Macron says 'Europe can no longer rely on the United States for its security'

(Image credit: IAN LANGSDON/AFP/Getty Images)

published 27 August 2018

"Europe can no longer rely on the United States for its security," French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday. "It is up to us today to take our responsibilities and guarantee our own security, and thus have European sovereignty."

Macron was speaking to a gathering of French overseas ambassadors, outlining his diplomatic agenda. "I want us to launch an exhaustive review of our security with all Europe's partners, which includes Russia," he said, arguing that at present France is "paying the price of several decades of a weakened Europe." Now, he added, "France wants a Europe which protects, even as extremism has grown stronger and nationalism has awoken." Macron will travel to Denmark and Finland to promote this message.

The French president's comments echo those of German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, who argued in an op-ed last week that Europe must "take an equal share of the responsibility" for its own defense and "form a counterweight" to Washington.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Explore More

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.