Macron, NATO, and the Minerals Deal

First, let’s start with the meeting at the White House yesterday. To say that President Donald Trump did not like getting corrected in real-time by French President Emmanuel Macron is to put it mildly.

However, apart from the optics, Macron achieved nothing of what he wanted. This is important because the chasm in the Atlantic alliance keeps growing:

Macron fails to secure Trump’s support for deploying European troops in Ukraine

French President Emmanuel Macron failed to obtain guarantees from US President Donald Trump of support for the possible deployment of European peacekeeping forces in Ukraine after a peace settlement, the Financial Times reported, citing diplomatic sources. After the meeting in Washington, Macron said that the talks had become a “turning point” in his attempts to change Trump’s position on Ukraine, but he failed to obtain specific promises from the US president, the newspaper writes.

A French official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that no final agreement had been reached on the form of US support, as the talks were still at an early stage. However, he added that while Trump had not made any specific commitments, he was “not opposed to the US providing security guarantees.” In addition, according to the newspaper’s sources, the meeting discussed issues of ensuring…