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In the sunlight of Normandy, before the surviving American veterans who eight decades ago helped turn the tide of the war against Hitler, President Emmanuel Macron of France spoke this past week of the \u201cbond of blood shed for liberty\u201d that ties his country to the United States.<\/p>\n
It is a bond that goes all the way back to the founding of the United States in 1776 and the decisive French support for American independence against the British. Tempestuous, often strained as France bristles at American postwar leadership in Europe, the ties between Paris and Washington are nonetheless resilient.<\/p>\n
President Biden\u2019s five-day stay in France, an exceptionally long visit for an American president, especially in an election year, is a powerful testament to that friendship. But it illustrates its double-edged nature. French gratitude for American sacrifice as ever vies uneasily with Gaullist restiveness over any hint of subservience.<\/p>\n
Those competing strands will form the backdrop of a lavish state dinner at the \u00c9lys\u00e9e Palace on Saturday, when Mr. Macron will reciprocate the state visit that Mr. Biden hosted for him at the White House<\/a> in December 2022, the first of his administration.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The toasts and bonhomie will not fully mask the tensions between Washington and Paris \u2014 over the war in Gaza, how best to support Ukraine and the unpredictable ways Mr. Macron tries to assert France\u2019s independence from the United States.<\/p>\n No recent French president has been as insistent as Mr. Macron in declaring Europe\u2019s need for \u201cstrategic autonomy\u201d and insisting that it \u201cshould never be a vassal of the United States.\u201d Yet he has stood shoulder to shoulder with Mr. Biden in seeing Ukraine\u2019s fight for freedom against Russia as no less than a battle for European liberty, an extension of the fight for freedom that led allied forces to scale the cliffs of the Pointe du Hoc in 1944.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t help seeing the parallel,\u201d Mr. Macron said this past week in a TV interview, portraying Ukraine as \u201ca people confronted by a power I would not compare to Nazi Germany, as there is not the same ideology, but an imperialist power that has trampled on international law.\u201d<\/p>\n Even so, when the cameras are off, American officials privately talk about their French counterparts with a tone of eye-rolling exasperation. French analysts express frustration at what they consider the Biden administration\u2019s overbearing approach to trans-Atlantic leadership.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Charles A. Kupchan, a former Europe adviser to President Barack Obama now at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that \u201cthe hot mess that the United States is in right now politically\u201d is forcing European leaders to calibrate \u201cwhether they can or should put all of their marbles in the U.S. basket.\u201d<\/p>\n That applies particularly to Ukraine, which former President Donald J. Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, has not supported in its war with Russia. \u201cIn some ways,\u201d Mr. Kupchan said, \u201cthere may have been too much U.S. leadership because if it does come about that the U.S. steps back from Ukraine and Europe needs to fill the gap, that\u2019s not going to be easy.\u201d<\/p>\n In an interview with Time magazine<\/a> posted this past week, Mr. Biden reflected on an early conversation with Mr. Macron after he beat Mr. Trump. \u201cI said, \u2018Well, America\u2019s back,\u2019\u201d Mr. Biden recounted. \u201cMacron looked at me, and he said: \u2018For how long? For how long?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Behind that question lurked another: How much American presence in Europe does Mr. Macron\u2019s France really want?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The differences were showcased most prominently in February when Mr. Macron shocked American and European allies alike<\/a> by holding out the possibility of sending NATO troops into Ukraine, something Mr. Biden has flatly ruled out for fear of escalating the war into a direct conflict with a nuclear-powered Russia.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n