According to French president Emmanuel Macron, NATO is "brain dead". According to him, European countries can no longer rely on the United States to defend them. Macron also says he has doubts about NATO Article 5, which requires "collective defense" and regards an attack on one NATO member as an attack on all members.
NATO only works if the security of the last resort works, Macron said. Macron said on the eve of the NATO meeting in Brussels that the European NATO countries should look again at the dedication of the United States. According to Macron, US President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw US troops from Syria without consulting his European allies is a sign that the US "turned their backs on us."
Macron warns the European countries in an interview with the British weekly magazine The Economist that they can no longer rely on the United States to defend NATO allies. Europe is on the verge of an abyss, he says, and must start to consider himself a geopolitical power. The French president says it is high time for Europe to "wake up."
Macron denounced the recent inability of NATO countries to respond to Turkey's offensive in Syria and said it was time for Europe to cease to act as an ally to the United States when it came to the Middle East.
Because if US President Trump is no longer willing to deploy his soldiers for the defense of Europe, then this alliance no longer makes sense, Macron reasoned. That works out well for France. Two years ago, President Macron launched old ideas for an independent, French-led credible European defense. The recent doubts about the US security guarantee for Europe and hence the credibility of NATO give Macron's ideas new urgency.
In addition, Trumps 'America First' Macron provides a convincing argument to transform the European Union into a fully-fledged military player. However, the costs of this are huge and are actually not affordable for EU concepts. People have been discussing their own EU defense policy for many years, but so far that is still the domain of the 'atlantic' alliance. But if Trump withdraws on its own American continent, and if the British withdraw from the European continent, new geo-political relationships arise, as many experts and analysts claim.
The biggest problem for the advocates of a European Defense policy is the fact that the 27 EU countries do not agree at all on a common foreign policy or international policy, let alone the deployment of a European peace mission or a European army. In fact, many European countries and politicians are increasingly opting for their own national, national interest.
The NATO countries commemorated the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 at their headquarters in Brussels. NATO ambassadors considered the thirtieth anniversary of the symbolic end of the Cold War and of the dichotomy of Germany. That paved the way for many Eastern and Central European countries to join the European Union and NATO. But thirty years later, according to many commentators, there is hardly any question of reunification or renewal of Europe, and there is more talk of new national fragmentation and fragmentation, especially on the southern and eastern fringes of the European Union.
The fall of the wall on November 9, 1989 is also commemorated on Saturday in Berlin. Numerous dignitaries will be present at that ceremony, including host and mayor Michael Müller and German president Frank Walter Steinmeier.