Recently, French President Emmanuel Macron's high-minded remarks have attracted a lot of attention. He reiterated his call for Europe to become independent in the defense, energy, and economic fields, and not to continue to rely on the United States, otherwise Europe may perish. Whether this makes sense or not, let's talk about it in a moment, but soon the one who poured cold water on him came, and it was still Germany.
Macron and Scholz
Macron believes that although Europe must improve its relations with the United States, it cannot ignore dialogue with other regions, and we must stand up to avoid being weakened and achieve true independence. The French are fighting for independence, this is nothing new, in history they have had Charles de Gaulle, a fierce man who once advocated withdrawing from NATO, and really did it, building France into a "bridge between the East and the West".
But apart from France, how many other countries in Europe want to get rid of the United States? At least Germany, not willing to do so. Soon after Macron's speech, the German media wrote a series of articles criticizing him, saying that he did not correct his attitude towards the United States, that he was more like a dreamer than a politician, that his ideal Europe of German-French cooperation did not exist, and that Macron's beautiful vision had no possibility of being realized.
Macron and Scholz
Some people who eat melons are happy, saying that you look at Macron and Scholz, these two people are pinching again. But in fact, Germany and France have huge differences on the issue of dealing with the United States, not because there is any contradiction between the leaders of the two countries, but because these two countries have not followed the same path in history.
First of all, let's be clear: even now, Germany is not a country with full sovereignty. The United States has a large number of military bases and garrisons here, and Germany's national defense and security are completely protected by the Americans. The reason for this phenomenon is that Germany's identity as a defeated country in World War II, and the US military stationed in Germany, nominally to protect, but in fact to prevent Germany from doing anything again.
Russian President Vladimir Putin joked that to this day, Germany is still a colony of the United States. It's hard to say, but it's not unreasonable. Since de Gaulle, France has been more independent, as an "old revolutionary area", there are still no US troops stationed in the country, if it were not for Sarkozy being seduced by Obama with African interests, France may have delayed returning to NATO for a while.
Macron
Therefore, the contradiction between Germany and France can be simply understood as a direct confrontation between France and the United States. Some friends may say, don't the Germans want to be a normal country? This brings us to the second point: Even if Germany withstands tremendous pressure from the United States and works with France to pursue European independence, then who will lead Europe?
As we said earlier, Germany and France are the two strongest countries in Europe, but neither has an absolute advantage over the other. Germany's economic influence in Europe is very great, and many EU countries owe money to the German government, and France's main strength lies in its military strength, not only in its nuclear weapons, but also in its arms export business in recent years.
If Europe wants to be independent, defense and economy are issues that cannot be bypassed, and you can see that Macron talks about defense independence when he opens and closes his mouth, just to push France to be the speaker of Europe. But again, this is unacceptable to Germany. If Germany changes from following the United States to following France, it is better not to change. Anyway, in the hundreds of years of European history, they all survived the big chaos, and people did not recognize equal cooperation at all, only subordinate from top to bottom.
Macron and Scholz
Therefore, on the issue of European independence, neither Germany nor France can bow their heads, nor can they conspire in any major affairs. Macron certainly has a heart, but firstly, he does not have enough power, and secondly, he wants to wait for the United States to decline to the point that it cannot control Europe, which is too long, at least during his tenure, he can't do this, and the possibility of being remembered by future generations as "Dai Gaolong" is also very small.