Macron’s ‘NATO Plot’: France Pushes UK to 'Stay Out of Western European Affairs’

Macron looks to “appease” France’s national interests when taking steps that indicate an apparent challenge to the US, including his alleged “no” to Ben Wallace as the new NATO chief, Paolo Raffone, a strategic analyst and director of the CIPI Foundation in Brussels, told Sputnik.

French President Emmanuel Macron is plotting to block British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace from becoming NATO’s next chief “because the UK left the EU,” media reports have claimed.

According to a UK newspaper, unnamed French government sources informed NATO officials of their will to see a new NATO figurehead from the EU in a move to make the alliance militarily independent.

“France remarks that it is time that the UK stay out of Western European affairs,” Raffone said.

He also referred to “UK overexposure in Eastern Europe” as well as in Nordic states, which is “hitching, and somehow conflicting with the French and Western European national interests.”

“The German political weakness cannot express any credible policy. Mr. Macron is speaking for the Germans too,” Raffone said.

As another possible reason for Macron’s unwillingness to see Wallace as the new NATO boss, the analyst singled out the US strategy to build a “global NATO” based around Poland and Japan. Due to this strategy, Raffone said, “it is evident that a [potential] UK NATO leadership would impose the total marginalization of Western European NATO allies.”

"Moreover, it would imply that the Mediterranean Sea would be a pass-through for the US/UK to connect the Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific Sea regions, impeding European policy towards the Mediterranean Sea and the North African region. France cannot accept it. The others, including Italy, think the same but cannot say it," the analyst pointed out.

When asked why Macron seeks to defy the US by supporting closer relations with China and BRICS, Raffone argued that “Despite a small political minority supporting him, the French president holds the presidency swinging between European, Atlantic and glory dreaming policies.”

The expert claimed that in a bid to remain in power, Macron “must appease the typical French nationalist interests, i.e. foreign and security policies in line with the French national interests that are deeply common in the armed forces and the security apparatus.”

According to the analyst, Macron is aware of "the German huge internal difficulties and of the waning EU leadership relevance," which is why he is “trying to signal his leadership in the Western continental Europe, spelling out the others’ undeclared dissatisfaction with US and EU policies towards China and BRICS."

At the same time, the analyst went on, France “would need the support of Italy and Spain” for Macron's leadership "to gain pace."

"Spain will soon go through a critical election and Italy is, until now, locked in the Atlantic narrative and policies. Macron’s hope is that by the EU [parliamentary] elections in 2024, a new political majority is shaped, possibly marginalizing the socialists and social democrats and paving the way for a core group of France, Italy and Spain giving direction to the EU to reassert and defend national interests. If this hope becomes true, together with a change in US leadership, Macron’s hope may become real," Raffone argued.

Matthew Gordon-Banks, a former British conservative MP and senior research fellow at the UK Defence Academy, has, meanwhile told Sputnik that he doesn’t think Macron is directly “blocking” the candidature of Wallace for the post of NATO secretary general.

“I believe he is raising the idea of the successor to Stoltenberg coming from an EU country. It remains to be seen who is eventually agreed upon,” Gordon-Banks added.

Dwelling on Macron’s reported defiance regarding the US, the expert noted that the French president “considers his country’s interests at an early stage on any issue, which is reasonable given he is the president of France.”

The ex-British MP recalled that Macron does not need to face another election as he is in his final term as president, which is why Gordon-Banks said Macron “wishes to do what he sees as the right thing and that means not always appearing to blindly follow the United States.”

Separately, Gordon-Banks urged Wallace not to criticize the French president as the UK defense secretary did last year, when Macron stated that “he would not make first use of nuclear weapons against Russia, a self-evident and sensible approach mirroring that of the policy adopted by [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin against the West.”