To the Grand Old Man of wartime and postwar France, Donald Trump’s treatment of America’s European allies would not have come as a surprise. Quite the contrary, he suspected the Americans all along of being perfectly capable of backstabbing their allies (in his view) like in the Suez Crisis of 1956. That is one of the reasons why he insisted on taking France out of NATO’s integrated military structure in 1966 and prioritised developing France’s independent nuclear deterrent.
In the days of Trump and MAGA, he seems to be proven right, to the point of Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp claiming ‘We’re all Gaullists now’, or Germany’s likely future Chancellor Friedrich Merz demanding European ‘independence from the US’ in security, like an Atlanticist mugged by reality.
No wonder that Charles de Gaulle is now back in the headlines across much of Europe, way beyond the hexagone of France itself. But before we unquestioningly jump on this bandwagon, let’s examine the entire de Gaulle, assess his present successor Emmanuel Macron and his record on European security, and spend a few thoughts on the future of our relationship with the US. And then chart a course that will hopefully be consensual among the majority of Europeans.
De Gaulle’s mixed legacy
While acknowledging the indispensable contribution of les Anglo-Saxons (meaning chiefly Britain and the US) to France’s freedom in the First as well as the Second World War, de Gaulle nevertheless harboured a deep, culture-based bias against them. Incidentally, that was why he went to considerable lengths to keep Britain out of the European Economic Community, the EU’s precursor, in the 1960s. Today, the UK is indispensable to any European security structure, for its size, as well as for its military, diplomatic and intelligence capabilities, especially its own nuclear deterrent. Nobody has brought post-Brexit Britain and the EU closer together than Donald Trump.
De Gaulle was also very much opposed to all supranational aspects of European integration, advocating a ‘Europe of the fatherlands’ (very much Orbán-style in today’s terms) – and boycotting European ministerial meetings in his ‘empty chair’ policy of 1965 which threw the young community into an existential crisis. The EU wouldn’t be where it is if this purely intergovernmental approach had won the day. De Gaulle also helped to kill the European Defence Community which would have given European integration an early security component, in 1954.
Finally, his 1959 dream of a ‘Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals’ deliberately excluded North America (including Canada) from the continent while approving a strong bond with Russia (as he insisted on calling the USSR). That’s not even equidistance anymore; in today’s terms, this would be appeasement of Putin.
Praise to Macron where praise is due
To make things absolutely clear: Macron was right about Europe’s strategic autonomy as a goal. Probably, the concept would have had stronger appeal if he had named it ‘responsibility’. But this is water under the bridge. As much as the Central Europeans were historically right about Russia, he had the right instincts about the probability of the US decoupling from European security in a way Atlanticists (including myself) could not imagine.
But Macron came late to the party of clearly and decisively opposing Russian aggression under Putin. Only in his Bratislava speech of 2023 did he fully embrace Central European views of Russia, having dangerously appeased Putin – alongside Germany under Schröder and Merkel – for much too long: for almost a decade after the initial aggression of 2014. This attitude went a long way to explain Central Europeans’ and, generally, Atlanticists’ distrust of French leadership on European security.
Moreover, even after 2023, France has not in every sense followed up its words with concrete action. Today, France’s defence spending has just reached 2 % of GDP while already being in massive debt. And French military assistance to Ukraine, at 3,5 billion Euros, remains behind countries like Sweden, Netherlands and Denmark and above all, Germany with over 12 billion.
Most importantly, France’s partners in Europe are still worried about the prospect of a Marine Le Pen victory (or some other nationalist’s) in the 2027 presidential election. Would other Europeans then be entitled, or actually forced, to seek strategic autonomy from France? – To say that such a victory is not going to happen, or not going to have any consequences for Europe’s common defence, would be to repeat the mistakes of those who ruled out Trump in 2015, or the disastrous effects of Trump 2.0 in 2024. This is another reason why France as the sole leader on Europe’s security is unlikely, and a backstop against one of the security drivers of future Europe turning nationalist, will have to be part of the formula.
Is Trump history’s last word on America?
The answer is, of course, no. First of all, whatever Trump and the Republican Party are claiming, November 6, 2024, was no landslide victory. Trump got less than 50 % of the valid votes (49,8 %), his advance on Kamala Harris was a mere 1,5 percentage points – and 48,3 % voted for her. With the US economy tanking, there are good reasons to assume that the midterm elections in November 2026 will see a Democratic majority in the House, ending unrestrained Republican government. There have been too many moments since the end of the Cold War when the current administration seemed to imply a total and lasting break with the past – for example, George W. Bush’s neocons 2000-2008, and right after that the ‘Obama coalition’ of youngsters, women and Black and Latino voters that were supposed to guarantee Democrat majorities forever. At some point, US electorates will realign again, maybe rather sooner than later.
Whether Trump and MAGA manage to turn the US into an autocracy, is very questionable. Not just are checks and balances still alive and hard to abolish, but there are powerful federal states, media, civil society and above all, citizens who will at least have an important say in the future of the United States, no matter who is in the White House.
Most of all, ‘America First’, bullying allies and pandering to autocrats is simply opposed to the founding narrative of the United States. The ‘city upon a hill’ as which America is designed, cannot easily and above all sustainably turned into a jingoistic bully. America the Beautiful is stronger than America the Horrible. Of course, Europe must now defend its freedom against MAGA and Musk, and it should never return to the dependency of recent decades. But it should always prepare for a change of tack in Washington and leave as much as possible of transatlantic ties in place, especially on the sub-national level.
What we owe to ourselves and our children now:
· It is high time to put to rest the acrimony of past debates about Russia as well as the US, and step by step work on Europe’s strategic autonomy in defence and security.
· Obviously, we need to ramp up defence spending, arms production and assisting Ukraine: on this, ‘Gaullists’ and Atlanticists were already in agreement for some time. For sophisticated weapons systems, there should be a clear ‘Buy European’ preference.
· This will in many cases have to happen in coalitions of the willing, because of Hungarian vetoes, and outside of EU structures in order to include countries like the UK. An EU Army is therefore hard to imagine, as well as an EU nuclear deterrence. Which is why Britain and France will be in the drivers’ seat of rearming Europe and securing a possible ceasefire in Ukraine for quite some time.
· We need to preserve of NATO as much as possible for as long as possible, because Europe’s autonomy will take time to build; if necessary, we need to stick to ‘NATO Redux’ (with the US remaining de facto passive) but including the UK, Canada and Norway. Even a ‘Ramstein Redux’ Group makes sense, in order to continue security cooperation with Japan, Australia, South Korea, Taiwan etc.
· Don’t fall for China: China under Xi Jinping has developed into a fundamentally hostile power that, though different from Russia under Putin, nevertheless defines our democracy as an existential threat. Some degree of economic decoupling from China, especially reducing dependency on its markets and lowering the risk of technological penetration, will be necessary – for our own sake, not to please Trump.
· Global democracy support remains a worthwhile undertaking. Our growth in hard power should not come at the cost of soft power (which is not that expensive anyway). Part of the mantle of America’s past solidarity with democrats across the globe must now be picked up by Europe.
In other words, we need to embrace strategic autonomy while seeing that it will only emerge step by step. We will need America’s support in a transactional manner where we can get it but should never rely on it for our freedom. It will be a long and arduous road, with lots of socioeconomic distribution battles. But we need to start walking on it now.