USA to sell Nuclear Subs to Australia

[parochial boy]

Yeah, I mean, I have been probably more critical of French internal politics than anyone else on this forum, and would normally go "not my problem, neutralité oblige". I still think it is rather interesting that this forum's reaction has been to dig in to its rather predictable anti-European resentment and francophobia and to uncritically parrot the idea that it is totally unacceptable for anyone to resist submitting to the US as if every country has a moral obligation to align its interests to those of the USA.

For many reasons, European and American geopolitical interests don't actually align perfectly - and one of those is that stuff like this; the four years of Trumpism; the Afghanstan debacle; the fact that one of the major American parties seems to have abandoned its commitment to democracy (and vice versa in certain EU member states); and in particular the increasing rejection of multilateralism on both sides of the American political spectrum mean that it is no longer seen as a trustworthy ally. If the US consistently goes around undermining the multilateral organisations, multipolarity, ignores the perspectives of EU members, and delves further into basing its world outlook on a resentful nationalism - then it isn't really surprising that, especially a figure like Macron, whose own outlook is similar except, well, French, will react.

By which I mean, I'm not actually sure whether this was intentional on Biden's part, of if he really just is pretty bad at foreign policy. Misjudging the Afghanistan withdrawal and now this would potentially seem indicate that you shouldn't assume bad intentions when it could more justifiably just be explained as incompetence.

Question is, does the EU actually have the balls to organise itself an come up with a coherent foreign and defence policy? Everything we've ever seen up to now would suggest no, which long term probably just means further decline of Europe's influence. And in any case the hysterical predictions of some new world order aren't likely - the EU and US might develop into reluctant and mistrustful allies à la France and Britain in the first half of the 20th century; but they are fundamentally too economically dependent on each other, and are still aligned on the fundamental basic values like democracy to ever be active antagonists.