France Should Embrace The Transatlantic Relationship And Help Lead It – Analysis

By Anglique Talmor*

French President Emmanuel Macron’s assertion three years ago that the transatlantic alliance was braindead rings as utterly misguided today.¹The resurgence of war in Europe has reinforced NATOs raison dtre and forced Europeans to face the fact that there is no realistic alternative to transatlantic cooperation. Further, more European policy leaders recognize Chinas increasing threat,²which bolsters the case for Western friend shoring on defense and other issues. This process will require leadership on both sides of the Atlantic. France, the largest military power in the European Union and the second-largest EU economy, is more reluctant to embrace Atlanticism than most of itsNATOcounterparts. This hesitance risks limiting the success and scope of efforts to reinforce transatlantic cooperation. Nonetheless, in the evolving geopolitical context, Frances best shot at preserving its interests and influence would be through embracing Atlanticism and helping lead the reinforcement of transatlantic cooperation in the realm of defense and beyond. American policymakers should encourage and extend a hand to their oldest ally to embrace such a shift.

Atlanticism is the support for a close relationship between Europe and the United States, and French reticence toward this goal is inextricably linked to the Franco-American relationship. For French elites, this relationship is shrouded with underlying in fears of vassalization, and they worry about French arms exports and their countrys sway in Europe. Dating back to the Suez Crisis in 1956, this attitude increased when General Charles de Gaulle established his grandeurfocused foreign policy, and he withdrew France from theNATOallied command structure in 1966. Still deeply engrained in the political-administrative apparatus,³grandeur seeks to maintain Frances influence, independence, and interests.⁴Ambition for grandeur thus led France to champion European strategic autonomy, and many elites have believed, especially since 1994, that France would have more influence in a separate European defense arrangement than withinNATO. More recent pragmatic realism on NATOs benefits caused France to reintegrate into theNATOallied command structure in 2009.⁵But this change has not significantly altered the notion that France should avoid relying too much on the US.⁶

European strategic autonomy has been an official EU objective since the 2016 EU Global Strategy,⁷and proponents paint it as complimentary toNATO. However, their claims remain mostly unconvincing because ambiguously and poorly defined strategic autonomy seeks to enable European independence from the United States.⁸What will Article Five [NATOs collective defense clause] mean tomorrow? questioned Macron in the same interview where he stated thatNATOwas braindead. While Europe needs to expand its military capacity, as the US has long wanted, Russias war of aggression in Ukraine has shown just how illusory true independence from American military capacity remains.⁹

As such, the clear institutional winner of the Russia-Ukraine War has beenNATOand European Atlanticists.¹⁰Central and Eastern Europeans have lost confidence,¹¹if they ever had any, that the EU could contribute to their security:NATOand US military guarantees are the only credible deterrent to Russian aggression. Sweden and Finland, two formerly nonaligned states that share a border with Russia, have hastily applied to join the alliance, a move that confirms how broad this sentiment is in Europe. As Zachary Selden highlights, If Sweden and Finland were confident in the European Unions ability to achieve meaningful strategic autonomy backed by military power, there would be no need to joinNATO.¹²Furthermore, Sweden and Finlands accession intoNATOwill bring more military capabilities and financial contributions than previous rounds of enlargement, which reinforces the case for creating a European bloc within the alliance. However, a serious European bloc inNATOwould be almost inconceivable without French leadership, as the top military power and the only nuclear state in the EU.

A shift in French strategic thinking toward Atlanticism may be more realistic now. The combination of Europes inability to independently assist Ukraine and Putins war crimes represents the crumbling of two foundational notions in French strategic thought that opposed Atlanticism.¹³The first is the hope that France could lead a Europe capable of independently defending itself. The second is the grandeur-based assumption that moral relativism applies to all superpowers (in this case, Russia and the United States) so that France can be a nonaligned mediating power between them.¹⁴Russias invasion and subsequent war crimes discredit these assumptions, which gives Macron an opportunity to make significant shifts in French strategic thought. Now is a politically opportune moment to do so, thanks to his recent reelection to a five-year presidential term in a country where the executive branch has authority on foreign policy with little legislative oversight. Moreover, ongoing reform of the French diplomatic corps and high-level French service provides an opportunity for the government to appoint foreign policy advisors who would facilitate such a shift instead of opposing it.¹⁵

