© Reinhard Krause/Reuters
It's no secret that President Trump believes NATO is an anachronism. It's also no secret that French President Emmanuel Macron wants a Grand Army of the EU and a single EU Finance Minister to further integration of the EU into the United States of Europe.
He and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have been championing these two things since the day after Macron took office. They are both pushing hard for the EU to conduct independent foreign policy, framing Trump's belligerence as the catalyst for its need now.
So, I'm not surprised in the wake of Merkel's garden summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin recently that both of these policy initiatives are being pushed now.
Both Merkel and Macron are in trouble politically. Their approval ratings are dropping. Both have seen cabinet defections. So, they need political wins and rapprochement with Russia is something very much desired by many European nations, like Italy, and necessary to gain some economic momentum after four years of ruinous sanctions.
Macron now openly engages the idea of a security framework with Russia. The same Russia that not three months ago Macron was pulling diplomats from over the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal.
This admission on his part is major bombshell. If sincere, it changes the entire narrative and accelerates the shift of Europe away from the U.S.'s abusive use of the dollar as a whip to command compliance.
It also cuts to the heart of Trump's criticisms of NATO, that the threat of Russian invasion of Eastern Europe as promoted by Poland and the Baltics is laughable.
Comment: One might wonder if Erdogan has woken up to the fact that an assault on Idlib would send thousands of jihadists (which he supports) scurrying north into Turkey. The US won't rescue all of them, just the White Helmets PR wing, if that. He would have a security nightmare on his hands.