French “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”
France’s Gamble and sporting “First Iraq, then France”
TRUMP AND THE ALLIES
As America Retreats,
Macron Steps Up
Natalie Nougayrède
D
espite the upbeat characterization
of France as the United States’
oldest ally—from the Marquis
de Lafayette’s help in the American
Revolution to France’s gift of the Statue
of Liberty and up through the shared
fight in two world wars—the U.S.-French
relationship has always been complicated.
During the Cold War, French President
Charles de Gaulle sided with the United
States when it mattered, as during the
1962 Cuban missile crisis. But he also
clashed with U.S. leaders as he sought
to assert French autonomy within nato
and position his country outside the
U.S.-Soviet rivalry. In the 1980s, U.S.
President Ronald Reagan’s free-market
policies made many French cringe (they
tended to overlook his successful efforts
to win the Cold War). But his French
counterpart, François Mitterrand, also
stood up to the Soviet Union, memora-
bly declaring in 1983, “The pacifists are
in the West, but the missiles are in the
East.” After U.S. President George W.
Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, the
United States’ popularity in France hit
rock bottom. Things got so bad that a
2003 poll found that 33 percent of French
hoped that the United States would
lose to Saddam Hussein. It didn’t help
that Americans had started calling the
NATALIE NOUGAYRÈDE is a columnist for The
Guardian. Follow her on Twitter @nnougayrede.
2 f o r e i g n a f fa i r s
bumper stickers on their cars. Yet U.S.-
French relations survived the disagree-
ment over Iraq, with French President
Jacques Chirac successfully seeking
Bush’s support for a joint effort to get
Syrian troops to withdraw from Lebanon
in 2005.
The election of Barack Obama certainly
swayed French public opinion. By the
summer of 2009, according to a survey
by the Pew Research Center, the United
States’ favorability rating in France had
soared to 75 percent (the highest score
in Europe), up from 42 percent in 2003.
But relations between Obama and French
President Nicolas Sarkozy were awkward.
Sarkozy found his American counterpart
cold, and Obama joked about Sarkozy’s
looks and his fast speech. Tensions over
Iran went deeper: the French were wary
of Obama’s outstretched hand and pushed
for harsher sanctions. The nato inter-
vention in Libya was another stumbling
block, with Sarkozy frustrated by Obama’s
decision to withdraw U.S. bombers ten
days into the operation.
Then came Donald Trump, a U.S.
president like no other. During last
fall’s U.S. campaign, France’s then
president, the Socialist François Hollande,
spoke for many of his compatriots when
he said that Trump’s “excesses” made him
want to “throw up.” On the right, Bruno
Le Maire (who has since become France’s
finance minister) called Trump “a danger-
ous man.” Days after Trump’s election, a
survey found that 75 percent of French
held a negative opinion of the incoming
U.S. president. Most were convinced
that he would damage U.S.-European
relations and threaten world peace. Even
half of the supporters of the far-right

French presidential candidate, Marine
Le Pen, opposed Trump, despite sharing
many of his views on Islam, immigration,
and trade.
Yet behind this widespread revulsion
lies a diplomatic opportunity. With the
United States looking inward and Trump
having torn up the traditional foreign
policy rule book, France’s new president,
Emmanuel Macron, is seeking to rein-
vigorate the European project as a way
of restoring French leadership. French
power is no substitute for American power,
of course. But with the United States’
image, global role, and reliability newly
uncertain, Europeans feel a void that
someone must fill—and France thinks
it should at least try to do just that.
ENTRE NOUS
France and the United States have
historically offered up similar but
competing messages to the world:
“American exceptionalism” is matched
by France’s claim of being “the birth-
place of human rights.” As Sarkozy
once quipped, the two countries “are
separated by common values.” France
and the United States may not always
see eye to eye on policy, but they both
stand for humanistic values harking
back to the Enlightenment. Against
that backdrop, Trump’s blunt abandon-
ment of even the pretense of defending
the liberal international order and its
accompanying body of human rights
conventions has marked a watershed.
Trump’s style is also anathema to
the French. The view from Paris is that
Trump is a vulgar plutocrat who came
to office by pandering to the unsophisti-
cated masses and who might leave office
early in scandal. His foreign policy posi-
tions, in their view, alternate between
France’s Gamble
1930s-style isolationism and trigger-
happy unilateralism. As tempting as it
may be for the French to look down
their noses at the United States, how-
ever, they know that their country is
not immune to right-wing populism:
in France’s presidential runoff in May,
Le Pen received more than ten million
votes, a third of the total.
