The Macron-Von der Leyen visit to China has sparked a blitzkrieg of a debate over an alleged unity/disunity paradox in Europe. The visit was essentially Europe playing ‘good cop bad cop’ in Beijing, with French President Emmanuel Macron the good cop — underscoring economic importance of China to Europe — and head of the European Commission Ursula Von der Leyen playing the bad one— having announced de-risking from China merely days before the visit. It ended up precipitating a baffling cacophony of Europe’s views, lacking in coordination and feeding the egos and sarcasm of Euroskeptics, especially the Chinese. The Chinese media stated it as Xi’s victory over Europe, embracing a “brilliant” Macron while alienating the “American puppet” Von der Leyen. Beijing rolled out the red carpet for Macron, congratulating him for finally breaking free from the US’s war-mongering worldview, most notably on Taiwan. China-skeptic Von der Leyen’s reception was poles apart, she was greeted by the ecology minister and the regular passenger exit of the airport.
Soon after Macron’s ill-pitched and ill-timed gaffe — on US dependence and Taiwan — clarifications flowed over how Macron’s statements do not mean any shift from French policies either in the Indo-Pacific or on Taiwan and that France stays committed to transatlantic ties. The world watched as American and European diplomats got busy with damage control.
Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock had taken on the responsibility of putting out the fire on her trip to China. After the visit, she called it “shocking” and said China is becoming a systemic rival. EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrel also announced a trip to China for the same, but that didn’t materialise because of a Covid infection.
The week after his Beijing visit, Macron, suave and undeterred, repeated the same strategic autonomy song, this time in the Netherlands.
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Macron’s objectives
There are two questions to answer. Why is France’s quest for strategic autonomy looked upon as a discordant note in European symphony today? But first, why did Macron travel to China?
Macron travelled to China for two reasons. First, for trade benefits — it was expected that the visit would reset Europe’s economic ties with China. More than 50 French entrepreneurs and senior executives including nuclear energy giant EDF, Alstom Railway and Airbus accompanied Macron. Furthermore, Macron did not want to lag behind his main European competitor —Germany, whose Chancellor Olaf Scholz made a rather successful trip to China in November 2022.
Second, for Ukraine. Geopolitically, the Ukraine war and its ramifications figured as the top priority. French president tried to persuade Xi Jinping to put some pressure on Russia.
Lest public memory falls short, Macron made frequent trips to Moscow before the war started, confident that his stewardship of diplomatic engagement with Putin will perhaps convince him to not invade Ukraine. Apart from a few meetings with Putin at his favourite and now famous table, Macron didn’t achieve anything.
However, what stood out then was his commitment to play a visible and decisive role in European politics, depsite transatlantic dependence. It was the same ambition during his latest trip to China that made Macron overstep Europe’s transatlantic solidarity and demand equal footing as US President Biden in the search for a solution to Ukraine.
Macron also hoped that Xi will show some concern about the deployment of Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus.
However, their Joint Declaration did not say anything about Russia’s actions in Ukraine. The French President’s visit could not help his ambitions for France to emerge as an arbiter of a watershed global conflict. Perhaps he was erroneously counting on Xi’s commitment to the 12-point peace plan for Ukraine.
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Macron’s tryst with strategic autonomy
France’s aspiration for strategic autonomy has its roots in the World War II experiences that sidelined France, and the rest of Europe, and made it dependent on the US. It refers to France, and through it Europe, regaining its lost ability to make decisions for itself in the global order.
While prima facie a correct aspiration, it has often fallen short because of the very way Europe’s post-world war security was outsourced to the US and the bloc was single-mindedly immersed in the pursuit of the world’s most successful inter-state economic integration experiment—the European Union.
As Macron came to power in 2017, it became a stated foreign policy goal for France to pursue a more independent policy and not one that is a mere footnote to the dominant transatlantic dynamic. But that was before the war.
Macron was not only actively pursuing a solution to the crisis in Eastern Ukraine under the Normandy Format talks, his stewardship of the Council of the EU in 2022 also ushered in a new era for Europe — for it to be more independent in its security under the unprecedented “strategic compass”.
In 2019, as the bloc readied for Brexit and later when Merkel stepped down in 2021, a young Macron, saw strategic autonomy as the real emancipation project for the EU to gain what it had lost to a “brain-dead” NATO.
But then came the unthinkable – the war in Ukraine that, among other things, proved that transatlantic security guarantees under NATO and the US remain the cornerstone of the EU’s existence.
It also made Europe realise that there is little dispute on its transatlantic dependence and that it should double down on its efforts to achieve capabilities and strategic autonomy that will allow it to stand by itself.
Then why the hue and cry?
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Bad timing, right sentiment
Just as Brussels has left no stone unturned to uphold the show of solidarity and unity of support for Ukraine, Macron, a formidable player and architect of EU’s post-Merkel worldview seemed to debunk the idea of a united transatlantic bloc and went solo in stating that France has an independent foreign policy from the US.
Recent French defence policy documents are undoubtedly anything but pro-China. For instance, France’s April 2023 draft Military Law speaks of China threatening to destabilise the Indo-Pacific, while reiterating concern for the security of France’s territories in the region. This law, and almost every other French national security document or statement of military policy, emphasises deepening ties with NATO and the criticality of France’s strategic cooperation with the US.
Macron’s damaging proclamations also came at a terrible time. Europe was debating the impact of the US intelligence leaks on the West’s support to Ukraine and the damage to transatlantic ties from America spying on its allies. It was also a sensitive time because DC and Brussels were busy ironing out any unevenness due to the leaks, before Ukraine’s upcoming counteroffensive begins.
Didn’t Macron know that he was throwing down the gauntlet? Perhaps.
Europe is tired of being pushed around by external powers, notably because of its complicated ménage à trios with US, Russia and China which became vulnerable with the fast-changing dynamics between the three. Amid all the flux, China remains the EU’s highest trading partner, even when listed as a systemic rival.
Just as anarchy is what you make of it, autonomy is also what one makes of it. The agency—the European Union — is entitled to the meaning it wishes to ascribe to that concept as long as it achieves larger foreign policy objectives.
Europe knows that France alone doesn’t speak for the continent. The diversity of views within the EU is a healthy sign of a thinking, contemplating society. No matter how wrong the timing, Macron’s views do not and will not change his policies either towards the Indo-Pacific or towards Taiwan and least of all towards Ukraine.
For India, there is an unmissable silver lining amid all noise of a “free thinking” France. It has been India’s preeminent strategic partner. France-India relations have sustained despite all geopolitical hiccups including sanctions on India after nuclear tests.
Further, France is also a permanent member of the UN Security Council. True to middle power congruence, New Delhi must embark upon exploring the potential of unwavering French support to India at the UNSC. The pursuit of freedom and a truly “French mark” in world affairs by Paris could turn in New Delhi’s favour. When diversification is the mantra, why shouldn’t New Delhi diversify its support base at the UNSC?
The writer is an Associate Fellow, Europe and Eurasia Center, at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses. She tweets @swasrao. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)