Beyond just a general political shift, different steps are needed to ensure that attitudes change among the French elite at a structural level, both in foreign policy and more broadly. Concretely, this would mean establishing broad and institutionalized forums of exchange and dialogue at different levels of government, including among elected officials, policymakers, and bureaucrats. The aim would be to reinforce understanding and relationships between Paris and Washington. Here, France could emulate and expand upon the success of the German example in establishing countless personal links between the German and American foreign policy communities.¹⁶The political shift would also require the Macron government to make effectively countering the impact of Russian influence and disinformation a policy priority.¹⁷These Kremlin actions promote narratives and analyses hostile toNATOand the United States to both the French elite and general population.¹⁸

Besides strengthening a European bloc inNATO, a French embrace of the transatlantic alliance would ensure French grandeur more effectively than championing European strategic autonomy would. StrengtheningNATOwould still require moves toward European strategic responsibility that would seek to strengthen instead of weakenNATO.¹⁹European countries need to reinforce their military capabilities to enable better burden sharing and establish independent European crisis management capabilities within their neighborhood. As the largest, most willing, and most effective military force in Europe, France would have a large role to play (certainly larger than Germany) in encouraging and coordinating such efforts. This effort would effectively fulfill French ambition to lead Europe and could bolster French legitimacy in leading and coalescing an increasingly capable European bloc withinNATO. Such a role would structurally reinforce both French influence and stature vis-vis its American counterparts in the alliance, thus assuaging concerns of vassalization.

The 2022 Madrid summit revised NATOs strategic concept to consider the Chinese challenge, which reinforces the case for France to embrace Atlanticism. If Europe can help counter China, the alliance would continue to have bipartisan support in the US, where a growing faction argues that Europeans are free riders. If a reinforced European bloc inNATOallowed the US military to focus on East Asia and counter China, that argument would be less credible. Furthermore, if France can help lead the transatlantic relationship inNATO, it could also amplify cooperation in other policy areas to counter China. Non-defense initiatives to strengthen coordination to sideline Chinese influence are already forming in such initiatives as the US-EU Trade and Technology Council, but the US and Europe will need to expand these efforts in both ambition and scope so that they are truly effective.²⁰

It is true that a French embrace of Atlanticism would constitute a significant departure from French strategic and political orthodoxy. But this goal is attainable with some help. While many wonder if President Joe Biden has a foreign policy vision,²¹a change in Frances direction would require the United States to explicitly foster an even closer Western alliance as the geopolitical context becomes more challenging. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has alluded to the evolution toward such a framework on a global economic level,²²but this is not enough. Once America establishes such an agenda, the US could engage with France on this issue. If successful, French leadership in the transatlantic relationship would put the West in a stronger position to face the widening security challenges from Russia, China, and others.

*About the author: Anglique Talmor, Former Visiting Research Fellow

Source: This article was published by the Hudson Institute. To ViewPDF

¹Emmanuel Macron Warns Europe: NATO Is Becoming Brain- Dead,The Economist, November 7, 2019, https://www.economist. com/europe/2019/11/07/emmanuel-macron-warns-europe- nato-is-becoming-brain-dead.

²Alexandra Brzozowski, Oliver Noyan, and Tho Bourgery, EU Still Split over Chinas Threat or Challenge,Euractiv, June 15, 2022, https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/eu-stillsplit- over-chinas-threat-or-challenge/.

³Alice Pannier, From One Exceptionalism to Another: Frances Strategic Relations with the United States and the United Kingdom in the Post-Cold War Era, Journal of Strategic Studies 40, no. 4 (2017): 475504, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2016.1230546.

⁴Maurice Vasse, La Grandeur. Politique trangre du Gnral de Gaulle. 1958-1969,Politique trangre63, no. 3 (Fall 1998): 66770, https://www.persee.fr/doc/polit_0032-342x_1998_ num_63_3_4788_t1_0667_0000_2.

⁵Anglique Talmor and Zachary Selden, Is French Defence Policy Becoming More Atlanticist?,Cambridge Review of International Affairs30, no. 23 (2017): 16076, https://www.tandfonline.com/ doi/abs/10.1080/09557571.2017.1410100.

⁶Alice Pannier, How to Keep France Engaged in NATO, Real Instituto Elcano, February 4, 2022, https://www.realinstitutoelcano.org/en/analyses/how-to-keep-france-engaged-in-nato/.