But in the wake of Macron’s decisive
victory over Le Pen, the French have
rightly felt a sense of pride for having
slowed down, or perhaps even halted,
the march of populism across Europe,
especially when across the Atlantic,
Trump’s America looks like something
out of Ubu Roi, the nineteenth-century
French satirical play about an obscene
king. But anxieties persist, and with the
destiny of the West seemingly at stake,
France feels as much discomfort as it
does smugness.
Still, to a certain degree, the country
is adopting a wait-and-see approach to
Trump. His election has not brought the
French out on the streets. There have
been no demonstrations with such slogans
as Vive la France! À bas l’Amérique de
Trump! (Long live France! Down with
Trump’s America!). Nor have the French
seized on Trump’s disregard for nato as
a pretext to revive past grudges against
the alliance, which some French saw as
a vehicle for American imperial domina-
tion. De Gaulle has long ago turned in
his grave: no official in Paris wants to
undo France’s 2009 return to nato’s
integrated military structure, which he had
pulled out of in 1966. Nor has Trump’s
presidency sparked a groundswell of
hostility toward the United States as a
whole. It’s his personality, not his coun-
try, that draws so much contempt. This
is good news for any future U.S.
September/October 2017 3
Natalie Nougayrède
president who decides to revive the
transatlantic link.
To be sure, anti-Americanism hasn’t
vanished from France. It’s still present
on both extremes of the political spec-
trum. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the former
Trotskyist who won nearly 20 percent of
the vote in the first round of this year’s
presidential election, loves to rant against
U.S. policies while evincing little dis-
comfort with those of various dictators.
Le Pen, for her part, was seen sipping
coffee in Trump Tower during her cam-
paign (without meeting the man), and
she did applaud his election (“Congrat-
ulations to the American people, free!”
she tweeted). But her party’s nationalist
ideology, as well as French opinion polls
showing a deep dislike for Trump, made
it hard for her to speak of the prospect
of a Franco-American love fest. Instead,
she chose to accentuate her fondness
for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Setting aside these populists, most
French distinguish between Trump,
whom they see as an aberration, and
the United States’ institutions, on which
their hopes still rest.
But even though many French look
back at Obama with nostalgia—so much
so that Macron sought out and received
his endorsement—he was not univer-
sally loved inside the Élysée Palace, the
official home of France’s president. In
fact, it is hard to overstate how livid the
French foreign policy establishment was
with Obama’s hesitant decision-making
style, particularly when it came to Syria.
The paroxysm came in August 2013,
when Obama, having warned Syria’s
Bashar al-Assad that the use of chemical
weapons would represent the crossing
of a “redline,” prepared to enforce it
with an air strike when Assad did just
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that. Rafale fighter jets were ready to
take off for a joint U.S.-French opera-
tion that French officials thought would
set the stage for a major shift in the
Syrian civil war and possibly lead Assad
to accept a negotiated settlement. But
within hours, Obama made a massive
U-turn, declining to intervene and thus
failing to carry out his own threat.
As the ensuing years have made
clear, the prolongation of the Syrian
conflict has not only produced untold
human suffering; it has also inflicted
severe damage on Europe, with the
resulting terrorism and migration
fueling the rise of populism. It was
that moment in 2013, and not Trump’s
election, that made Paris realize that it
could no longer count on its ally across
the Atlantic. Obama, with his adver-
tised “pivot” to Asia, was already seen
as aloof from Europe, but now France’s
decision-makers learned that the White
House could demonstrate total disre-
gard for the objections of a close ally,
and that it could go back on its word
in ways that harmed European inter-
ests and international norms.
Macron was a senior aide to Hollande
in the Élysée when these events unfolded,
and they left deep traces on his own
thinking about Europe and the United
States. In an interview in June, he drew
an explicit link between Obama’s turn-
around in Syria and Putin’s aggression
in Ukraine, which shattered Europe’s
security architecture. “When you draw
redlines, if you don’t know how to get
them respected, you decide to be weak,”
he said. He went on: “What embold-
ened Putin to act in other theaters of
operation? The fact that he saw he had
in front of him people who had redlines
but didn’t enforce them.”

