SAre we all going to be GAullist now? In the language of the most important French European partner, the answer is “Jein!”(A German word that combines Ja for yes and Nein for no). Yes, Emmanuel Macron is right to warn us since he became President of France in 2017, recognizing a long -term US disengagement trend, Europe should be ready to defend itself. Today, Donald Trump, a US Rogue president talking about an 80-year-old American promise in Europe’s defense against Russia, is a lifelong euro-atlanticist like me should recognize that not only do we need a Europe with a harder power-something I always beat-but also the real possibility of European “strategic”. Oui, Monsieur Le PrésidentYou’re right.
Pa en mȇme temps (at the same time), To deploy Macron’s Signature Trope, we must answer “No.”. For de Gaulle, a great man of his time, believed that the defense must be the exclusive province of the state of the country; that the emerging European community should be a European state (a disunited version of the European Union in which hard-right populist nationalist party dreams to return); That Britain should be excluded from the European project (hence its famous “No!Carrying British membership in the emerging community); And Europe should be built as a counterweight in the US, with close relationships with Russia and China.
Above all, though, any realistic plan for defending ourselves against Russia’s Vladimir Putin should begin with the only serious military organization in Europe today, NATO. This is where you find the assigned, trained and interoperable forces from all European NATO countries, the command and control, the complex coordinated air operations, the detailed plans for a concomitant reaction force to rush into the defense of the eastern border and a believable ladder of (mainly American) nuclear deterrence. The EU has nothing comparable to comparable. History could be different if the original idea of building a more integrated Europe around the defense was not killed by the votes of the Gaullists (and the communists) at the French National Assembly in 1954. For De Gaulle’s biographer Julian Jackson reminded us, “he attacked the Supranational organization more oppressive than the abortive European Defense Community”.
So regardless of your original ideological, Gaullist or Atlantic preferences, if you are serious about European defense, you will start from NATO – and then see how we can do it faster Europe. But evenly, faced with Trump’s radical disadvantage, we need to think about the expansion of French and British nuclear deterrence. The EU is becoming a significant player in the field of defense, especially in supporting Ukraine and for defense. And since the EU and NATO both contain Putin friendly blockers like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, some of the promises of defense defense will require “coalitions of want” as for Ukraine where the British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, works closely with the President of France.
A former French minister for Europe, Clément Beaune, tweeted a picture of an improvised meeting of European leaders, Turkish and Canada that Starmer gathered in London with the three words “Les états unisCarrying (The United States). But there is all the difference in the world between being “United States” and being the United States, Les états-unis – a single state capable of deploying large deadly power to a single executive decision. So the challenge for Europe is to make a fast, interrelated, credible transition from security that we enjoyed almost 80 years, with a US-governed alliance, in a Europe without a single hegemon that however has the ability to defend itself against the most aggressive power. That is a tall order. To be a non-hegemonic good power in product regulation or trade policy is one thing; Doing it in the hardest places of difficult power, one who calls on young men and women to sacrifice their lives, is something else.
There are three main obstacles to achieving ambitious but now the existing purpose. The first is the strictly diverse historical understanding of European countries when it comes to national security. In an international crisis, every British prime minister thinks they should be Winston Churchill and every French president, De Gaulle. The national role models of other European leaders are less clearly cut – the postwar chancellor Konrad Adenauer for Germany? The Inter-War Marshal Józef Piłsudski for Poland? The 1990s “Hour of Europe” Foreign Minister Jacques poos for Luxembourg? – But their strategic instincts and cultures are equally diverse.
The approach to Europe is therefore churchillo-gaullism, which combines the best of the two most influential traditions of our continent when it comes to a war world. That’s a formula where not only Macron and Starmer but maybe even most European leaders can subscribe.
Second, the rules we need are European but our democratic politics are still national. Behind the headline figure last week of EU provides € 800bn in defense is actually just € 150bn of European funding complex. Most of the headline figure is just a license for individual member states to spend another € 650BN in combined with. Every national leader who expresses an increase in defense spending explains how it will create jobs in their home country. However, apart from more weapon making, Europe really requires reasoning and integration -with it. Europe has about 170 major weapons systems compared to about 30 for the US. Incorporating -it means that this type of fighter plane should be made, say, Italy and Sweden, closing a French factory, while the type of air defense system should be made in France and Britain, closing a German factory. Imagine how easy it was.
All of this when most European countries are deeply indebted and their populations of accumulation are crying for increased health expenditure, social care, pensions and more. It brings us to the final obstacle, perfectly captured by something Churchill told de Gaulle when the Croix de la Libération (Liberation Cross) awarded him in 1958. Comparing the complex challenges of the 1950s with a clear purpose of their war with the partnership, Churchill noticed, “It is harder of a security that is the situation in the world that is not peace or war.
As we have seen in recent days, the first sign of the possibility of a ceasefire in Ukraine Our public is desperate to believe that we are quick to return to our former post-1989 forms of peace. It is the duty of European leaders not only to re -give the spirit of the fighting of Churchill and de Gaulle but also to explain faithfully to the voters that we are facing another long struggle – and if we really want peace we should prepare for the war. So I say: Vive L’Europe! Vive Le Churchillo-Gaullisme!
