display
Larger-than-life statesmen have never been welcome in Brussels.
Charles de Gaulle, French President from 1959 to 1969, longed for a Europe of strong statesmen, of which he included himself.
However, Germany and the smaller founding members of the EU preferred a different Europe, a Europe of lawyers and bureaucrats.
Most of the time they got their way.
In Brussels, political visions that flare up are stifled in rules, the more prosaic the better: the shape of rolls, the content of chocolate bars, the storage of cookies on web browsers.
If Europe needed guidance until recently, it was flown in by Air Force One.
It is this legacy that haunts Emmanuel Macron.
He calls himself “made for storms” - born to save Europe from catastrophe.
He longs for domestic rather than foreign governance, for a Europe that is strong and sovereign, for a global player that nobody dares to get in the way.
display
But Macron's “sovereign” endeavors clash with Europe's self-image as a rule-ruled bureaucracy.
He angered the Atlanticists who fear the collapse of NATO.
He insults those who want to keep Russia out and Turkey in.
Trump's success has given Macron credibility.
But Trump is now as good as gone.
"What was true 75 years ago is still true today," wrote the foreign ministers of the Benelux countries recently in a joint article.
“American leadership is necessary to meet all current geopolitical and security challenges.” Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, German Defense Minister, agrees.
Merkel's former successor argued in November last year that “illusions about European strategic autonomy must come to an end”.
Her former mentor spoke eloquently about the fact that Europe must take its fate into its own hands.
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer's mantra is: Is that supposed to be a joke?
Let's get back to our comfort zone: the Europe of rules and lawyers.
POTUS, the President of the United States, will take care of the rest.
Macron is guilty of many sins
display
But if the beaten track is Europe's new master plan, it is not likely that it will be successful.
The belief that what worked in the past will work in the future always gets early applause.
It offers the easiest and cheapest way forward.
But that has never automatically meant that such a belief is correct.
Macron, the visionary quoting Hegel, is guilty of many sins: intellectual vanity, too great a lead over the troops, hubris.
Calling NATO brain dead was not wise.
Macron certainly did too little to rally others behind his plans, especially in Eastern and Central Europe.
But those who propagate the status quo, like Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, are guilty of the opposite.
You drive in old tracks and do not understand that history does not stand still, but calls for adaptation and innovation after 75 years.
If Macron is Europe's “chief thinker”, as his critics call him, then Kramp-Karrenbauer will audition for the role of Europe's “chief chewer”.
display
Both should agree on one thing: Europe in its current state cannot renounce the leadership and power of the USA.
The idea that it can do that is so obviously wrong that it deserves no debate.
Just think of Europe’s dependence on America’s nuclear shield or how helpless it has acted in Syria, Libya and Nagorno Karabakh.
What is at stake, however, is the future.
Macron's big idea is not that Europe is sovereign;
but that Europe must become sovereign.
This is neither a dream nor an illusion;
it is a strategic goal and a necessity.
Nobody suggests that NATO dissolves tomorrow or ever;
but Europe must prepare for a time when the US is no longer willing or able to take the lead, or does so in a way that Europeans do not like.
A quick look at US politics should be enough to understand that this is not an idle theorizing.
What will Europe do when one day the US lets go of it?
Kramp-Karrenbauer's answer is that that won't happen.
“America needs Europe,” she claims.
It will never let the continent down.
One wonders what special insight into US politics Macron’s critics have to recommend putting Europe's security on America’s four-year election cycle.
In the recent past, it was like a Russian roulette.
Of course, Kramp-Karrenbauer also asserts that Europeans “have to spend and do a lot more to keep the peace”.
But that smells and tastes like an empty phrase.
What exactly is she or Germany proposing?
Financially it is "very difficult", warns Kramp-Karrenbauer and thus shatters another illusion.
Don't expect money miracles from Berlin.
With Donald Trump, Europe jumped into the deep end and gasped for air.
Joe Biden has now thrown him a lifeline, an interlude of transatlantic calm in otherwise choppy seas.
The EU should use them to reconcile the Europe of the rules of the last 75 years with the Europe of leaders, which it must be for the next 75 years.
Four years fly by.
Imagination, not procrastination, is what the continent needs.
The author is the author of The Strongmen (Agenda Publishing, 2020) and co-founder of Shearwater Global