Under the Normandy sun, French President Emmanuel Macron spoke of the “tie of bloodshed for freedom” that binds France before surviving American veterans who helped turn the tide of the war against Hitler eighty years ago.
This bond dates back to the founding of the United States in 1776 and France’s decisive support for American independence against the British. Despite France’s anger at America’s postwar leadership in Europe, relations between Paris and Washington, while acrimonious and often strained, remained resilient.
President Biden’s five-day visit to France, an unusually long trip for a U.S. president, especially in an election year, was a powerful testament to that friendship. But this illustrates its double-edged nature. The French’s unfailing gratitude for American sacrifices formed an uneasy competition with the Gaullist unease at any hint of submission.
The competing threads will be the backdrop for a lavish state dinner at the Elysée Palace on Saturday, when Macron pays off Biden for hosting him at the White House in December 2022, the first of his administration.
Toasts and goodwill can’t entirely mask the tensions between Washington and Paris – over the war in Gaza, how best to support Ukraine and the unpredictable ways in which Macron has tried to assert France’s independence from the United States.
No recent French president has been more insistent than Macron in declaring Europe’s need for “strategic autonomy” and insisting that Europe “should never become a vassal of the United States.” Yet he joins Biden in arguing that the fight for freedom in Ukraine against Russia is no less than the fight for freedom in Europe and an extension of the fight for freedom that led the Allies to climb the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc in 2017.
“You can’t help but see the similarities,” Mr. Macron said in a television interview last week, describing Ukraine as “a country that I would not compare to Nazi Germany because the two countries have different ideologies.” , but an imperialist power that tramples on international law.
Even so, when the cameras were off, U.S. officials spoke privately about their French counterparts with an air of eye-rolling exasperation. French analysts have expressed frustration with the Biden administration’s authoritarian approach to transatlantic leadership.
Charles A. Kupchan, a former European adviser to President Barack Obama who now sits on the Council on Foreign Relations, said the “current political chaos in the United States” is forcing European leaders to make adjustments. whether they can or should take action”. All their marbles are in the American basket. “
This applies particularly to Ukraine, where former President Donald J. Trump, the 2024 Republican presidential candidate, has not supported Ukraine in its war with Russia. “In some ways,” Kupkan said, “there may be too much American leadership, because if the U.S. does withdraw from Ukraine and Europe needs to fill that void, it’s not going to be easy.”
In an interview with Time magazine published last week, Biden recalled early conversations with Macron after Macron defeated Trump. “I said, ‘OK, America is back,'” Biden recalled. “Macron looked at me and he said: ‘How long? How long?
Behind this question lies another question: How much presence does France under Macron want the United States to have in Europe?
The divide was most acute in February, when Macron alarmed the United States and European allies by raising the possibility of sending NATO troops to Ukraine, while Biden flatly ruled out the possibility because of concerns about The war would escalate into direct conflict with Ukraine.
“There are no American soldiers fighting in Ukraine,” Biden declared in his State of the Union address days after Macron’s balloon test. “And I’m determined to keep it that way.”
The two leaders are a study in contrasts. Biden, 81, has spent more than half a century in Washington and is a product of the American establishment, a fervent believer in the U.S.-led order established after World War II. When France balked at the U.S. invasion of Iraq, he was outraged, seeing an unacceptable act of defiance in a country that owed its freedom to the United States.
Macron, 46, is a restless 21st-century president eager to reassert France’s leadership on the European stage and willing to anger friends with challenging ideas and rhetoric, suggesting in 2019 that NATO suffered “brain death” .
Even before Biden’s visit, there appeared to be some back and forth on the possibility of France sending military trainers to Ukraine. Macron said in a television interview that it was not a “taboo” and that he did not see sending such trainers to western Ukraine instead of the eastern war zone as a radical move that would escalate relations with Russia.
Officials close to Macron said such a decision would not be announced immediately. That would almost certainly not please Mr. Biden.
However, Macron did offer to train a brigade of 4,500 Ukrainian soldiers. The troops are currently being trained outside Ukraine by Western instructors.
Gérard Arrow, a former French ambassador to Washington, said the two presidents disagreed not only on the number of Western troops in theory but also on where and how the war should end.
“Explanations between the two heads of state are more necessary than ever,” Mr Aloud said. “This is not only about the conduct of the war, but also about the prospects for negotiations after November 5 if Biden is re-elected. Beyond the empty rhetoric of “1991 Ukrainian borders”, what are the West’s real war goals?
The chemistry between the two leaders generally looks good. “They get along really well personally,” said Matthias Mattis, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.
But he said tensions remain, not just over Ukraine but also over the Inflation Reduction Act signed by Biden, which provides broad subsidies for electric vehicles and other clean technologies. Europeans believe the measure unfairly competes.
France is also frustrated by the extent of U.S. support for Israel in the Gaza war. Complaints focus on the United States’ failure to stop Israel’s advance on Rafah and to control Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But it also includes Washington’s current strong refusal to recognize Palestinian statehood and its hesitation about how to govern Gaza after the war.
“Arab states have never been more engaged and ready to normalize relations with Israel if a reliable path to a Palestinian state is established,” said a senior French official, who requested anonymity in line with diplomatic practice. “It’s frustrating. “
France did not recognize the Palestinian state as four other European countries did last month, but it did vote at the United Nations in May for Palestine to become a full member of the organization. The United States voted against it.
Still, differences can be managed deftly under the Biden administration, although the prospect of Trump returning to the White House in November would cause extreme anxiety in France and elsewhere in Europe. What the two leaders have in common is that they are trying to fend off the nationalist right at home, represented by Trump and Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s far-right National Rally party.
Throughout his presidency, Mr. Trump has disdained allies. He recently made clear that his views on these issues have not changed and said he would not mind if Russia attacked NATO members that did not spend enough on defense.
Biden denounced this isolationism, saying “we are not going away” about Ukraine in Normandy. The target of his rhetoric is clear: his opponents in the November 5 election. As for Mr Macron, he told US veterans in English: “If I may say that, you are at home.”
It was a reminder that for the United States and France, frequent skirmishes cannot erase a century-old friendship.
