In an interview in a recent visit to China in April 2023, the French President stated that “Europe must reduce its dependency on the United States and avoid getting dragged into a confrontation between China and the U.S. over Taiwan”.

 

President Macron emphasized his theory of “strategic autonomy” for Europe, presumably led by France, to become a “third superpower.” The said comments drew an outrage across Europe and specially America

 

Former French ambassador to Washington Gérard Araud said on France’s LCI Television, “It’s a long-term protectionism that will not stop, it didn’t stop with Trump, or with Biden, and the Europeans must understand this.”.

 

The relationship with America & France had soured after USA launched a military alliances of AUKUS consisting of USA, Australia & UK in Indo-Pacific countering China and snatched the nuclear submarine deal which the French had agreed with Australia.

 

The Carnegie Foundation OpEd in November 2022 stated as follows:

 

“President Macron’s predecessors have been aggravating Washington for more than fifty years, starting with president Charles De Gaulle, who lambasted America for the Vietnam War, protested the U.S. dollar’s global dominance, built France’s own nuclear weapons, and distanced France from NATO. Macron has been no less frank. When he called NATO “brain dead” in 2019, heads exploded in the corridors of the Pentagon, CIA, and State Department. When the Biden administration announced new plans for military cooperation with Australia and Britain in 2021, U.S. officials were stunned by Paris’s sharp rebuke. Macron’s insistence on keeping a diplomatic channel open with Moscow after its invasion of Ukraine only made more steam blow from the ears of U.S. policy elites. Most of all, Macron’s energetic cheerleading for European “strategic autonomy” by which he means that Europe needs the economic and military might to take on much more responsibility for its foreign policy rankles ardent NATO backers here and in and Europe.”

 

In an oped in the Foreign Policy in February 2019 titled, “Macron Is Going Full De Gaulle”, it is stated as follows:

 

“President Macron, for his part, has always insisted on the difference between the Gaullist and Atlanticist positions and on the superiority of the former. In an interview with several European newspapers shortly after becoming president, he announced: “I will bring to an end the form of will bring to an end the form of neoconservatism that has been imported to France over the past 10 years.”

 

Rejecting the U.S. attempt at nation building in Iraq, Macron concluded: “Democracy cannot be imposed from the outside without the participation of the people. France was right not to participate in the war in Iraq and was wrong to go to war in this manner in Libya.”

 

Foreign Policy article dt 03rd July 2023 titled, “Strategic Autonomy’ Is a French Pipe Dream” again dishes the Anglo-Saxon narrative against Macron showing disdain towards French foreign policy.

 

French News Paper had reported in June 2023 that it has agreed to transfer 100% transfer of technology in 110-130KN fighter jet engine to India for its AMCA project. Glad that project has now been approved by Government of India’s MoD.