On returning from his recent trip to China, French President Emmanuel Macron gave interviews that have ruffled feathers on both sides of the Atlantic. Memorably, he said that Europe cannot blindly follow the United States’ lead and should avoid “getting dragged into crises that are not our own.” This remark, which presumably refers to Taiwan, has caused some observers to claim that he is undercutting the trans-Atlantic front against China, even though he went on to reiterate France’s support for the status quo in Taiwan.
He expanded in a vein many commentators also found controversial: “Europeans cannot resolve the crisis in Ukraine; how can we credibly say on Taiwan, ‘watch out, if you do something wrong, we will be there?’” But this is hardly surprising: As part of his broader, ongoing pitch for “strategic autonomy,” Macron simply observed that Europeans would not be credible in Asia if they can’t tend to security issues in their own backyard—especially given that successive U.S. presidents, Republicans and Democrats alike, have asked Europeans to take greater ownership of their own security.
