In 2002-2003, these conflicts came to a head when France, Germany and Russia opposed the Bush administration's attempt to obtain UN approval for the illegal, US-led invasion of oil-rich Iraq. Nearly two decades later, however, the conflicts tearing the NATO alliance apart are far deeper even than at the time of that war, and speculation is growing in European media as to whether these conflicts could in fact split the alliance.
For a time, after Trump's election in 2016, the media attributed growing conflicts between Washington and its European allies to the personality and unpredictability of the new US president.
Since Macron spoke to the Economist, however, it is ever more evident that the European imperialist powers are at odds not simply with Trump, but with US foreign policy as a whole. After meeting with Stoltenberg in Paris on Friday, trying to patch up relations with NATO, Macron said: "Is our enemy today Russia? Or China? Is it the goal of NATO to designate them as enemies? I don't believe so." He pointed to "Peace in Europe, the post-INF situation, the relationship with Russia, the Turkey issue, who's the enemy" as key issues requiring attention.
Such remarks contradict the 2018 US National Security Strategy, which, after the defeat of NATO's Al Qaeda-linked proxy militias in the war in Syria, abandoned the political fraud of the "war on terror." Instead, the 2018 strategy document identified "great power competition" to assert US world dominance as the central task of US foreign policy. It named Russia and China as enemies and advocated first use of US nuclear weapons as a response to non-nuclear threats.
The assertion of US world dominance is fundamentally aimed at Washington's imperialist rivals in Europe, however, as well as Russia and China.
For now, Macron's complaints about a "brain dead" NATO have attracted criticism from across the entire alliance. German Chancellor Angela Merkel sought to patch up the differences and claimed, implausibly, that she was "very optimistic" about the summit. "Despite our divergences, which we must discuss among ourselves, we need to discuss NATO's future and our common strategic interests," she said.
Quite broadly across Europe, however, there have been many complaints over the issues Macron raised in his Economist interview to justify calling the alliance "brain dead." Germany has called for large-scale rearmament, re-militarization and an independent European policy, prompting bitter US criticisms in diplomatic back channels of European attempts to lock US defense contractors out of European weapons markets. Italy has ignored US demands to cut off ties with China's Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure plans.
On December 9 in Paris, Macron will host talks between French, German, Russian and Ukrainian officials to try to arrange a peace deal over conflicts inside Ukraine provoked by the US-backed, fascist-led coup in Kiev in February 2014. Significantly, Washington is excluded from these talks. It is conflicts such as these that underlay Trump's eruption against Macron today.
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