Summary
French President Emmanuel Macron urged Europe to “wake up” and strengthen its defense in response to Donald Trump’s second-term inauguration.
Highlighting potential U.S. policy shifts, including reduced support for Ukraine and a military pivot to the Pacific, Macron emphasized Europe’s need to reduce reliance on U.S. security.
He called for increased European military spending, robust aid to Ukraine, and guarantees for its security post-war.
Macron’s remarks underscore concerns about U.S. disengagement and aim to prompt Europe to play a larger role in global security.
Don’t be fooled. Nothing that’s happening in the US shocks him.
He’s expressing a logic of block against block to defend the interests of the French ultra-rich (Arnault, Bettencourt, Drahi, Saade, Bolloré…)
And in his vertical conception of politics, France must naturally lead the European bloc, and he must naturally lead France.
He’s not shocked but he is preparing. Europe’s planned defense against Russian imperialism has traditionally counted upon the USA to assist Europe. There’s a much greater chance of that not happening should Putin attempt to project force westward. Europe needs to plan on moving away from their traditionally closer toes to the USA
Should have thought of that when he blocked the socialist plurality from choosing their prime minister, forcing again a right wing clown.
I surely hope the French can resist le pen
Says the sun king.
Macron referred to expected changes in Washington’s foreign policy, citing the need to reduce reliance on the United States for security.
As an American, I also urge Europe to reduce its reliance on the US, for security or anything else. You’re going to want to insulate yourselves as much as possible from my unbelievably stupid, and potentially very dangerous country.
I feel for you. People just voted in power kind of asshats their grandparents fought a war against.
This is what gets me. I remember the war stories my grandparents told, I remember the nightmares my grandfathers had. These boomers are throwing away a country their PARENTS fought for, to people their PARENTS fought against. It only took one fucking generation to brainwash them.
The thing is, it was a close one that first time around. Prior to Pearl Harbor there was a small but strong pro-Nazi movement in the US. That’s part of why the US was being moderately hands off during the start of WW2. Sure the US was shipping supplies to the UK, but in the grand scheme of things that wasn’t much.
Japan really fucked up by attacking the US as there’s a pretty strong argument to be made that that one action determined the outcome of WW2. There’s an alternate history out there where Pearl Harbor didn’t happen and the US either never took part in WW2 or else entered far too late to make a difference and the Axis powers ultimately won.
Turns out the pro-Nazi faction in the US never really went anywhere, they just got quiet for nearly a century. Lets hope we can shut them up this time again.
Of course they never went away. Same thing happened with the US civil war; they didnt finish the job (and id argue it was probably the same groups).
Clearly, “the scouring of the shire” is not an optional part of the story.
There’s an alternate history out there where Pearl Harbor didn’t happen and the US either never took part in WW2 or else entered far too late to make a difference and the Axis powers ultimately won.
Seems unlikely since either way the Soviets did the bulk of the work of defeating the Nazis.
That is A: debatable and B: something that happened thanks to the lend-lease program. A lot of brave soviets put their lives on the line, but so did soldiers of many other countries.
Lend lease piled up around 1/5 of soviet equipment, or am I mistaken? Thats a lot of equipment, but still feels jusr like an extra push
Only hope is that current bunch appear to be morons and sycophants, but they can pave the way to something much worse. Honor and dignity has disappeared from politics and surprising many stabilising things were reliant on that. Now everything goes and Trump will go like a Duracell rabbit.
That’s social cycle theory. Over the generations, people respond to circumstances and do things a bit differently, setting the next generations up for different circumstances and where the lessons from the past are forgotten. It follows a typical pattern that humanity is doomed to repeat.
Don’t think it’s the boomers. Gen x and millennials.
Boomers are the core, but they’ve gotten some reinforcements from Gen X and Millenials. The good news if there is any is that not enough of Gen X and Millenials are MAGAts to carry an election without the Boomers, so in another couple decades if a bunch of Gen Alpha doesn’t turn real stupid we might have a chance.
