BY ALFRED DE ZAYAS

APRIL 20, 2023

Photograph Source: Marek Ślusarczyk (Tupungato) –CC BY 3.0

French President Emmanuel Macron’s statement in China about developing “strategic autonomy” from the United States is empty posturing intended for the domestic French market. Macron is a light-weight and a political opportunist, like so many before him. He has done some back-pedalling since China, which justifies the criticism of some observers that describe him as “a well-oiled weathervane”. The rest of the Europeans are no better, as the meeting of G-7 Foreign Ministers in Nagano has shown.

This does not necessarily mean that rational considerations of self-interest in France, Germany, Italy, Spain might not eventually drive European governments to take concrete measures to buttress their own economies and assert European economic and political priorities – and not those of the Big Brother across the ocean. It is time to rethink the Ukraine crisis, its…