strategic autonomy it has economic and political costs. And right now Europe it doesn’t seem to be able to support them. This is how the embarrassment created by the statements of Emmanuel Macron regarding the need forUe to increase one’s level of autonomy and “not to be vassal of the United States“. The words, then scaled directly from theElysium specifying that “for France there is no equidistance between China and the USA“, reiterate a vision of Europe that the French president has never hidden: more independent from the economy and above all from the international positioning of the United States, which should no longer be pulled by the jacket by the adventurism of Washington, be it military campaigns or trade wars, and which may, as a result of this, have its own weighty voice on international tables. A project that, however, the war in Ukraine has done nothing but slow down, demonstrating its current unfeasibility: the conflict, whether one likes it or not, is fought right on European territory and without a common army Brussels can do nothing but remain, to a greater or lesser extent, under the great American umbrella.
France is the European country where the concept of strategic autonomy historically finds its humus. A principle that has been developing since the 1990s, especially declined in the field of defence, which at European level has taken on a broader vision, not limited to the military sphere. And the National Defense and Security Strategic Review (the Strategic Report on Defense and National Security) of 2017, with Macron already in office as president, which gives this principle a broader, community vision and re-enacts the theme of the need for a common European army. A “pragmatic strengthening” which tends to create a European powerin the plans of Paris, Franco-German traction. A power that gradually increases its independence and manages to carve out a place for itself at the table of the greats of the earth. In 2018 it will be Macron himself who will reiterate this concept during the annual conference of ambassadors.
Without going too far back in time, it is enough to re-read the declarations of the head of the Elysée in the weeks leading up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine to trace this conviction of his. It was he who proposed himself as mediator European to maintain a dialogue with the head of the Kremlin and avoid the entry of the tanks of Mosca on Ukrainian territory. There were several contacts, telephone and in person, which he had with Putin, without however obtaining any success, both due to the reluctance of the Russian president and to Washington’s unwillingness to come to terms with him. It was always the head of the Elysee who declared that at the end of the war the Russia it wasn’t supposed to be humiliated, well aware that a competitor on the border can always dialogue, not with a sworn enemy. And it was always Macron who put himself at the head of the trio of European countries, with Germania e Italiawhich they sent Mario Draghi to dialogue in the White House with Joe Biden to ask for a more proactive approach to the alliance diplomacy and less to military confrontation. Appeal, that too, fell on deaf ears. To this it must be added that the French president, today, can no longer even count on that feeling created with the Draghi government: now Palazzo Chigi there is the executive Melons which, to date, has demonstrated full alignment with the White House.
It is in this context that Macron’s statements a Politico: they represent his ideal vision that Eliseo himself, as we read at the bottom of the interview, then revised during the proofreading phase. His thinking is clear, but what is equally clear is his unfeasibility, at least for now. The EU conceived by Macron wants to detach itself, at least in part, from the United States, transforming what in some cases is a dependence in a alliance as equal as possible. But on the other side there is a conflict, the one in Ukraine, which is being fought in Europe, as has not happened since the wars in former Yugoslavia of the 90s, and without a common European army the Old World it cannot aspire to any relevance at the negotiating tables. Without forgetting the need to replace Moscow in the exchange of goods and primary resources following the sanctions. On the contrary: now more than ever he needs an umbrella Nato e Usa. But this protective shield comes at a price: from raising the military spending up to the threshold of 2% of GDP, up to alignment with the USA on other international policy dossiers. And this is where the question of comes into play Taiwanover which the real confrontation between the United States and the Chinese. When asked if it is in the European interest to accelerate a crisis on Taiwan, the president replied that “the worst thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers of this topic and take a cue from theUS agenda and from a Chinese overreaction.” But at the moment Brussels does not seem to have the strength to oppose Washington’s will.
In reality, the European institutions do not even seem to have the will. Not surprisingly, she was the president of the Commission Ursula von der Leyen, in early March, to visit Joe Biden in Washington to reiterate the full support of the European Union in the fight against China. In the joint communiqué, the two leaders in fact reiterated the need to strengthen the “Economic and National Security”. Demonstrating that the EU also wants to gradually free itself from the Dragonthe president brought in the Oval Office the decision of the Netherlandsimmediately after that of JapanOf block the export towards Beijing of technology for the production of microchip. A victory for Biden who had been trying to convince the allies to take this decisive step for months. A stance which, however, infuriated several European chancelleries, with France and Germany in the lead, so much so that five days later it was the turn of the president of the EU Council, Charles Michel, rebalancing everything with the same words used today by the Elysée to soften Macron’s words: “There is no equidistance between the US and China, we are a faithful ally of the former. Meanwhile, China is a reality, an important subject. We can’t ignore it.”