Monday, November 12, 2018

Macron is Wrong: Nationalism Was Not the Cause of World War I

French President Emmanuel Macron argues that nationalism was the cause of the First World War, but the more likely culprit is the globalism he espouses.

“By putting our own interests first, with no regard for others, we erase the very thing that a nation holds dearest, and the thing that keeps it alive: its moral values,” French President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday at the 100th anniversary of the end of the Great War — World War I. It was on November 11, 1918, at 11:00 a.m., French time, that the war that had taken millions of lives was finally over.

Macron’s remarks, in which he blamed “nationalism” for the great disaster of 1914-1918, were widely taken as a rebuke of President Donald Trump’s public support for nationalism, specifically his “America First” foreign policy. Macron said that nationalism was a “betrayal of patriotism,” and warned about “old demons coming back to wreak chaos and death.”

Macron spoke at the foot of the Arc de Triumph in Paris with Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and more than 60 other world leaders in attendance.

According to Macron’s version of history, the millions of soldiers who died in the war were actually fighting to defend the “universal values” of France, and to reject the “selfishness of nations only looking after their own interests.”

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