“I have come to talk to you about Europe. ‘Again,’ some might exclaim.” These were the words with which French President Emmanuel Macron, just a few months after taking office, opened his famous Sorbonne speech in September 2017. He called for a stronger role for Europeans in European defense and strategic autonomy. And that has been his message ever since, often sparking irritation and even open outrage among France’s European partners. The almost theological debate culminated in September 2020 in a confrontation via interviews and op-eds with Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, then defense minister of Germany, who clearly rebuked Macron’s ideas and underlined that there was only one backbone for the European security: the United States.
European defense should be solidly constructed on a trans-Atlantic (meaning American) backbone, voices like Kramp-Karrenbauer argued from across Germany, Poland, and the Baltic states. Simply the idea of strengthening the European contribution, let alone European leadership on the continent’s security, was perceived as potentially offensive to Washington. Furthermore, perhaps the key problem of Macron’s vision was that it barely took into consideration the warnings of Eastern European states regarding the threat from Russia. Instead, it projected France’s view of the map to the European level, rather than approaching European security and defense holistically.
Since 2017, things have changed. Russia’s war against Ukraine profoundly altered threat perceptions among Europeans, including in France, testing the continent’s ability to defend itself. And the Trump administration is downgrading Europe’s place in American security interests, with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth explaining that it is time for Europe to “take ownership of conventional security on the continent” and that the United States “will no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship which encourages dependency.”
When even staunch trans-Atlanticists call for “independence from the United States,” such as likely next German chancellor Friedrich Merz and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, what was once a parochial French position has become mainstream across Europe.
This has significant implications for France’s role in Europe: What might look like a massive political victory after a long uphill battle now also presents a new challenge for French foreign policy and France’s role in Europe. If France wants to seize this momentum and truly strengthen Europe’s ability to defend its interests by itself, this will not only require intellectual leadership from Paris, but also revisiting some of its own approaches to European defense — including the E.U. preference for acquiring capabilities and linking E.U.-U.K. defense cooperation to a deal on fisheries. And ironically, France itself and the country’s domestic situation are likely to stand in the way of realizing this ambition, as the possibility of a far-right president in 2027 jeopardizes the necessary trust among partners.
France Had to Come a Long Way
Three years into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, France has hence re-emerged as a leader against the odds. Europe’s new endorsement of the originally French proposal of strategic autonomy did not emerge overnight — and neither did France’s credibility as a partner. When Russia launched its full-scale attack against Ukraine, Macron’s ongoing dialogue with President Vladimir Putin and the government’s initial reluctance to publish the full list of French equipment sent to Ukraine sparked outrage, especially among partners along the eastern front of Europe.
However, Macron has managed to slowly repair France’s image, particularly through his Bratislava speech in 2023. Since his mea culpa, Paris has been permanently pushing European lines on potential actions Europeans could take for Ukraine’s support and their own defense, at least intellectually and rhetorically. The most visible manifestation of this is the debate on a Franco-British proposal for a European “reassurance force” in Ukraine. When Macron first suggested in early 2024 not to rule out European “boots on the ground” in Ukraine, his words triggered massive headwinds in most other European partner nations. Since then, other high-ranking European politicians have endorsed the proposal — and today, it is a critical element of the debate on Europe’s engagement for Ukraine’s future security, even though neither France nor the United Kingdom have presented credible proposals how such a force could be resourced.
While Macron has certainly reminded the world that he has been calling for European strategic autonomy for years, his “I told you so” moment has been mostly implicit. But today, the idea of European strategic autonomy à la française seems more in vogue than ever before.
One of the central reasons why France’s vision of strategic autonomy never became consensual among Europeans was the lack of consideration for the concerns of other European states, be it in terms of their relationship with the United States or the threat from Russia. If France wants to play a leading role in shaping the European security order, it needs to bring those most affected by the fundamental shifts into this process. The E5 format, consisting of France, Germany, Poland, Italy, and the United Kingdom, is a promising step toward coordinating a European position.
Nuclear Options and the Limits of Trust
A critical issue for the French role in the new European security order is the European dimension of France’s nuclear weapons. Macron had already suggested a “strategic dialogue” on European nuclear defense with partner nations in 2020, but this was never implemented on the highest political level — on the military level, only Italy took up the offer and participated in French nuclear exercises in 2022.
