France's Macron says NATO experiencing 'brain death'

French President Emmanuel Macron said he believed NATO was undergoing ‘brain death,’ lamenting a lack of coordination between Europe and the United States and unilateral action in Syria by key member Turkey, in an interview published on 7 November.

‘What we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO,’ Macron told The Economist magazine.

The president's explosive comments, appearing to question the very future of NATO, threatened to send shock waves through the alliance ahead of a summit in Britain next month.

‘You have no coordination whatsoever of strategic decision-making between the United States and its NATO allies. None,’ said Macron.

‘You have an uncoordinated aggressive action by another NATO ally, Turkey, in an area where our interests are at stake,’ he added, according to an English transcript released by The Economist.

Turkey's latest military operation against Kurdish forces in northern Syria was staunchly opposed by fellow members like France, but made possible by a withdrawal of US forces ordered by President Donald Trump.

‘There has been no NATO planning, nor any coordination,’ Macron said. 

And while NATO works well in communicating between armies and commanding operations, ‘strategically and politically, we need to recognise that we have a problem,’ he said.

‘We should reassess the reality of what NATO is in light of the commitment of the United States,’ he warned, adding that ‘In my opinion, Europe has the capacity to defend itself.’

Macron said that while ‘it's not in our interest’ to expel Turkey from NATO – as has been urged by some politicians – members states should ‘reconsider what NATO is.’

And he emphasised it was crucial to seek a rapprochement with Moscow, which regards NATO and its expansion into ex-Communist bloc states with huge suspicion since the alliance was set up to counter the USSR.

‘We need to reopen a strategic dialogue, without being naive and which will take time, with Russia,’ said Macron, who is seeking to broker an end to the conflict in Ukraine and has courted President Vladimir Putin as a partner.

He said NATO did not reexamine its future in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union and ‘the unarticulated assumption is that the enemy is still Russia.’

‘So, the question about the present purpose of NATO is a real question that needs to be asked’, especially by the United States where Trump sees the alliance as a ‘commercial project’, he said.

And Macron said he believed that Putin, for all the anti-Western bombast from the Kremlin, would find his strategic options limited, in the long term, to ‘a partnership project with Europe.’

‘If we want to build peace in Europe, to rebuild European strategic autonomy, we need to reconsider our position with Russia,’ said Macron.