French President Emmanuel Macron has suggested that Europe needs to strengthen its defence posture, claiming that China, Russia, and the United States are all opposed to the interests of the old continent.
On a visit with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Athens on Friday, President Macron continued his push for Europe to re-arm itself in light of the supposed unreliability of the United States under President Trump, who has himself long called for Europe to pay more for its own defence.
Nevertheless, Macron yet again attempted to cast such a rearmament as being contrary to the interests of the United States.
Speaking from the Roman Forum in Athens, the French president said, per Le Figaro, that Europe is going through a “unique moment” in which there are “an American president, a Russian president and a Chinese president” who are all “fiercely opposed to the Europeans”.
Macron said there is now “doubt about Article 5”, referring to the provision in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) charter that ensures all members of the alliance would come to the defence of another if attacked.
While President Trump has consistently maintained that the United States would honour the agreement, he and top members of his administration have questioned the current status quo of the alliance and whether it continues to benefit America and its citizens.
This has come to the fore in recent weeks after multiple NATO allies refused or restricted access to military bases in their countries or territories for the United States to use as it dismantled the Islamist regime in Iran.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that after the conflict with Iran has been concluded, the relationship between the U.S. and NATO will have to be “re-examined”.
“If NATO is just about us defending Europe if they’re attacked, but them denying us basing rights when we need them, then that’s not a very good arrangement. That’s a hard one to stay engaged in and say this is good for the United States,” he said last month.
The White House has reportedly been drawing up various possible post-war reactions to the stance of some European nations. This came to the fore this week after an alleged internal Pentagon memo listed several options, including pushing for the removal of Socialist Spain from the alliance over its outright refusal to allow the U.S. to use its bases.
According to Reuters, the memo also suggested that Washington could “review” its position on the UK’s ownership of the Falkland Islands, an archipelago off Argentina’s Patagonia coast that has been under British control for centuries.
While the suggestions in the allegedly leaked memo in no way reflect current White House policy, critics of President Trump in Britain and elsewhere have attempted to invoke the memory of the 1982 war between Buenos Aires and London while claiming that it was Trump’s proposal and that it therefore demonstrated that America is an “unreliable” ally.
This sentiment was echoed by President Macron in Athens, saying that although the U.S. President remains an ally, he is not “reliable” or “predictable”. In contrast, the French leader claimed that the European Union is the paragon of reliability and predictability.
It comes as Macron, who is entering his final year in office, is seeking to vastly expand French military might across Europe, particularly by extending Paris’ nuclear umbrella across the continent, in what appears to be the makings of an EU Army.
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