Aletho News

Inter-EU relations plummeting over Macron’s apparent China tilt

By Drago Bosnic | April 17, 2023

It’s hardly breaking news that the European Union is essentially a giant collection of vassals of the United States. Ironically enough, as the bloc effectively doubled in size since the (First) Cold War, its sovereignty has proportionately gone down. Washington DC largely accomplished this by propping up staunchly pro-US EU members. One such country is certainly Poland, as Warsaw consistently supports American interests in the EU. And while it could be argued that this is largely thanks to Poland’s virtually endemic Russophobia, the most recent episode with French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to China clearly indicates that Warsaw’s foreign policy framework is as American as it could possibly be.

Late last week, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki slammed Macron’s “controversial” comments on Beijing, made just after he met his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. Morawiecki openly mocked the French President’s call for “strategic autonomy”, which also included follow-up comments about the EU “not being a direct US vassal”. Such rhetoric isn’t unheard of, particularly from France, but the question remains how exactly honest and straightforward it is. However, even a semblance of anything that could remotely be seen as “anti-American” is virtual “heresy” in Warsaw, which explains its harsh reaction to this. Morawiecki equated even just cordial EU-China ties with “cutting off relations with the US”. His exact words were:

“European autonomy sounds fancy, doesn’t it? But it means shifting the center of European gravity towards China and severing the ties with the US. Short-sightedly they look to China to be able to sell more EU products there at huge geopolitical costs, making us more dependent on China and not less. Some European countries are trying to make with China the same mistake which was made with Russia – this dramatic mistake.”

According to AFP’s reporting, Morawiecki also (implicitly) slammed both France and Germany for their allegedly “lukewarm” support for the Kiev regime and “warned” about China’s breakaway island province of Taiwan:

“You cannot protect Ukraine today and tomorrow by saying Taiwan is not your business. I think that, God forbid, if Ukraine falls, if Ukraine gets conquered, the next day China may attack – can attack – Taiwan… … I do not quite understand the concept of strategic autonomy if it means de facto shooting into our own knee. Western European nations have grown accustomed to a model based on cheap energy from Russia, high-margin trade with China, low-cost labor from Eastern Europe and security for free from the United States. Now their modus vivendi collapsed in ruins so what do they do? They want a quick ceasefire, armistice, in Ukraine, almost at any price. Some politicians in Western Europe are thinking, ‘Ukraine, why are you fighting so bravely?'”

Somewhat surprisingly, despite increased NATO pressure, Macron has not only refused to take back his statements, but has even reiterated them, openly declaring that “being an ally does not mean being a vassal … [or] mean that we don’t have the right to think for ourselves.” Macron’s recent “controversial” statements have sent shockwaves across the political West. And while they’re hardly a clear indicator of a major strategic shift in French foreign policy, as the country still supports the Kiev regime through weapons shipments that are killing the people of Donbass, they are quite an unpleasant surprise for Washington DC planners hopeful of sustaining their strategic siege of China in the Asia-Pacific, an effort that requires pan-Western support.

“The paradox would be that, overcome with panic, we believe we are just America’s followers. The question Europeans need to answer … is it in our interest to accelerate [a crisis] on Taiwan? No. The worse thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the US agenda and a Chinese overreaction… … If the tensions between the two superpowers heat up … we won’t have the time nor the resources to finance our strategic autonomy and we will become vassals,” Macron said at the time.

This and the fact that the French President said “the great risk facing Europe right now is that it gets caught up in crises that are not ours, which prevents it from building its strategic autonomy” is quite indicative of so-called “old” Europe’s desire to maintain at least some degree of strategic relevance. However, it’s quite difficult to take the “old” EU seriously in the matter of Taiwan when it’s been so religiously following Washington DC’s diktat on Ukraine for well over a decade. Despite clear and open frustrations with the US profiteering that has been “bleeding dry” the increasingly cash-strapped EU for over a year now, the bloc still continues its self-defeating subservience. As long as the EU participates in Washington DC’s crawling aggression against Russia, the desire to stop being US vassals will be nothing but that.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

April 17, 2023 Posted by aletho | Russophobia | European Union, France, Germany, Poland, United States | Leave a comment