FRANCE PERSPECTIVE

Paris averts its gaze from NATO to focus on its own domestic politics. Le Monde, which typically covers the Alliance with sustained attention, devotes its main coverage to Renaud Muselier's candidacy for the presidency of the PACA region — a local politics story unrelated to the Atlantic crisis. This disparity is itself revealing: France, which has always had an ambivalent relationship with NATO (De Gaulle's 1966 withdrawal, reintegration under Sarkozy in 2009), seems unwilling to take a stance on Trump's threat. This silence can be read as calculation: Paris has long pushed for autonomous European defense, and a US withdrawal from NATO — however destabilizing — would finally force Europeans to build what Macron has called since 2017 'strategic autonomy.' France has no interest in begging Washington to stay — it has interest in preparing for after.