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PARIS – Emmanuel Macron never mentioned Donald Trump by name. Yet, it was the U.S. president alone who prompted the extraordinary address to the nation Wednesday night by the French president.
Macron’s aim was to call on France and Europe to recognize new risks, in a tone that was somber, and not entirely reassuring.
From the outset, Macron referred to the United States as “our ally,” seemingly addressing a growing concern in recent days: Has Trump’s America shifted from ally to adversary, after decades of partnership — albeit with ups and downs — since 1945?
Even when General Charles de Gaulle pulled France out of NATO’s integrated military command in 1966, he was careful to maintain the political alliance.
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The word “ally” isn’t part of Donald Trump’s vocabulary, but that’s one of the unspoken realities of the moment. It underscores the complexity of resolving the war in Ukraine and, more broadly, the challenge of European security.
Power dynamics
Despite Trump’s highly questionable decisions and actions, Macron has continued to refrain from criticizing the U.S. president — acknowledging the clear power imbalance in Trump’s favor.
Just such a power dynamic has been on full display for the past week with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky: humiliated in the Oval Office last Friday, hit on Monday with the suspension of U.S. military aid, and dealt another serious blow Wednesday with the halt in intelligence sharing.
Europe wants to avoid being squeezed between a threatening Russia and an unpredictable United States
Zelensky has now gone so far as to send a letter to Trump, which the former president mentioned in his speech to Congress. He remains grateful and humble before the very man who pushed him out of the White House. This is realpolitik — America holds the upper hand.
“You don’t have the cards. With us, you have the cards,” Trump bluntly told Zelensky during their confrontation. Unfortunately, he wasn’t wrong.
Doomed to endure?
The result is that Europeans are left scrambling to minimize the damage from the growing Trump-Putin rapprochement that has left them stunned. Their best hope is that Trump will “buy into” their plan for deploying European troops after a ceasefire — an idea Macron mentioned in his televised speech.
Is Europe doomed to simply endure? That was the central question in Macron’s address. If Europe wants to avoid being squeezed between a threatening Russia and an unpredictable United States, its long-awaited defense strategy must finally take shape.
It’s been the recurring issue in European integration for decades, always delayed by those who feared upsetting the Americans. But the world has changed: first in 2022 with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and then in 2025 with Donald Trump’s return with his “America First” slogan.
Europe must accomplish in a short time what it has failed to achieve in half a century. It starts by funding a bonafide European defense force.
