If France spectacularly loses a lucrative arms deal with Australia – why does that have to be a disadvantage for the French government? Emmanuel Macron may have just won his second presidency. And is there an unassailable lead in September 2021 before the April 2022 election? France should neither be deceived nor humiliated if military pacts are formed in the Indo-Pacific, signals a statesman in the Élysée nation and people who is concerned with national dignity. Does he also mean his worst opponents Marine Le Pen from the right-wing Rassemblement National and Michel Barnier, the likely candidate for president of the right-wing liberal Les Républicains (LR).
In an affair like the one involving the AUKUS military alliance (acronym for Australia, United Kingdom, United States), the official bonus means well with the incumbent. Which means that the political gain for the Élysée is far from being completely outlined. France’s preference – the question of strategic sovereignty for the EU – can no longer be evaded in Europe. It will literally be catapulted back onto the agenda of the European Council and will already be a topic at the upcoming summit in Ljubljana. Even the German defense minister, who is about to leave office, experiences a sudden change of heart. Not least after the Afghanistan experience, the EU needs “more military independence”, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer believes, in order to assert in the following that one should not part with the USA. What for? Joe Biden will take care of that himself if necessary.
As recently as November 2020, she had spoken of the “illusions of European strategic independence”, which must be stopped, referring to Macron. It cannot be ruled out that these “illusions” will soon become more virulent when the French head of state savored another official bonus. On January 1, 2022, his government will take over the EU Council Presidency and can do so in the expectation that no Merkel government will be able to slow down her reformist ambitions, which recently so often came to nothing.
Under the atomic umbrella
There is no need for prophecy to assume that what has already been presented will be reissued and that France will be the only EU state with its own nuclear weapons after Brexit. The offer for non-nuclear countries could be renewed to benefit from the nuclear deterrent of the “Force de Frappe” and to find protection under its nuclear umbrella. In a speech at the École Militaire in Paris at the beginning of February 2020, Macron spoke of an “exchange with European countries” about the value of his country’s nuclear capacities and the way towards “a real strategic culture for Europeans”. However, one would reserve the last word and not give up sovereignty over the nuclear warheads carried by airplanes and submarines. In other words, Europeanise the defense mandate of the “Force de Frappe”, but of course not the decision about when and how it will be fulfilled.
What does this come down to? Undisputed nuclear participation beyond NATO. Recall that when France returned to the integrated command structure of the Western Alliance in 2009 after 43 years of abstinence, it did not affect the Nuclear Planning Group. And since Emmanuel Macron has never abandoned his finding that the alliance is “brain dead”, nuclear protection would mean more than ever to lure EU partners away from the North Atlantic Pact. If every military self-authorization of the European Union does not leave NATO untouched, then it is one based on nuclear potential. And when, if not now or soon?
The blunt AUKUS unilateralism of the USA and the chutzpah with which President Biden excluded this from his appearance at the UN General Assembly are causing some EU grandees to tremble with uproar (which should not be overrated). EU Council President Charles Michel attests Washington “a clear lack of transparency and loyalty”. What are they worth, Biden’s great speeches “about a renewal of the transatlantic bond”? Even Ursula von der Leyen, the Commission President who has previously subscribed to the transatlantic retro mentality, has to agree.
Otherwise, the assumption that 27 EU states are preparing to resist America in response to AUKUS is pure fiction. To make this clear, it is enough to list the consequences that the Alliance inevitably conjures up in the Pacific. First of all, there is certainty that the Biden government considers the confrontational approach to China to be without alternative and that it is militarily flanked. This is not an exercise in applied reason. Near-collisions between warships in the South China Sea, such as in late 2018, when the destroyer USS Decatur and a Chinese frigate approached within 40 meters and a last-minute collision was avoided, can become more frequent. But with such a parade to exchange blows between the systems, the EU’s Europe has lost as little as it has to offer and is consequently passed down in the US ranking.
This can only be compensated for by reaching for one’s own “strategic compass”, as France’s Foreign Minister Le Drian considers necessary in order to avoid second-rate globalism. However, if one approaches a security policy parallel to NATO, the Eastern and Central European EU members will leave with a light heart. As they were drawn into a “coalition of the willing” under the Americans George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld before the 2003 Iraq war, they will counter a “defense identity” of the EU with loyalty to NATO. The Baltic countries, Poland, Croatia and Romania for sure. The Czech Republic, Slovenia and Slovakia probably too. If “united Europe” wants to become more autonomous and self-determined, it immediately has the cross of internal alienation on its shoulder.
In this respect, the trouble about AUKUS serves a paradigmatic lesson. It confirms a profound experience of the decades since 1990. The West is breaking the foundations on which it still stands as a system and bloc, because the pursuit of global governance gives it one interest after another. When Joe Biden declares straight away that the US wants to contain China in order to remain the world’s leading power, the EU must look for reactions that are also outside of the hitherto conceivable.
Joker Russia
Why actually see an association with no alternative in this federation of states? It would certainly be premature to define the opposing forces in East Central Europe as a countervailing power, but Germany and France should ask themselves whether they just want to hold this union together or upgrade it in relation to the USA. If Washington wants to keep a foot in the European door with the help of NATO, by favoring the front-line behavior of Poland and others towards Russia, there can only be one answer: coexistence in partnership with Moscow in order to shake the defense syndrome. Macron is lacking in a consistent Ostpolitik, but he has repeatedly emphasized that for him Russia is “part of the European area”. It shouldn’t be left to China. A wild card that Angela Merkel never wanted to play. It won’t be anymore either.
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