With the risk of abandonment by the United States, European states are looking for alternatives for nuclear deterrence. Nobody in Europe or France has any illusion that a European nuclear deterrent could replace the U.S. umbrella — the ambition would be supplementing it. From a purely practical and operational point of view, liaising with Paris on this issue is easier than doing so with London, given that British nuclear weapons are highly dependent on operational and technical cooperation with the United States. Just in early March, Macron reaffirmed his willingness to discuss French nuclear protection for European partners. Beyond the operational and capability challenges, a key problem here is trust, which suffers due to the trajectory of French domestic politics and the strong electoral position of the far-right Rassemblement National. Why should other European states bet everything on cooperation with Paris instead of Washington, even though they could shortly face a similar scenario of a partner that is not willing to defend them?
The answer is that France’s European partners do simply not have any alternatives. Nuclear deterrence in Europe by the United States is already weakened by the lack of credible assurances that Washington would protect Europe against an attack. Muddling through for three more years and hoping for a scenario where the next U.S. president might revise the retrenchment from Europe and fully re-engage in the continent’s security is a risky bet on an unrealistic outcome. Whether Europeans like it or not, the best alternative might be Paris. However, while the deliberate ambiguity in France’s nuclear strategy might be salient for France as an individual state with a limited nuclear arsenal, it is challenging for trust-building with European partners.
Autonomy Could Well Fall in France
A similar conundrum for French foreign policy emerges beyond the nuclear domain and operational aspects. In many regards, France’s traditional claims and long-held positions, as well as its domestic policy, limit its own credibility — and raise the question of to what extent France’s partners will give Paris credit for its strategic change.
Other Europeans will scrutinize whether France walks the walk instead of just talking the talk of European strategic autonomy, both within and beyond the European Union. A longstanding point of criticism is that France’s quest for European strategic autonomy is a way to Europeanize French security interests, and use the European Union as a power multiplier for French national interests. If Paris is serious about the idea of truly building a “Europe of defense” and about other Europeans buying into this objective, it will need to avoid a “France first” approach. Against this backdrop, the French push to exclude non-E.U. states from procurement and capability acquisition financed from the ReArm plan, often referred to as “European preference,” opens the door for old (and justified) criticism. Similarly, tying a potential post-Brexit E.U.-U.K. security pact to a deal on fisheries and access to British waters, a key ask of French fishermen among others, appears like the pursuit of a particular national interest at the cost of advancing European defense cooperation — and again prompts the question of whether France is only serious about European strategic autonomy when it serves French interests. Only revisiting its positions can help Paris fight these claims.
Another challenge for France’s credibility on European strategic autonomy is the lack of clarity on how Macron intends to fund these ambitions. In his speech on March 5, he reassured French citizens that increased defense spending would not imply new taxes — but the margin of maneuver for budget cuts is limited, meaning that the only viable option seems to be new debt. In light of the budgetary pressure France is currently facing, it is hard to see how this approach could be sustainable.
Macron is therefore facing a political dilemma at the nexus of foreign and domestic policy. Precluded from running for another term in the next presidential elections in 2027, Macron could go all in on European security and strengthening strategic autonomy, deciding to take decisions that would likely benefit Europe but go against French short-term interests and be massively unpopular among voters. The question for him is one of political legacy: If he puts all his odds on Europe, he might be remembered as a key enabler and trailblazer for European strategic autonomy. Yet, this also requires European partners to step up and not hit the snooze button again after yet another wake-up call, a scenario that sparks major concern in Paris. Furthermore, prioritizing his European agenda with potentially costly implications for French citizens could spark considerable discontent and demonstrations among the French public, which is nothing less than an anticipated gift for the election campaign of the far-right Rassemblement National. In a case of victory of Marine Le Pen or her successor in the next presidential elections, Macron would also be remembered as the president who paved the way for the far-right’s ascent to power. The danger of this for the European project, and for his pet project of strategic autonomy, is hard to overestimate.
While France might have won the intellectual battle on European strategic autonomy, the tough political and strategic choices still lie ahead.
Gesine Weber is a research fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, based in Paris, an associate fellow at the Centre for Grand Strategy at King’s College London, and a non-resident Hans J. Morgenthau fellow at the Notre Dame International Security Center.
Image: Staff Sgt. Kyle Larsen via DVIDS
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