That’s been the rhetoric for as long as I’ve been alive. “Maybe if we wait for the next generation…”
Maybe if people fucking showed up at all, we’d have this fucking licked. Turnout has been historically high the last few elections… and it’s still atrocious.
This isn’t on the people who show up, it’s on the people who don’t. I don’t care how much you don’t like the options available, deciding to abstain in this is saying you want someone else to think for you cause you don’t feel like it.
Unless, of course, the Boomers benefit from advances in medical care and are rich enough to prolong their lifespans. Then they could continue ruining the world for half a century!
RFK Jr. is going to be in charge of US health policy. They won’t survive long.
Only a very small minority will be rich enough to benefit from advanced medical care. The overwhelming majority will actually have shorter lifespans due to the gutting and subsequent collapse of the healthcare system in the US. The hospitals are going to be overrun with communicable diseases due to the influx of unvaccinated children and those who aren’t receiving preventative care due to skyrocketing medical costs. That combined with the gutting of social security and Medicaid/Medicare will insure that most Boomers if they don’t die in the next couple years will be bankrupt and struggling to afford basic necessities.
Thank you. This isn’t a generation problem. There’s plenty of young Republicans out there too.
I’m quite literally feeling sick about this. My grandpa fought these fuckers, only for my family to elect them again.
WW2 - Democratic America and Communist Russia, joining together to fight Fascist Europe
whatever this shit is - Fascist Russia and Fascist America scheming over how they’ll divide the world.
You’re missing China, Israel, and to a lesser extent, Iran.
Im not convinced that China will ultimately stay “allied” to Russia. the CCP is incredibly obstinent, and Russians are incedibly racist, they hate China, they hate the fact that China has been taking over east asia (including the colonized parts of Russia) for years up to this, they’ve fought serious border wars against each other. they say they’re allies, but its only for the camera, the only reason Russia isn’t openly regarded as a Chinese satellite state, is the nuclear arsenal. Russia’s economy is smaller than Italy, it has a relatively large population of old and poor people, its military is eviscerated, and it’s used up pretty much all of the diplomatic capital it had in the world by going on an imperialist genocide.
and until Im proven wrong, the Republican party in the US seems to have nothing but hatred for China, and nothing but footsie flirtation for Russia. I think I read somewhere back during Trump’s first term that they were trying to “court Russia to be America’s ally so that in the future they could both fight China” Not giving a F about how Russia is seen by Europe, (and in hindsight other than getting the nukes off the table, its a braindead alliance plan, Russia cooked itself trying to colonize Ukraine, and pissed off europe to the point they started re-arming, making them the military power of the continent again. Strategically, if we’re disregarding the openly kleptocratic tendancies of Mobsters and Oligarchs running both countries, making people like Putin, Trump, and Musk ridiculously wealthy… Russia has nothing to contribute to America other than taking 3000 nukes out of the equation, and guess what, China and America still have enough to wipe each other out)
Israel and America are largely the same entity.
Iran and Russia are diplomatically, the same entity, Russia’s closest ally isn’t the fake, for the cameras relationship with China, their closest Ally is Iran
It’s really not th same at all, but good fear mongering.
As a Canadian I urge the same for Canada.
Canada into EU. You are are already a better scandi country than denmark.
I’ll go a step further. Do you have any idea how wet Trump would get about invading Europe?
We’re at day 2. Europe sat on its hands with a wait and see attitude. Meanwhile, In Washington, Trumps allies were throwing hands into seig heil gestures…
Europe needs to prepare for war, if Donny’s date with Putin doesn’t result in Putin fucking off, then no one is going to stop Russia, but Europe.
if Donny’s date with Putin doesn’t result in Putin fucking off
Does anyone realistically think Trump being elected would do anything but further play into Putin’s hands?
Republicans.
Republicans don’t give a shit about anything other than owning the libs. That’s their entire ideology.
Trump’s ideology is doing whatever it takes to give Donald Trump the most amount of power.Libs need to pretend to love israel and putin, that way the repubs will have to own the libs.
Shame, but i have to agree with macron on this one.
Even european terrible politican is nowhere near american avarage.
That is true, depressing and funny at the same time somehow
It’s probably the first time that guy say someting inteligent in all his life.
