Seasons pass, new iPhone models are released … and French President Emmanuel Macron will be out of office before long, in 2027 to be precise. Time is marching on. In less than two years, Macron, once Europe’s wunderkind, will walk down the steps of the Élysée Palace for the very last time. What then?
Après Macron, le déluge? A question one persistently gets asked in Berlin when making the case for deeper German defense integration with France is, “But what if Marine Le Pen or Jordan Bardella wins in 2027?” (Bardella may be Rassemblement National’s, or RN’s, candidate if Le Pen’s criminal conviction over the embezzlement of EU funds is upheld; it bans her from public office for five years).
The “what if” question is an evergreen. At least since Le Pen’s far-right RN made it to the run-off of the presidential election for the first time in 2002, Germans have begun to doubt France’s reliability as a European partner. Pointing to the RN risk has often also served as a handy excuse for shooting down any French proposals for a deepening of EU integration that Berlin did not like.
But the question of France’s future commitment to European security has taken on a new urgency. In May, President Macron and new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz set up “3 plus 3” talks between the heads of government as well as the foreign and defense ministers on strengthening the “European dimension” of France’s nuclear deterrent. Merz and Macron want to build out France’s force de frappe as a complementary layer of protection to the US nuclear deterrent.
The talks need to cover many technical questions. Does France need to increase its nuclear arsenal? Could German fighter jets deliver French bombs? Most of these issues are less complicated than it seems, according to a person close to the talks. The crucial question is rather: Will Russian President Vladimir Putin really believe that France would be willing to press the button to defend a German city if push comes to shove? What’s more, will he believe it if Le Pen or Bardella is sitting in the Élysée?
A Fiction
Perhaps, a good starting point for that discussion is to acknowledge that the United States’ extended nuclear deterrent for Europe has never been as fictive as today. Even when a conventional US president was in the White House, it was hard to believe that Washington would sacrifice Chicago or Miami for Warsaw or Berlin, if worse comes to worst.
That is because, although the survival of a free Europe may be a key interest, it is no longer an existential matter for Washington. The US has the luxury of distance. “We have a big, beautiful ocean as a separation,” Trump likes to say.
The US always has the option to retreat to its own continent. And history shows that Trump is not the first US president that thinks of the Atlantic less as a “pond” than a barrier. Both in World War I and II, Washington abstained at first, observing the European carnage from afar.
Even worse, Europe’s importance to the US has been declining since at least the 1980s. Today, only 15 percent of US exports go to the EU, while 20 percent of US imports come from the bloc. Financial flows remain important. But the US can do without Europe if it must. Losing Europe would be costly, but the US economy doesn’t fall or stand with the old continent.
No Choice But to Be European
A French president, even one called Le Pen or Bardella, wouldn’t have the option of disengaging from Europe in the case of a Russian attack. They also couldn’t cut a deal with Moscow, betraying Germany and Central Europe.
Napoléon is supposed to have said that “To know a nation’s geography is to know its foreign policy.” That remains true today. France is stuck on the European continent. But there is another reason why a President Le Pen could not fundamentally reshape France’s alliances and would remain a reliable partner for Germany and other Europeans on defense.
France’s economy is inextricably intertwined with its neighbors. 54 percent of France’s exports go to the EU’s single market. And France is in a currency union with most EU members, including the Baltic countries. Good luck financing the budget deficit or getting re-elected as president if the euro collapses under your watch and a devalued franc impoverishes the entire population. A conflict that destabilized Europe would destabilize France big time.
The dream of Robert Schuman, one of the EU’s founding fathers, has come true: Economic integration has done the trick of aligning France’s with Germany’s and Europe’s wider strategic interests. For any French leader it has become impossible to dissociate the survival of the European Union from its own national interest.
This is also why an extended French nuclear deterrent, even with Le Pen or Bardella in the Élysée, would be politically credible enough in Russian eyes.
The Genius of Integration
Finally, the obsession with the “what if” question is short-sighted. It fails to see that just like economic integration, steps toward defense integration create facts and path dependencies that future politicians cannot ignore.
In that vein, the fact that RN for the first time has a realistic shot at winning the presidential election in 2027 (this columnist would still argue that it is more unlikely than not) should not lead Merz to be cautious and delay deeper Franco-German and European integration in the defense realm.
On the contrary, it is precisely the possibility of far-right leadership in France that should persuade Merz to double down, from nuclear deterrence to defense industry mergers, in the coming 18 months.
Macron and Merz have to lay the foundations of a web of commitments and projects in defense too beneficiary and too costly to unwind. That has been the genius of the euro—it created a strategic alignment between its members that outlasts personalities, elections, and time.
Joseph de Weck is IPQ’s Paris columnist and author or Emmanuel Macron. The revolutionary president.
