal of NATO
Even French security experts worry about their president’s claim that the alliance is becoming brain-dead
FOR MONTHS, NATO officials have fretted that a summit of alliance leaders in London on December 3rd might be soured by an impolitic remark by Donald Trump. They didn’t count on Emmanuel Macron. In an interview with The Economist published on November 7th, the president of France declared that NATO was experiencing “brain death”. He cast doubt on Article Five, the alliance’s collective-defence clause, and said he was not sure whether America would show up to defend Europe in a crisis.
Mr Macron was saying no more than has been murmured in chancelleries and think-tanks for years, particularly since the election of Mr Trump, who has called NATO “obsolete” and chastised allies for failing to spend enough on defence. But Mr Macron’s willingness to say it out loud worries NATO.
On the same morning as Mr Macron’s bombshell landed, Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary-general, was giving a speech in Berlin. Though not intended as a riposte to the French president, it might as well have been. Mr Macron had boasted that the EU’s new defence schemes showed that “Europe has the capacity to defend itself”. Mr Stoltenberg welcomed those projects, but scoffed at the idea that they could substitute for America’s might, declaring: “The European Union cannot defend Europe.”
Mr Stoltenberg pointed out that once Britain left the bloc, 80% of NATO’s defence spending would come from non-EU allies. Germany would be left as the only EU member leading one of the alliance's four forward-deployed battlegroups in eastern Europe (France has sporadically contributed a handful of troops to the British-led deployment in Estonia). “European unity”, he concluded, “cannot replace transatlantic unity”.
Many countries in NATO agree. Eastern European allies are particularly suspicious about anything that might push America away—or worse, give Russia a whiff of Western weakness. Slawomir Debski, director of the Polish Institute of International Affairs, a think-tank close to the government, says that Mr Macron’s ambition for European defence “is seen in Warsaw as a dangerous mirage”. That view is widespread east of the Oder river. “Macron sees this as a last ditch effort by the EU to be a player in 21st-century geopolitics,” says Jamie Shea, who until last year was deputy assistant secretary-general at NATO. “But the idea of strategic autonomy has not yet taken off.”
Others share Mr Macron’s doubts, but believe that for a leader to express them publicly amounts to diplomatic malpractice. Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor—who herself called on Europe to “take its destiny in its own hands” in 2017 and last year called for “a real, true European army”—admonished Mr Macron for his “drastic words” and “sweeping blow”. She insisted that NATO remained a cornerstone of German security.
Even many French observers sympathetic to Mr Macron have been taken aback. “NATO’s power rests not on tanks or bombs but on the notion that when crisis comes it will act as one. Raising doubt on Article Five is by itself pronouncing it dead,” says Fabrice Pothier, a former head of policy planning for Mr Stoltenberg, and a member of Mr Macron’s political party, La République en Marche. François Heisbourg, a former French defence official who advised Mr Macron’s presidential campaign on national security, says the remarks are “very disturbing”.
The kindest interpretation of Mr Macron’s comments is that, ahead of the NATO summit, he is seeking to deliver a “double wake-up call to both the US and to Europe”, as Mr Shea puts it: telling America to recommit itself to Europe’s defence and Europe to take its own security seriously. The danger is that it will merely push the two sides apart, and strengthen Mr Trump’s belief in “America first”. That could make for a rocky summit.
Dig Deeper
Cover leader (November 7th): “A continent in peril”
Briefing (November 7th): A president on a missionTranscript: Emmanuel Macron in his own words
The Intelligence podcast: “He talked about Europe in almost apocalyptic terms”— Macron's interview
Briefing (November 7th): A president on a missionTranscript: Emmanuel Macron in his own words
The Intelligence podcast: “He talked about Europe in almost apocalyptic terms”— Macron's interview
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