Last week, under the Normandy sun, before surviving American veterans who helped turn the tide of the war against Hitler 80 years ago, French President Emmanuel Macron spoke of the “bond of blood for freedom” that binds France to the United States.
The bond dates back to the founding of the United States in 1776, when France strongly supported American independence from Britain. Despite French anger at America’s postwar leadership in Europe, relations between Paris and Washington have been stormy and often strained, but have nonetheless remained resilient.
President Biden’s five-day stay in France, an unusually long visit for a U.S. president, especially in an election year, was a powerful testament to the friendship. But it also showed the double-edged nature of that friendship, with French gratitude for American sacrifices mixed with Gaullist antipathy to any kowtow.
These competing themes will form the backdrop for a lavish state dinner at the Elysee Palace on Saturday, when Macron returns the favor for Biden’s state visit. Held in the White House December 2022, his first year in office.
The toasts and good cheer can’t quite mask the tensions between Washington and Paris — over the war in Gaza, how best to support Ukraine and Macron’s unpredictable attempts to assert France’s independence from the United States.
No French president in recent times has been as insistent as Macron on Europe’s need for “strategic autonomy” and its insistence that Europe “should never become a vassal of the United States.” Yet he stands shoulder to shoulder with Biden in arguing that Ukraine’s battle for freedom with Russia is no less a battle for European freedom than the one fought in 1944 when the Allies scaled the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc.
“You can’t help but see the similarities,” Macron said in a television interview last week, describing Ukraine as “a people facing a power that I would not compare to Nazi Germany because their ideology is different, but an imperialist power that violates international law.”
Even so, when the cameras were off, U.S. officials spoke privately about their French counterparts with a tone of eye-rolling exasperation. French analysts have expressed dissatisfaction with what they see as the Biden administration’s high-handed approach to transatlantic leadership.
Charles A. Kupchan, a former European affairs adviser to President Obama and now a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, said the “political dilemma the United States is in right now” is forcing European leaders to weigh “whether they can or should focus all their energy on the United States.”
That applies especially to Ukraine, where former President Donald J. Trump, a 2024 Republican presidential candidate, did not support a war with Russia. “In some ways,” Mr. Kupchan said, “the U.S. leadership role may be too great, because if the U.S. does withdraw from Ukraine, Europe will need to fill that void, and that’s not going to be easy.”
exist Interviewed by Time Magazine Last week, Biden recalled on Twitter an early conversation he had with Macron after defeating Trump. “I said, 'Well, America is back,'” Biden recalled. “Macron looked at me and said, 'How long can it last? How long can it last?'”
Hidden behind this question is another question: How much of a presence does Macron's France want the United States to have in Europe?
The difference was most evident in February, when Macron Shocked the United States and European allies The possibility of sending NATO troops to Ukraine was raised, but Biden flatly ruled it out because he feared the war would escalate into a direct conflict with nuclear-armed Russia.
“There are no American soldiers at war in Ukraine,” Biden said in a statement. His State of the Union Address It comes just days after Macron’s tentative remarks. “I am determined to keep it this way.”
The two leaders are in stark contrast. Biden, 81, has worked in Washington for more than half a century and is a representative of the American establishment. He firmly believes in the American-led order established after World War II. When France rejected the US invasion of Iraq, he was furious because he saw a country that owed its freedom to the United States actually engage in such unacceptable defiance.
Macron, 46, is a tireless 21st-century president eager to reassert France's leadership on the European stage and willing to irritate friends with challenging ideas and rhetoric, suggesting in 2019 that NATO had suffered “brain death.”
Even on the eve of Biden's visit, France appeared to be discussing the possibility of sending military instructors to Ukraine. Macron said in a television interview that this was not a “taboo” and that he did not think sending such instructors to western Ukraine rather than the eastern war zone was a radical move that would escalate tensions with Russia.
Officials close to Macron have indicated that an announcement will not be imminent. That will almost certainly not please Biden.
Macron did, however, offer to train a brigade of 4,500 Ukrainian soldiers who are currently being trained by Western instructors outside Ukraine.
Gérard Araud, a former French ambassador to Washington, said the two presidents disagreed not only on the theoretical number of Western ground troops, but also on where and how the war should end.
“An explanation between the two heads of state is more necessary than ever,” Araud said. “It’s not only about the conduct of the war, but also about the prospects for negotiations after November 5, if Biden is re-elected. What are the West’s real war goals, beyond empty rhetoric about Ukraine’s 1991 borders?”
The chemistry between the two leaders appears generally good. “They get along very well personally,” said Matthias Matthijs, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
But he said tension points remain, not just over Ukraine but also over the Inflation Reduction Act signed by Biden, which provides heavy subsidies for electric vehicles and other clean technologies – a measure that the Europeans see as unfair competition.
France is also unhappy with the extent of U.S. support for Israel in the Gaza war. Complaints focus on the U.S. failure to stop Israel's advance on Rafah and its failure to rein in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But they also include Washington's current vehement refusal to recognize Palestinian statehood and its indecision about how Gaza should be governed after the war.
“The Arabs have never been so committed and so willing to normalize relations with Israel if a credible path to a Palestinian state is established,” said a senior French official who requested anonymity in accordance with diplomatic practice. “It’s frustrating.”
France has not yet recognized the Palestinian state, as four other European countries did last month. But it supported Palestine's full membership of the organization in a U.N. vote in May. The United States voted against it.
Still, the differences could be deftly managed under a Biden administration, even though Trump’s likely return to the White House in November has caused great anxiety in France and elsewhere in Europe.One thing the two leaders have in common is that they are both struggling to fend off the nationalist right at home, represented by Trump and Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s far-right National Rally party.
Trump, who has been dismissive of allies throughout his presidency, recently made clear that his views on them have not changed and said he would be comfortable if Russia attacked NATO members that underinvested in their defense.
Biden denounced such isolationism, saying of Ukraine in Normandy: “We are not going to sit idly by.” The target of his remarks was clear: his opponents in the Nov. 5 election. As for Macron, he told American veterans in English: “If I may say so, you feel at home.”
It’s a reminder that for the United States and France, regular conflict won’t destroy a century-old friendship.
