Cartoon by Bob Englehart

Behind breakup of Trump-Macron bromance, a deeper US-Europe divide

Christian Science Monitor: It was clear from that first power-grip handshake a year ago between President Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron that this was one bromance that was not destined to last.

There were expressions of deep friendship between the two leaders, and even a White House state dinner in April feting both Mr. Macron and the Franco-American bond. But the fissures have since only grown between a self-proclaimed nationalist and anti-European-Union American president and a French president who has emerged as an ardent multilateralist and chief defender of an integrated Europe.  

The breakup of the West’s unlikely power couple was laid out over a painful weekend in Paris crafted by Macron to commemorate the centenary of the World War I armistice – only to be sealed Tuesday with a series of tweets from Mr. Trump.

Deriding Macron’s call for building a European army to make Europe a stronger defense player, Trump noted that the two world wars were fought against Germany and that it was the US that saved France. “They were starting to learn German in Paris before the US came along,” he said.

Trump repeated his demand that Europeans “pay for NATO” or else, blasted France for “not fair” trade practices, and suggested that in promoting his vision for Europe, Macron was “just trying to get onto another subject.”

Then Trump’s critique veered toward the personal. “The problem is that Emmanuel suffers from a very low Approval Rating in France,” he wrote of his erstwhile close friend, “and an unemployment rate of almost 10%.” All of which he concluded with “MAKE FRANCE GREAT AGAIN!”   

The end of the Trump-Macron tandem might hold little more than human interest value were it not for the fact that the breakup confirms the collision course Trump has embarked on in relations with Europe.

Indeed the falling out between two leaders of such differing and increasingly bifurcating visions will almost certainly have profound repercussions in already-foundering transatlantic relations – in everything from trade and economic ties to defense cooperation, the future of NATO, and on to the strength of the West as a beacon for the rest of the world.

“The collision of world visions we saw this weekend in Paris was not anything new, but it was perhaps the starkest confrontation yet, with President Trump proudly announcing he is a nationalist, and President Macron condemning nationalism as the source of so many historical catastrophes and announcing multilateralism as the only way we can address our global problems,” says Heather Conley, director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“We are in a moment of transition, when we are moving away from the international system that was developed by ‘the greatest generation’ and which depended so heavily on American leadership, and there’s tremendous uncertainty about what will replace it,” she adds. “And in the meantime those two fundamental world visions we saw from President Trump and President Macron are going to keep colliding, whether it’s over NATO’s future, or climate, or the Iran nuclear deal, or how to approach Russia.”

Viewed through the European and much of the US media, the Paris weekend was largely an optics disaster for Trump. An event meant to showcase transatlantic unity and the sacrifice of the American “doughboys” who came to the rescue of peace and freedom in Europe instead highlighted transatlantic tensions and an American president estranged from his peers.

The French were shocked at Trump’s absence from a ceremony at a World War I American cemetery outside of Paris – the White House blamed the rain for grounding Marine One, the president’s helicopter, and thus preventing Trump’s travel to the site.

Newspaper editorials declared that earlier US presidents – certainly Ronald Reagan, not particularly loved in France but recognized for his role in restoring a united Europe – would have found a way to the cemetery. Some said it marked the end of Europe’s ability to hark back to American sacrifices at Belleau Wood or on the beaches of Normandy to preserve transatlantic ties.

Then Trump was notably absent when a column of world leaders led by Macron marched arm-in-arm up the Champs-Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe – the White House again stating that security considerations were to blame, forcing Trump to arrive at the Arc by a separate route.

For some observers, the message from Paris was of an American president more focused on America as the victim of its unfair allies rather than on America as the savior and now partner of those allies. But that focus left Trump looking bitter and estranged, they say.

“These are the same themes President Trump returns to over and over, of others taking advantage of America and America going it alone and so forth,” says Ms. Conley. “And the more he doubles down the more self-isolated he becomes, and that’s what he experienced in Paris.” >>>

Howard LaFranchi has been the Monitor's diplomacy correspondent in DC since 2001. Previously, he spent 12 years as a reporter in the field; serving five years as the Monitor's Paris bureau chief from 1989 to 1994, and as a Latin America correspondent in Mexico City from 1994 to 2001.