Pas de deux: Trump and Macron at the Élysée Palace, Paris, July 2017
HOW TO TREAT TRUMP
Immediately after Macron took office,
fresh from an electoral battle against
political forces that Trump seemed ready
to promote, he made it clear he would not
submit to the U.S. president. At a nato
meeting on May 25, Macron managed
to fend off Trump’s apparent attempt to
dominate him during a handshake. He
wasted no time in capitalizing on the
episode. “That’s how you ensure you are
respected,” he told reporters. “You have to
show you won’t make small concessions—
not even symbolic ones.” Macron went
POOL / REUTERS
on to deliver a remarkable video address
to the American people in response to
Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate
agreement, calling on U.S. scientists,
France’s Gamble
engineers, and “responsible citizens” to
“find a second homeland” in France. And
he launched a campaign to “make the
planet great again” that gained traction
on social media. For a moment, it seemed
as if Macron would single-handedly take
on Trump and cast himself as the leader
of Western liberalism.
In Paris, foreign policy grandees
took to the television studios, barely
hiding their excitement: now was the
time to demonstrate a Gaullist inde-
pendence, they claimed. Dominique de
Villepin, a former foreign minister and
former prime minister, argued that
France needed to be put back on its
traditional track of “mediating” and
“balancing” between powers. A debate
September/October 2017 5
Natalie Nougayrède
had been raging in Parisian circles about
whether Hollande—and, before him,
Sarkozy—had been too “Atlanticist” in
orientation, too dangerously aligned
with the United States. This hardly
matched the facts, considering the bilat-
eral tensions that existed under both
Sarkozy and Hollande. But Macron, it
was thought, would offer a welcome
course correction.
But those who hoped for a full-on
clash with the United States would be
disappointed. Macron, it turns out,
has recognized that anti-Trumpism
can hard­ly serve as the animating idea
behind French foreign policy. He has
chosen his words carefully, eager to
preserve relations with the White
House. Unlike German Chancellor
Angela Merkel, who has publicly con­­
fronted Trump over his lack of commit-
ment to Western values, Macron has
aimed narrowly—for instance, criticizing
the Trump administration’s stance on
climate change rather than declaring, as
Merkel did, that the United States can
no longer be relied on. In the run-up to
the federal election in Germany in
September, Merkel has no doubt been
aware of the risks of appearing to agree
with Trump on anything. Macron is
much less constrained. In May, after
meeting with Trump at the G-7 summit,
he said that despite their differences,
he found Trump “pragmatic” and “some-
one who listens and who is willing to
work.” Macron even went so far as to
invite Trump to this year’s Bastille Day
festivities in Paris. Macron’s team framed
the gesture as aimed at honoring the
United States’ long-standing role in
Europe, but it was hard not to see it as
an attempt to generate good chemistry
with Trump.
6 f o r e i g n a f fa i r s
For Macron, antagonizing the new
U.S. leader simply carries too many
downsides—above all, the prospect of
jeopardizing cooperation on counter­
terrorism. French officials see national
security as paramount. For years, France
has been positioning itself as the United
States’ most active European ally when
it comes to counterterrorism, and since
the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris and
the 2016 one in Nice, that has proved
truer than ever. It’s no mystery why:
with its constrained defense resources,
France can ill afford to dispense with
U.S. help in the fight against the Islamic
State (or isis) and other terrorist groups,
whether in the Middle East or the Sahel.
Trump’s election will not change the
centrality of counterterrorism in the
relationship. Indeed, Macron has de-
clared counterterrorism his “number one
priority,” and his first meeting with
Trump centered on the fight against
isis. But what Trump’s election will
likely change is the way France man-
ages the relationship. Like other U.S.
allies, France is struggling to navigate
an increasingly indecipherable Wash-
ington power structure.
EUROVISION
Instead of seeing Trump’s election as a
reason to completely distance France
from its ally across the Atlantic, Macron
is looking for ways to boost France’s
standing in its immediate neighbor-
hood. French influence in Europe has
waned in recent years, in turn weaken-
ing France’s position on the broader
international stage. During the Obama
era, it was Germany that served as the
United States’ preferred interlocutor.
From a French standpoint, that was a
highly unbalanced arrangement. Ever

since its creation 60 years ago, the Euro-
pean project has been seen in Paris as
an amplifier of French influence, not
an instrument of its marginalization.
Remember that it was only after France
lost its empire in 1962, when it with-
drew from Algeria, that de Gaulle fully
committed to a common European
endeavour. (He signed a friendship
treaty with West Germany the very
next year.)
