No sooner had he arrived at the Elysee Palace than President Macron undertook to launch, with Angela Merkel's Germany, several major defense equipment programs, in a dynamic never seen before. In turn, it was the program ofnew generation SCAF fighter (Air Combat System of the Future ”, then the MGCS main battle tank program (Main Ground Combat System), followed by CIFS artillery system program (Common Indirect Fire System), and very recently, theMAWS maritime patrol aircraft (Maritime Airborne Warfare System). The declared objective of the French president was to strengthen the Franco-German couple in matters of Defense with a view to creating an autonomous Defense Europe, capable of assuming its own defense if necessary, and of influencing the major coalitions alongside the United States.
Unfortunately for Emmanuel Macron, this notion of European strategic autonomy is very far from gaining unanimity on the old continent. And three times already, the German authorities have distanced themselves from this one, not without showing a touch of hostility towards France, perceived as wanting to take control of the Europe de La Défense via this project. The first alert came ahead of the NATO summit in London when the French president declared that NATO was brain dead, following the alliance's lack of reaction to Turkey's multiple provocations, in Syria as in Libya. What the German authorities replied that NATO was the heart of European Defense, and that "nothing could change this fact".
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[…] strategic defense of the old continent, Berlin succeeded where France had failed, largely due to Germany, by proposing to extend French deterrence to some of its European neighbors in […]