Biden Wants to Restore NATO. Macron Is Looking to Move On – By Kevin Baron (Defense One) / Feb 19 2021
The two leaders appeared to talk past each other at this week’s Munich Security Conference.
President Joe Biden came to office promising to renew the spirit of the Western alliances born after World War II. It’s his deliberate rejection of the Trump-and-Brexit era of hyper-nationalism and the America First bullying that has beleaguered Europe for five years.
“I’m sending a clear message to the world: America is back. The transatlantic alliance is back,” Biden said in a Friday speech streamed from the White House to Western leaders listening in at this year’s virtually-held Munich Security Conference. “And we are not looking backward, we are looking forward — together.”
But are they?
France’s President Emmanuel Macron is looking forward — to an entirely new transatlantic “security architecture” for the 21st century. Macron’s vision is an all-European defensive collective that is armed up and can act independently and ahead of “brain dead” NATO. Biden knows this, but made no mention of it in his remarks, offering instead only sweeping declarations that Europe and the United States must again “trust in one another.” And so, just minutes after Biden’s speech, the first by a sitting U.S. president to the annual event, Macron pumped the brakes.
CONTINUE > https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2021/02/biden-wants-restore-nato-macron-looking-move/172189/
