A couple of seconds within a two-and-a-half hour television interview propelled French President Macron on the front pages of international media, as the one who claims he persuaded President Trump to change his policy in Syria. Macron repeated four times that "we convinced him” to maintain US troops in the country and to limit air strikes to the regime’s chemical weapons sites. This publicly made statement is more than a diplomatic gaffe. It also, and above all, reveals that the French president is tempted by a rather naive approach to relations with America, the same that had, time and time again, led Britain into an impasse.

The turbulences in the European and transatlantic skies over the course of the past year obviously have not been without impact on the coexistence between the Atlantic Alliance and the European Union's (EU) Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP). Long-time taboos have been lifted, initiatives are multiplying, new perspectives seem to open up, and immediately generate powerful backlashes. The outcome will depend largely, once again, on the choices made, and determination displayed, by France.

At the mid-October EU summit, President Macron joined the so-called Declaration No. 52, ten years after the Lisbon Treaty was adopted and France decided not to sign the annexed Declaration on EU symbols.[1] If the new French president chose to reverse policy at this particular moment, it is primarily as a response to far-left leader Mélenchon’s recent call to ban the European flag from the Assemblée nationale (the Lower House of the Parliament). Whereas the Declaration is legally non-binding, the move is intended, in Emmanuel Macron’s words, to “assert the attachment” of France to the symbols of Europe. One point that seems to have been largely overlooked, is that the meaning of those symbols can be very different, depending on whether one refers to the French or English version of the text.

"For the next five years, on the domestic front, the main challenge will be the feeling of alienation of a large majority of the French population. This comes both from the divide between globalization’s winners and losers, and from what is widely perceived as an increasingly assertive presence of Islam. On the European front, there is an unprecedented window of opportunity for the protective, strategic, autonomous EU project France has always advocated, but the key to achieve this still resides in the implementation of the multispeed model."

I had the pleasure to discuss the results of German elections, in a broader European context, with Ronald Granieri and Jeremy Black at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. To listen to the conversation, please click here.

 “One only comes out of ambiguity to their own detriment,” this maxim often repeated by former President François Mitterrand sounds like a premonitory warning in the aftermath of Emmanuel Macron’s election in France.

I had the pleasure to discuss the upcoming French elections with Ronald Granieri at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. To listen to the conversation, please click on the link.

NATO "obsolete", the Brexit "a success"? The bluntly expressed views of the U.S. president-elect[1] are the best thing that has happened to France’s European policy[2] over the past quarter of a century.

"In the face of great powers, old ones as well as new, France must reaffirm its independence ... few countries have by their defense - in other words their armed forces and foreign policy - the capacity to decide sovereignly. We do have it. And we must do everything possible to preserve this strategic freedom."[1]

Hailed (or intensely disparaged, it depends) as a "return to the fold", would the reintegration by France of the integrated military structures end up exploding the Alliance? The question is paradoxical only in appearance.

There is no doubt that France has always constituted the cornerstone of the whole European construction: in its capacity as the guardian of the temple: the one who watches the project being kept on its original political track and who reminds the others to bear in mind the pursuit of those strategic purposes.

From the French point of view enlargement cannot relegate to the second plan the aspiration to European independence and prosperity. On the contrary: the CEE countries’ accession must be carried out in a way to serve the cause of the preservation of the European model and of Europe's sovereignty.

European-American structural tensions – breeding for decades and becoming acute with the end of the bipolar era – were merely brought onto surface by the Iraq crisis. Beyond the official pseudo-vision and occasional visions represented by German hesitations, the two genuine, concurring visions about Europe, transatlantic relations and the international order are advocated respectively by the British and the French.