It is really tragic for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Just before the 70th anniversary of its foundation and this year's annual summit to be held in London in December, the NATO - the single multilateral military alliance in the world - was considered by French President Emmanuel Macron "brain death". He went further than US President Donald Trump, who almost two years ago assessed the bloc as "obsolete". An obsolete NATO could belong to the past and a NATO in the brain death state would be nothing more than only sound and smoke. Just shortly before such important events, it is hit by such a heavy strike.
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With that, Mr. Macron divided his colleges in the NATO because they are not of his point of view on the military block. He used his extremely provocative remarks to try to wake up his colleges in Europe by pointing out that European NATO members can't rely on the NATO and on US security commitments to them anymore. Mr. Macron’s aim with his NATO remarks was to urge European NATO and EU member states to do more for their own security in a profoundly changing Europe and world of today to become sovereign on their security and to build their one European security identity.
In this aspect, his NATO remarks may be useful and necessary for the European and NATO members but very harmful and toxic for the NATO. It mirrors the present disastrous state of the NATO. It illustrates the deep and wide gap between the US and other NATO members on the sense of the bloc’s existence and on the strategic orientations of this military alliance, or in other words: should the NATO continues to exist and how the NATO must be in the future if it does further exist. It implies also the profound dissent among European EU and NATO members on the US’s foreign and security policies as well as on the future of the NATO.
Macron's deliberately provocative remarks are also aiming at profiling himself as Europe's leader by encouraging other member states to equally deal with the new US administration and with new creative ideas to reshape the future of the EU and the NATO. He sees it as one means and way to reach his ambitious goal to regain the world power status for France.
His remarks were not wrong but disgraced the NATO. It finally put the European EU and NATO members, no matter they want or to, in the track of discussion on whether to build their own defense and security identity inside the present NATO or the future NATO.
