Back in late October, before the U.S. presidential primaries kicked into high gear, Belgian Ambassador Jean-Arthur Regibeau visited Atlanta with his Swiss counterpart to talk apprenticeships and highlight the small German-speaking community in his country.
Beyond those relatively benign topics, however, the ambassador weighed in during multiple forums on issues of global security, particularly around the NATO alliance and the war in Ukraine.
In the ensuing months, his diagnoses have turned out to be prescient.
While NATO is an alliance of 31 individual states, 22 of them are situated in the European Union, and Mr. Regibeau said that the strengthening of the transatlantic military alliance should not preclude the EU stepping up and taking more responsibility for its security, as leaders like French President Emmanuel Macron have advocated.
“(Belgium’s) motto is a strong Europe within a strong NATO. We believe the stronger Europe is, the stronger NATO will be, and we want a strong transatlantic relationship. I must say we are quite happy with the current state of affairs, especially after the start of the war in Ukraine. There is a real closeness between the two sides of the Atlantic and consensus across the board that we have to stick together,” Mr. Regibeau said during an interview.
Mr. Macron, who once famously called NATO “brain-dead,” is given to tough words, Mr. Regibeau said, but hand-wringing in Washington over such comments is “because the Americans don’t understand the French.”
“The French like to use a somewhat different rhetoric, but in the depths of their minds and hearts, they know that they have no better options than the transatlantic relationship,” said Mr. Regibeau, who said that position is where Europe always tends to land.
“‘I’m just a bit surprised about the level of French-bashing sometimes in Washington. My own interpretation is that…
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