Emmanuel Macron doesn’t want to pick sides.

During interviews published Sunday, but conducted while he was in China, Macron emphasized that Europe should pursue “strategic autonomy” to avoid becoming “vassals” in the event of a US-China confrontation.

I editorialized around Macron’s three-day state visit to China last week. To the extent his optimism regarding Xi Jinping’s alleged willingness to broker a fair peace between Kyiv and Moscow is genuine, it’s extraordinarily naive. And that’s why I don’t think it’s wholly genuine. Rather, Macron likely sees little upside for Europe (or France) in antagonizing Xi at this juncture, and little downside from the pretense of neutrality vis-à-vis worsening Sino-US ties.

If push comes to absolute shove, the US is obligated to defend France. Nothing is going to change that, so you could argue that any belligerent posturing on Europe’s part towards Xi is just risky bluster for the sake of it. In that light, I suppose Macron can be forgiven for openly suggesting Europe shouldn’t favor the US over China.

Still, it was easy to chafe at Macron’s public remarks if you were in Washington. “The great risk [facing Europe] is that we get swept up in crises that aren’t ours,” he told French media and Politico. I suppose World War II was just the US repaying France for its assistance to the Continental Army, and now that everyone’s even, both sides are free to avoid getting “swept up” in each other’s crises.

Dark humor aside, it’s not obvious that neutrality for Europe in a “panic” (as Macron put it, alluding to Taiwan) would be a viable strategy. Brussels and London couldn’t just declare themselves neutral in the event the PLA crosses the Strait. That wouldn’t be a tenable position. It’d undermine Europe’s high-minded rhetoric about the sanctity of democracy and the absolute necessity of defending and preserving it.

We are, after all, talking about a bloc which has habitually castigated and lamented Viktor Orban’s self-described “illiberal democracy,” and which is currently engaged in a sweeping effort to supply arms and money to a non-member state on the excuse democracy is inviolable wherever it exists.

Macron doesn’t sound so sure about the inviolability of democracy, though. Even as it relates to Ukraine. “Europeans cannot resolve the crisis in Ukraine; how can we credibly say on Taiwan, ‘Watch out, if you do something wrong we will be there?'”

The answer is that Europe can’t credibly say that, but can credibly say that in the event Xi decides to seize the island by force, Europe would stand with the US, whatever America decides to do, including in a scenario where the Pentagon deems it necessary to “be there,” as Macron put it.

There’s something uncomfortable about a traditional ally and one of the world’s foremost nuclear powers suggesting the US can’t count on it if there’s a world war. Macron would surely contend there’s a big difference between China attacking Taiwan and China attacking Hawaii. One assumes the French would declare war immediately in the latter scenario, but maybe that’s not the given we thought it was.

“If you really want to increase tensions, that’s the way to do it,” Macron went on, of a hypothetical European threat to show up in Taiwan.

Of course, if you “really want” to embolden Xi, suggesting France would countenance a PLA island excursion is “the way to do it.”

In the linked article above, I said Xi would wait until Macron left China to respond to Tsai Ing-wen’s meeting with Kevin McCarthy in L.A. And he did wait. For a couple of hours. The PLA staged drills the next day.

Xi reportedly “went off script” while speaking to Macron and Ursula von der Leyen about Taiwan last week. It sounds as though Macron told Xi one thing about Europe’s position on Taiwan during that meeting and then something at least a little bit different later, when the two were alone on a trip to Guangdong.

Just as notable, perhaps, as Macron’s remarks about strategic neutrality for Europe, were his comments on US currency hegemony. Europe, Macron suggested, should be less reliant on US dollar “extraterritoriality.”

All of this from a president whose approval rating is 11 percentage points below Joe Biden’s rock-bottom numbers. Maybe Macron’s remarks are indicative of a leader who needs to tap into a little populist political capital before anything else burns down in Paris.