Tremors in the West: Why is Europe drifting away from America?

Virendra Pandit

New Delhi: The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 continues to churn geopolitics and the latest victim of this ongoing war could be the United States-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), whose members are afraid of their ‘catchment area’ threatening to expand from Russia to China, and the resultant uncertainties about war and peace.

These concerns of the 31-member European Union (EU) reflect the unease in the West about the widening gulf between America and Europe and the geopolitical shift.

After the Second World War, NATO was created to counter the communist Soviet Union’s influence in Europe; now it has almost become an instrument of the US foreign policy to counter a pseudo-communist China as well and help keep America as the global policeman.

This unease in the West has burst forth with former US President Donald Trump’s latest remarks about French President Emmanuel Macron.

Even though a Manhattan court indicted him recently in a sensational hush-money case, Trump’s cuss words against Macron, after he met his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Beijing, has exposed the chinks in the West’s armor: that Europe may drift away from America faster than the world believed.

What the worried Biden Administration did not say in so many words, despite its extreme unease with Macron, the maverick former US President summed it up in a few words.

“Macron is a good friend of mine, he visited China and kissed Xi Jinping’s ass,” Trump remarked to Fox News over France’s growing anti-US stance. France is the largest nation in Europe and the largest Catholic country in the world.

Trump lambasted the French President for visiting Beijing and meeting his Chinese counterpart, where he uttered “unpleasing words” against the United States.

“Macron, who’s a friend of mine, is over with China, kissing his ass. Okay, in China! I said, ‘France is now going to China,” he told the news channel.

“You got this crazy world, it’s blowing up and the United States has absolutely no say,” added Trump.

The critical remarks from Trump came days after Macron visited China where he boasted about his policies and expressed displeasure over European Union’s condition due to the Russia-Ukraine war.

In a major shift in the geopolitical order, Macron lamented the collaborative conclusion of the European Union to follow the agendas promoted by the West, especially the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war and the intensifying China-Taiwan tensions.

The critical remarks from Macron came hours after he left Chinese airspace following his crucial meeting with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.

Speaking to the German-owned political newspaper Politico, Macron asserted that Europe must reduce its dependency on the United States. He also appealed to the EU states to refrain from getting involved in the soaring tension between Beijing and Taipei.

During the interview, he advocated a “strategic autonomy” for the EU, under French leadership, and claimed Europe could become the “third superpower”– presumably sidelining both the West and China.

“The paradox would be that, overcome with panic, we believe we are just America’s followers,” Macron told the German media.

According to Macron, “the great risk” Europe faces is that it “gets caught up in crises that are not Europe’s”. He claimed this is the main reason why Europe has no strategic autonomy yet.

“The question Europeans need to answer … is it in our interest to accelerate a crisis on Taiwan? No. The worst thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the US agenda and a Chinese overreaction,” said the French President.

According to the report, during their meeting, President Xi also endorsed Macron’s concept of strategic autonomy for Europe but stuck to China’s own aspirations to supersede the US.

France has been smarting because of the US hegemony, and its latest reflections in the Quadrilateral Dialogue (Quad) in which four democratic nations—the US, India, Australia, and Japan—have forged something like an ‘Asian NATO’ against China. Later, the US, Australia, and New Zealand also set up yet another group, ANZUS, with the same purpose, in 2021.

Because of this unilateralism, the media reported, an angry Macron has been acting like a “wounded fiancée”, especially after Australia backed out from a crucial arms deal with France under the ‘influence’ of US President Joe Biden and the then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Instead, Australia signed a deal with the US and UK, wherein Canberra will get nuclear submarines from them, not France as decided earlier. At that time, Macron had said, “The US and UK stabbed France from back.”

That was why Macron was initially reluctant to impose sanctions on Moscow when Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-fledged war against its neighboring Ukraine. But he had to fall in line because of the consensus of nearly all the EU members.

Under him, France has resumed its assertiveness vis-à-vis the US.