Garvan Walshe is a former National and International Security Policy Adviser to the Conservative Party.
Emmanuel Macron got himself into another little row over an interview that he gave Politico and Les Echos during his state visit to China. He visited Beijing chaperoned by Ursula von der Leyen who, at least if Politico is to be believed, had good reasons to keep an eye on him.
Politico painted him as an appeaser of Xi Jinping, willing to sell Europe out for a few airbuses full of pork. Its dismissive tone (strategic autonomy, a longstanding French policy, was labelled Macron’s pet project) casts some doubt on Politico’s judgement, but this isn’t the first time that the subtlety of his speech opened up hostages to fortune in the more combative Anglo-Saxon press. His remarks about not “humiliating” Putin caused similar outrage from the same people, and some others about Islam infuriated different ones.
His willingness to muse – “do the Chinese care about Ukraine, probably not” can generate copy and always make him worth listening to, but even in France, the presidency and membership of the corps of TV intellectuals are different roles. The interview exposed his main weakness – a desire to show himself cleverer than whoever he happens to be talking to at the time.
His most scandalous remark, however, was one he probably doesn’t believe – that Europe should be a “third pole” between the United States and whoever its main Communist adversary happens to be. This appeals to the French sense of self and their desire to épater les anglosaxons, and to the French left, who really do see themselves as a third force halfway between capitalist America and the communists of the east.
It is nonsense thrice. The “communists” of Beijing are the most rapacious state capitalists there have ever been – using Marx’s analysis of exploitative industrialism as an instruction manual. The left are hardly in a mood to listen to him after his pension reform. And even de Gaulle, who talked up France as a third force, always thought France part of the West.
If some of the more hysterical reaction might have led one to think Macron had pronounced himself a latter-day Tito (in fact, Macron is the most Atlanticist French leader since the Marquis de La Fayette), such an exaggeration shouldn’t get in the way of some serious problems behind his conception of strategic autonomy.
Strategic autonomy is best understood as a new reason for Europe to develop its own defence and security capabilities with the implication that they should naturally, especially after Brexit, fall under the leadership of France.
Its appeal beyond France is as a hedge against the return of Donald Trump, American isolationism or even just the United States having to focus too much on China to defend Europe from Russian aggression. Yet its use as an insurance policy to do things the Americans currently do, but might not in the future, is less than entirely compatible with its use to do things the Americans are opposed to right now.
The crude version of the “third pole” idea is that European industry could still export to China, and European consumers benefit from Chinese goods, even in the event of a Sino-American conflict. It is obviously impractical: the US would impose third party financial sanctions, and European banks, forced to choose between Beijing and Washington, would cut off their customers that didn’t stop trading with China, and the goods would anyway have to be shipped through a war zone. Its less crude version, of continuing to trade with China as tension between the US and China grows, is merely German energy security policy writ large.
Strategic autonomy as an insurance policy has two different casts. If the US is simply busy with China, and so unable to defend Europe from Russia, it devolves into a new cold war: with the US focusing on Asia, and Europe on Russia. Here, Europeans would merely be doing what the Americans couldn’t any more. This may be right, as Europe is rich enough to defend itself, but it is very definitely not a third pole.
The second, darker, cast is Europe having to shoulder the burden of defending itself because the United States is convulsed by a second Trump presidency, and is either unable to act, or else actively sabotaging European defence. In that scenario, Europe wouldn’t be half way between the US and China, but would be on the democratic end of the spectrum facing off against Russia on its own, and figuring out how to bolster democracy in the United States while Japan, South Korea and Australia struggled to contain Chinese imperialism. Europe would be autonomous but only by default, in the greatest crisis for the West since the 1930s. Even “Jupiterian” Macron is not self-important enough to wish this fate upon his continent so that he can present himself as its saviour.
We are left with strategic autonomy as grandstanding. As a matter of practical China policy, which is mainly a matter of trade, France can’t act on its own. Trade policy is set collectively by the EU, and France has to compromise with its other members. Von der Leyen plans to curtail high tech trade and investment with China until it aligns with Western policy (on Ukraine for example). This won’t diminish current European dependence on Chinese metal-bashing industry, but will divert future high-value trade elsewhere, and make Europe less proportionately dependent on Chinese goods than it currently is.
Even as grandstanding, his remarks turned out to be a big mistake. They reinforce Xi Jinping’s propaganda loop, and help him believe the EU would acquiesce in aggression against Taiwan. They further sow distrust in Eastern Europe, where Europe’s other military cultures, whose support is needed for strategic autonomy, can be found.
Instead of persuading Poland and Ukraine that France could be a reliable alternative to a volatile United States, Macron’s remarks in China make them feel the US is a the bulwark against the French. He needs to drop all talk of a third pole, before he impales himself on it.