Donald Trump’s America makes Gaullism respectable again
Illustration: Peter Schrank
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E uropean leaders who gathered at the Munich Security Conference last weekend found some solace in the less caustic note struck by America. Whereas last year J.D. Vance, its vice-president, had wounded and dismayed, this year Marco Rubio, its secretary of state, was a more gracious critic. But a critic he was, and the Europeans left with the sense that, in Trumpworld, they are on their own. This is disconcerting enough. But while Donald Trump’s capriciousness inspires deep anxiety among Europeans, they are also troubled by another uncomfortable idea: a scratchy sense that perhaps France was right after all.
No other European country has been so consistently sceptical about the dependability of its transatlantic ally nor displayed such a pesky determination to go it alone. Shortly after Charles de Gaulle became France’s leader in 1958 he warned Konrad Adenauer, then German chancellor, that the Americans were “not reliable, not very solid and understand nothing about history or Europe”. Musing about the shifting balance of world power, le général told an adviser: “Any day the most extraordinary events could happen…America could…become a threat to peace.” By 1966 de Gaulle had built a bomb, pulled out of NATO ’s integrated military command and booted American soldiers off French soil.
Emmanuel Macron misses no occasion to channel his inner de Gaulle. For nearly a decade the president has badgered European leaders with his call for “strategic autonomy”. They have responded with eye-rolling or indifference. When Mr Macron told The Economist in 2019 that NATO was experiencing “brain death”, his friends accused him of an attempt to shatter the transatlantic alliance. Last week he declare d that Europe faces an “openly hostile” America that wants nothing less than its “dismemberment”, and that the moment is “a profound geopolitical rupture”.
In more Atlantic-leaning European capitals, the prospect of standing alone without America has prompted distress. In Paris—which maintains a fully independent nuclear deterrent, sends its own satellites into space, supplies itself with nuclear energy and builds its own fighter jets—it feels like vindication. Yet if France has had a point all along about greater European strategic independence, why did it not happen? The answers might loosely be grouped into three: France was right, but too soon; it was right, but not credible; and it was right, but got on everyone’s nerves.
If France made the call too early for its friends, it was because they correctly viewed the post-war Pax Americana not as a risk or an indignity, but as the guarantee that bound the West together. De Gaulle concluded, particularly after the Suez crisis in 1956, that America could not be fully trusted. Britain, France’s ally during Suez, drew the opposite conclusion: judging it could not act without the Americans’ backing, it hugged them closer still. Distrust of America pushed France to diversify its alliances long before Mark Carney made it fashionable. But Britain saw America as an extension of itself, while Germany was unable to assert its own power after the war. They and other Europeans were most at ease snuggling under the American wing, and treated France’s bid for independence as not only misguided but dangerous: a move that could hasten American disengagement.
Had France fully followed its own logic, it might have pre-empted some scepticism. Yet for decades France (like others in Europe) pursued social policies that weakened its ability to build up strategic muscle. Even today it spends over six times more on pensions each year than on defence—and borrows heavily to do so. How is it possible, critics ask, to assert strategic autonomy if you depend on the bond markets to pay your pensioners? Moreover, France’s “Buy European” strategy has long been regarded by its American-equipped friends as a sales pitch for French kit. When France calls for more joint borrowing to rearm Europe, its friends hear: get somebody else to pay. When France urges more spending on European defence, its friends hear: more contracts for French makers of fighter jets, missiles and engines.
And then there is—how to put it?—the tone. France considers itself a serious ally in Europe and NATO, and does not understand why its ideas meet such resistance. Others find the haughty manner in which it tries to impose them insupportable. De Gaulle left his European chair in Brussels empty for six months, boycotting meetings in order to get his way in a spat over decision-making rules. Central and eastern Europeans have not forgotten how Jacques Chirac, then president, told them that in backing America’s war in Iraq they had “missed a good opportunity to shut up”. When Mr Macron donned aviator shades for a speech in Davos, to mask a bloody eye, it was vintage France: defiant, chic, perhaps ridiculous, indisputably show-stopping. Some loved it. Some didn’t.
Sometimes it’s too slow
France has made its share of mistakes, for sure. De Gaulle’s grandstanding towards America was in part an attempt to preserve the country’s great-power status despite its often brutal mishandling of the retreat from empire. Its pretensions to post-imperial influence can go awry, as in the Sahel, where Russia has exploited resentment of France. France happily backs strengthening Europe when it suits, and breezily opposes it (on the Mercosur trade deal, for example) when it does not.
Prickly, proud, exasperating, it is so often the country that maddens others. France, wrote the general, “cannot be France without grandeur”. As European leaders grapple with the implications of the transatlantic rift, a few still hope this is a passing moment. Others are daunted by the costs of going it alone. Mocked, dismissed, disparaged, France has long thought differently about the world, and seldom been afraid to say so. Do not expect fellow Europeans to give it credit, even when they agree. ■
논증 분석
유형: causal
핵심 주장
Donald Trump의 미국이 유럽 동맹국들을 불안하게 만들면서, 수십 년간 무시당하고 조롱받던 프랑스의 ‘전략적 자율성’ 주장이 마침내 정당성을 인정받고 있다.
논리구조
- 전제: Munich Security Conference에서 유럽 지도자들은 Donald Trump의 미국 하에서 자신들이 혼자라는 것을 깨달았으며, 이는 프랑스의 오랜 경고가 옳았다는 불편한 인식을 낳았다.
- 논거: 프랑스는 Charles de Gaulle 이래 미국의 신뢰성에 일관되게 회의적이었으며, 1966년 NATO 통합군사령부 탈퇴와 독자 핵 개발로 전략적 자율성을 실천했다.
- 논거: Emmanuel Macron은 10년 가까이 ‘전략적 자율성(strategic autonomy)‘을 주장하고 2019년 NATO ‘뇌사’ 발언을 했으나 유럽 파트너들로부터 눈총과 무관심만 받았다.
- 진단: 프랑스가 옳았음에도 유럽 전략적 자율성이 실현되지 못한 이유는 세 가지다: ① 너무 이른 주장(시대 선행), ② 신뢰성 결여, ③ 주변국을 짜증나게 하는 태도.
- 진단: 전후 Pax Americana를 위험이 아닌 서방의 결속 보증으로 여긴 영국·독일 등은 미국의 품에 안기는 것을 선호했고, 프랑스의 독립 시도를 미국의 이탈을 앞당길 위험한 행동으로 간주했다.
- 반론: 프랑스 스스로도 전략적 자율성 논리를 일관되게 따르지 못했다: 연금 지출이 국방비의 6배를 넘고 재정을 채권시장에 의존하면서, 채권시장에 종속된 상태에서 전략적 자율성을 외치는 것은 모순이다.
- 반론: 프랑스의 ‘유럽산 구매’ 전략과 공동 차입 요구는 파트너들에게 자국 방산업체(전투기·미사일·엔진)를 위한 영업으로 비쳐, 진정성을 의심받았다.
- 반론: 프랑스의 오만한 태도—Charles de Gaulle의 브뤼셀 보이콧, Jacques Chirac의 동유럽국 ‘입 닫을 기회를 놓쳤다’ 발언—가 유럽 파트너들의 반감을 샀다.
- 진단: 프랑스는 사헬에서의 탈식민 실패와 Mercosur 무역협정 반대 등 자국 이익에 따라 유럽 통합을 선택적으로 지지하는 모순도 보였다.
결론
프랑스의 전략적 자율성 주장은 결국 옳았지만, 그 오만한 방식 때문에 유럽 동맹국들은 Donald Trump발 위기 속에서도 프랑스에 공을 돌리지 않을 것이다.
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