Denied a military parade in Washington, President Trump sought one abroad. In Paris, on the centennial of Armistice Day, he found not the jubilant flyovers, ribbons, and uniforms that he had perhaps envisioned, but a solemn procession and ceremonies that highlighted war, not in its glory but its sacrifices.
At cemeteries and monuments framed against a gray sky, the events commemorated the young men who taught the world a lesson twice. They paid in blood for the bitterness of division and the failure of an agreement that was meant to end the violence but paved the way for more.
In Europe, these lessons are etched into the landscape. The countryside is riddled with cemeteries, monuments, museums, and trenches — visible scars in the ground. City sidewalks bear witness with plaques, and churches list the local dead in endless lines of carved letters. In villages, the names of the dead are read off each year in cold silence. The pain is palpable and the memory of war present.
For French President Emmanuel Macron, the lessons of history and its memory were clear: A divided Europe and world leaders who fuel such division for their own gains will raise “old demons … ready to complete their task of chaos and of death.”
In the same speech, before world leaders at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, Macron said, “Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism,” adding, “Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism by saying: ‘Our interest first. Who cares about the others?’”
Later in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, he explained, “I do defend my country. I do believe that we have a strong identity. But I’m a strong believer in cooperation between the different peoples, and I’m a strong believer of the fact that this cooperation is good for everybody, where the nationalists are sometimes much more based on a unilateral approach and the law of strongest, which is not my case.”
Macron, in splitting patriotism and nationalism (regardless of how a dictionary might define them), is making a case for leadership of a single country with an eye toward the value of alliances and their capacity for peace. Macron is in effect saying that Trump, in embracing nationalism, has created a false choice in pitting what is good for one country against what is good for the world.
Indeed, Macron clearly explained this in remarks about the hope born out of violence. He says, “This hope is called the European Union, a union freely entered into, never before seen in history, a union that has freed us of our civil wars.”
In the United States, those words were understood as a rebuke of Trump’s self-declared nationalism and strategy of “America First.” Pointing to work on denuclearization in North Korea and an agreement on the successor to NAFTA as evidence of Trump’s engagement abroad, it might be tempting to gloss over Macron’s comments as unfair characterizations.
But the view from Europe is different. In Europe, Trump’s words at the United Nations championing “America First,” his confrontational approach to NATO, his friendliness toward Russia ,and his criticism of globalism point to an unraveling of the stability and unity deemed necessary for peace in Europe and once fostered by U.S. presidents.
And Macron has good reason to worry. With Brexit negotiations ongoing in the United Kingdom, authoritarians gaining power in Hungary and Poland, and support for the far-right, anti-immigrant parties rising in France and Germany, the European post-war order certainly looks fragile.
On the centennial of Armistice Day, in a show of unity notable for its cracks, with a set of white headstones a clear reminder of the price of divisions, the danger of declared peace unraveling was broadcast clearly in Macron’s words.
For Macron, preventing the chaos of that unraveling is patriotism. Adding to it is nationalism.
