Why Macron Infuriates the Hawks

The reaction to Macron’s latest remarks has been even more vitriolic because his talk of Europe becoming a “third pole” alarms hegemonists that expect Europe to remain docile and subordinate.

Marco Rubio overreacts to French President Macron’s recent Taiwan remarks:

In the United States, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, posted a video asking whether Macron indeed speaks for Europe.

The United States, he said, “is spending a lot of taxpayer money on a European war.”

“If Macron speaks for all of Europe, and their position now is they’re not going to pick sides between the U.S. and China over Taiwan, maybe then we should not be taking sides either,” he added.

Macron was talking about Europe charting its own course without being dependent on either the U.S. or China, and this has predictably outraged all those in Washington that believe that our European allies are or should be vassals. The pity is that Macron doesn’t speak for all of Europe, since many allies in Europe prefer dependence on the U.S. to the autonomy Macron has been trying to promote. Every time that Macron has talked about European strategic autonomy, he encounters stiff resistance from both American and European critics that prefer to maintain the imbalanced status quo. The reaction to Macron’s latest remarks has been even more vitriolic because his talk of Europe becoming a “third pole” alarms hegemonists that expect Europe to remain docile and subordinate behind U.S. “leadership.”