In an important campaign speech in
March, Macron described his vision
of France’s place in the shifting global
landscape:
To those who have become accus-
tomed to waiting for solutions to
their problems from the other side
of the Atlantic, I believe that devel-
opments in U.S. foreign policy
clearly show that we have changed
eras. Of course, the alliance with
the United States is and remains
fundamental, at the strategic, intel-
ligence, and operational levels. . . .
But for now, the Americans seem
to want to focus on themselves.
The current unpredictability of U.S.
foreign policy is calling into ques-
tion some of our points of reference,
while a wide space has been left open
for the politics of power and fait
accompli, in Europe, in the Middle
East, and also in Asia. So it is up to
us to act where our interests are at
stake and to find partners with whom
we will work to substitute stability
and peace for chaos and violence.
That Macron hasn’t publicly
­repeated those thoughts in so many
words since his election does not mean
they have changed: rather, he recog-
nizes the diplomatic constraints of
being in office. But while somewhat
France’s Gamble
toning down his rhetoric, he has already
started putting some of these ideas
into practice.
The centerpiece of Macron’s plan
for Europe is to usher in a new era of
continental defense cooperation. The
French president has supported the
creation of a “European defense fund”
to pay for continent-wide projects, and
he envisages ad hoc European coalitions
for military interventions in and outside
Europe. On this front, the French think
it’s only natural that their country take
the lead. The United Kingdom has
become obsessively inward-looking—
almost a disappearing act, to France’s
deep regret. In continental Europe,
France remains the top military power,
and the only one with a nuclear deter-
rent and a permanent seat on the un
Security Council. For historical reasons,
Germany is still reluctant to expand
its military and put soldiers in harm’s
way. France has no such qualms, and
its political culture allows the presi-
dent to act militarily without much
parliamentary oversight.
But Macron recognizes that France
cannot go it alone, and that Germany
is key to what he likes to describe as a
“European renaissance.” His team is
considering taking steps toward deeper
integration of the eurozone, although
much will depend on the outcome of the
German election, as well as on Macron’s
capacity to implement economic reforms
at home. In the future, expect Macron
to showcase his closeness to Merkel, as
when he went to great lengths to sup-
port the chancellor’s refugee policies—
ones Trump has repeatedly castigated.
Reviving the so-called Franco-German
engine is crucial to the continent’s
newfound sense of self-confidence,
September/October 2017 7
Natalie Nougayrède

momentum that Macron wants to “Europe needs to hold the fort for as
­capitalize on. long as Trump remains in office.”
Macron has also called for reform of Frans Timmermans, the deputy
the European Union, which he sees as leader of the European Commission,
ineffective and out of touch. In his once said that there are two kinds of
view, it must build better defenses countries in Europe: “small ones, and
against terrorism, Russian aggression, those who don’t know yet they are small.”
and abusive trade practices (including The French would like to renew their
China’s). Macron had drawn up this country’s sense of grandeur, but France
wish list well before the U.S. election, is no superpower. The contrast with
but Trump’s maverick streak has made Trump may make them feel good about
those steps even more urgent, because themselves. But as Macron reflects on
Europe now questions the United States’ what he has called “the strategic void”
traditional security guarantees and left by the United States’ retreat, he
lacks a reliable partner on free trade. knows that he has no other option but
to address Europe’s weaknesses if he
NOW WHAT? wants France’s voice to matter. In other
Trump is arguably as much an opportu- words, he must hedge against “America
nity for Europe as he is a problem. But first” by focusing on Europe first.∂
those hoping that Europe will weather
the United States’ turn inward easily
should manage their expectations. For
starters, Europe can hardly fill the shoes
of the United States. There is no such
thing as a European nuclear umbrella
on offer, and talk of a “European army”
remains lofty. Rather, Europeans will
take more modest steps, such as pooling
their resources for the joint procurement
of military equipment. Besides, there are
powerful historical hang-ups that haven’t
entirely disappeared. Macron knows
well that it was France, not Germany,
that rejected plans for a European
army in 1954.
Given all the threats to Europe
today—Brexit, Putin’s aggression,
Turkey’s authoritarian turn, and the
specter of terrorism—Europe can only
try to mitigate some of the conse-
quences of the Trump phenomenon.
On this, Macron would surely agree
with how one former Obama adminis-
tration official framed things for me:

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