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France’s Emmanuel Macron laments Nato’s ‘brain death’ as Donald Trump’s US ‘turns its back on us’
- French leader argues that EU must step up and start acting as a strategic world power
- Germany’s Angela Merkel and Nato secretary general reject Macron’s criticism of alliance, setting scene for possible showdown at London summit
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French President Emmanuel Macron claimed that a lack of US leadership is causing the “brain death” of the Nato military alliance, insisting in an interview published on Thursday that the European Union must step up and start acting as a strategic world power.
Macron’s public criticism of the state of the world’s biggest military alliance was rejected by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, setting the scene for a possible showdown in London next month when US President Donald Trump joins his counterparts.
“What we are currently experiencing is the brain death of Nato,” Macron told The Economist magazine. He said the United States under Trump appears to be “turning its back on us”, notably by pulling troops out of northeast Syria without notice.
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Trump surprised his Nato partners with last month’s troop withdrawal. Nato plays no role in Syria, apart from helping the coalition fighting the Islamic State extremist group. But the move was seen by Turkey, another Nato ally, as a green light to invade the region.
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“So as soon as you have a member who feels they have a right to head off on their own, granted by the United States of America, they do it. And that’s what happened,” Macron said.
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