So is he going for the hypocrisy world record, does he think we’re all idiots with no memory of his tenure in government, or is this just a ploy to enrich his buddies in the MIC?
I’m gonna go with D: all of the above.
Wasn’t he also one of the first European leaders to congratulate Trump on his victory?
The word “diplomacy” has its roots in Latin from thousands of years ago
It’s a fairly basic concept
Strategically, this was probably the right move. At that point, the results were in. We can’t change what happened, only where we go from here. Kissing his ass is a case of Tragedy of the Commons.
True but Macron shouldn’t be a leader either
Not the same ballpark
Of course not
Macron?
MaCorn
I don’t remember eating MaCorn
Says the dude actively pushing us towards the exact same path.
Apparently you can’t spell Le Penn, or tell the difference between her and Macron.
Macron no more pushes France and EU towards the Trump Nazi intolerance narcissist path than Biden did. Like Biden Macron is trying to prevent it. Problem is Biden failed.
While for now Macron has been successful.Macron’s last two governments (the current one and the previous one) were formed with an agreement with the RN. It’s the only thing keeping him in power right now.
Macron personally has had a worrying amount of comments towards minorities, former colonies, women, LGBTQ people and such.
Members of his current government have links to the far right and Christian conservatives. (Like Darmanin or Retailleau). The previous government was also filled with pro forced birth, reactionaries, racists, homophobic people. Most of them millionaires.
Macron’s policies have massively increased inequality in France, our education system and healthcare are in shambles, ecology is barely an afterthought.So no, Macron is NOT fighting the far right, you could argue on semantics about actively helping them (like he’s not financially or physically helping them), but all of his policies, ministers and actions have tipped the balance pretty far right. And he’s massively responsible for it.
Well I guess we could agree that it was better if Macron was considered the far right, and Le Penn and her ilk were just considered insane.
Not really though? He’s using his position as the alternative to Le Pen in order to push extremely unpopular measures, which is absolutely the reason for Le Pen’s popularity.
For that reason, I absolutely agree that he (and other politicians using the same strategy) is no different to Biden
Macron no more pushes France and EU towards the Trump Nazi intolerance narcissist path than Biden did.
Exactly, Macron or Starmer or Scholz is pushing Europe just as much towards far right as Biden did with his lack of populist economic policies.
Sorry brother but you aren’t going to lib yourself out of this problem. It’s going to have to be at least social democracy (not third way but actual strengthening of trade unions and taxing the rich) or fascism and war.
It’s going to have to be at least social democracy
Absolutely, I 100% agree that that is what democracies in general should do.
So when his minister of education said that there was an “islamo-leftism” problem in French universities, that was Lepen’s fault? What about when his interior minister told Lepen that he fault she was getting a bit too soft on immigration? Or when Macron himself said, about two weeks ago, that African countries should thank France for all it did to them? Or when he told us that the left was as dangerous as the far-right?
I could go on for pages
there was an “islamo-leftism” problem in French universitie
I’m not aware if there is, but I agree Islam is bad for EU, and we would be better off without it.
That said people have their religious freedom to believe what they want. But I really really would prefer if they’d stop believing Islam.
Christianity is bad too, but Islam is currently probably the worst major religion on the planet.BUT!!! Generally the ones on the left are not NEARLY as bad as the Islamists on the right. It’s on the right you find the orthodox, and the most extremists.
There are branches of Islam that are moderate, and I don’t mind them anymore than I mind my grandmother going to church on Sundays.A lot of Muslims are very nice people, I had Muslim friends when I lived in Copenhagen, but they are nice not BECAUSE of their religion, but DESPITE it.
people insulted the french 20 years ago for being obstinent, arrogant, and pointlessly contrary. French hostility towards America in general was something Americans would mock,
Turns out, the French knew what was up and were probably better prepared for this eventuality than any other of Americas Allies.
And yet they’re on the same path, with no little help from Macron and his ilk.
You can talk for days about how they’re so willing to stand up and fight for what they want… but at this point they’ve gotten very little of it, so their methods seem awfully suspect.
