Macron's Bid For 'Power Europe'

Macron’s Bid for ‘Power Europe’ Runs Into Putin’s Russia

 Lionel Laurent

Emmanuel Macron has spent much of his presidency trying to get the European Union to speak the language of hard power in a more hostile world.

A smorgasbord of EU defense plans, including a 5,000-strong deployment force by 2025, have accompanied visions of a bloc less dependent on the U.S. and NATO — which he once derided as “brain-dead.” In 2019, when trying to engineer a rapprochement with Vladimir Putin’s Russia on a host of issues including the Ukraine conflict, Macron evoked Charles de Gaulle’s call for a Europe stretching from “the Atlantic to the Urals.”

The reality is that such a sweeping Eurasian vision built on French grandeur has failed to bear fruit. Today, more than 100,000 Russian troops have massed on the Ukrainian border, the U.S. is on high alert and European leaders are struggling to have their voice heard, let alone find common ground about what to do. 

Rather than a power bloc, Europe looks more like a fractured archipelago, with some parts calling for dialogue and others sending weapons to Ukraine. Distractions abound: France is entering election season, Germany has just exited it, and both are conscious of spillover costs to energy prices — one of many crises (including refugees) that an invasion would bring, says Marie Dumoulin of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

This is in many ways a nightmare scenario for Macron, the standard-bearer for a more autonomous European Union. But it’s also an opportunity to make up for past failures. As the EU’s only nuclear power and pre-eminent military power after Brexit, France can play a more productive role.

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