Macron in Beijing: Why US China-watchers need to take a deep breath

French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to China last weekend rankled some American and European observers, who read into it indications of a rift between France and the United States and, more specifically, an attempt to undermine President Biden’s position on China, especially regarding Taiwan. Comments Macron gave in an interview with Chinese and French journalists added fuel to the fire. Macron insisted that Europe had to reduce its dependency on the U.S. and not be dragged into a confrontation with China.

“The paradox would be that, overcome with panic, we believe we are just America’s followers,” Macron said in the interview. “The question Europeans need to answer … is it in our interest to accelerate [a crisis] on Taiwan? No. The worse thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the U.S. agenda and a Chinese overreaction,” he said.

The reaction to Macron’s comments betrays a lack of understanding of long-term French policy and the concept of strategic autonomy, and the subtleties of French realism. Indeed, the full interview, published by the French newspaper Les Echos, presents a more complete picture of what Macron is after, one that makes more sense to long-term France watchers and should be respected by Americans.

France, to be clear, is not pro-China. Of this, recent French defense policy documents leaves no doubt. France’s recent draft Military Programming Law, for example, which Macron’s government released this month, speaks of China threatening to destabilize the Indo-Pacific, while reiterating concern for the security of France’s extensive overseas territories in that theater. The law, like every other French national security document or statement of military policy, stresses the importance of the NATO alliance and France’s strategic cooperation with the U.S. It is for this reason that the French and American militaries routinely train together: Interoperability with the U.S. is a French strategic priority.

Macron insists on “strategic autonomy” because it is something France has sought ever since World War II, when it was sidelined as a great power and became dependent on the United States. French leaders understood that while U.S. and French interests mostly overlap, they do not always, and on several occasions the French found their reliance on American help to be an obstacle to their pursuing their own interests: President Eisenhower famously pulled the plug on the Franco-British military intervention against Egypt in 1956; Eisenhower and Kennedy also put brakes on French military efforts in Algeria and Indochina.

Perhaps more problematic from the French point of view was the understanding that America’s evolving nuclear policy in the 1950s meant that Washington’s nuclear umbrella was not a 100 percent guarantee, and that Washington might not be willing to throw the weight of its nuclear deterrence behind protecting French interests. That, plus the way NATO was structured meant that Paris could do no more than passively look on while Washington determined when to go to war, and how, or when to escalate a conflict, and how.

More recently, the Ukraine crisis has reminded the French of this problem: Biden controls the West’s response to Russian aggression; Macron is in the passenger seat. This is what bothers Macron, not the direction Biden is taking, with which Macron largely agrees. Macron, of course, understands why this is so: France and even Europe lack the power to take the wheel. Macron wants to change this, and he figures that Europe working together can make it happen.

Washington also needs to reckon with the French way of realism. First, the French are well aware that they lack the military power to influence events in the Indo-Pacific. Second, absent military power, the French way is to talk, even if this means talking to the worst of people and at times being seen to accommodate them. They don’t bluster. They don’t threaten. They don’t lecture. They hold their nose, put on a smile and make nice. This does not mean they are committing to any stance or position. This is not a Munich moment.

If anything, Washington should see Macron’s efforts as an opportunity: If Macron wants to brand France as an alternative to joining the American block, perhaps counties such as Indonesia and Vietnam that fear China but for various reasons aren’t eager to rally to Uncle Sam might embrace a third option that most definitely is not pro-China yet might be perceived by China as less hostile and less antagonistic.

Michael Shurkin is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center.