[Salon] Why Macron Infuriates the Hawks. . . because his talk of Europe becoming a “third pole” alarms hegemonists that expect Europe to remain docile and subordinate

https://daniellarison.substack.com/p/why-macron-infuriates-the-hawks?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=73370&post_id=114332682&isFreemail=false&utm_medium=email

Why Macron Infuriates the Hawks

The reaction to Macron’s latest remarks has been even more vitriolic because his talk of Europe becoming a “third pole” alarms hegemonists that expect Europe to remain docile and subordinate.

Daniel Larison, April 12, 2023

Marco Rubio overreacts to French President Macron’s recent Taiwan remarks:

In the United States, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, posted a video asking whether Macron indeed speaks for Europe.

The United States, he said, “is spending a lot of taxpayer money on a European war.”

“If Macron speaks for all of Europe, and their position now is they’re not going to pick sides between the U.S. and China over Taiwan, maybe then we should not be taking sides either,” he added.

Macron was talking about Europe charting its own course without being dependent on either the U.S. or China, and this has predictably outraged all those in Washington that believe that our European allies are or should be vassals. The pity is that Macron doesn’t speak for all of Europe, since many allies in Europe prefer dependence on the U.S. to the autonomy Macron has been trying to promote. Every time that Macron has talked about European strategic autonomy, he encounters stiff resistance from both American and European critics that prefer to maintain the imbalanced status quo. The reaction to Macron’s latest remarks has been even more vitriolic because his talk of Europe becoming a “third pole” alarms hegemonists that expect Europe to remain docile and subordinate behind U.S. “leadership.”

Eldar Mamedov ably counters all the hawkish whining by looking at what Macron actually said and paying attention to what he meant:

Moreover, those who took issue with Macron’s remarks about the speed with which the U.S.-China confrontation is taking place missed the point — what he said did not even remotely imply that the EU should abandon Taiwan to its fate, but rather that the EU should manage the competition with China on its own terms, and at its own pace.

One of the things that has been mostly overlooked in the responses to what Macron said is his reference to how U.S. and European views will often “overlap.” He said, “we must be clear where our views overlap with the U.S., but whether it's about Ukraine, relations to China or sanctions, we have a European strategy.” In other words, he acknowledged that the U.S. and Europe will agree on many things, but Europe cannot settle simply for toeing the American line. This is a reasonable position to take. It would be entirely uncontroversial if so many people in Washington weren’t accustomed to believing that the U.S. calls the tune and its allies are expected to fall in line.

The U.S. should be glad that it has allies that can engage constructively with the other side in its rivalries. As U.S.-Chinese relations continue to deteriorate, it is even more valuable to have major allies that can work to reduce tensions. The hostile reaction to Macron’s remarks is redolent of the blinkered “with us or against us” mentality that defined U.S. foreign policy at the start of this century and led to some of the biggest disasters in recent history. France chose not to be a “follower” twenty years ago, and it was right not to follow the U.S. lead then. We should want our European allies to have the capabilities and the confidence not to follow Washington into new disasters, since that may also help the U.S. to avoid driving itself into the ditch.

Many Americans are inclined to see foreign policy in terms of a Manichean struggle between two sides, and this makes them allergic to any hint of multipolarity where several powers interact and balance each other. In the Manichean view of the world, a Europe that is not enthusiastically on board with the U.S. in every part of its rivalry with China may as well be on the other side. This is a stupid way of looking at the world, but it is often how Americans see things. In this view, a European “third pole” is considered a threat to U.S. dominance, and for many people in Washington that is every bit as frightening as the Chinese threat that they routinely inflate.