“It doesn’t mean we don’t have the right to think for ourselves.”Īs it happens the Netherlands, along with Japan, is at the forefront of another tug-of-war between China, which aims to dominate the semiconductor industry in order to enable globally competitive indigenous innovation, and the US, which is spending billions of dollars to safeguard its supplies. “Being an ally does not mean being a vassal”, he told reporters in The Hague, echoing his comments following a visit to China just days earlier that Europe should not be a “follower” of either Washington or Beijing.
In geopolitical terms he has also maintained his line that France should not get caught up in the latest escalation of tensions between the US and China over Taiwan, compounded by recent Chinese military exercises near the self-governed island.
So it was with Emmanuel Macron’s state visit to the Netherlands last week, which finally got down to the lucrative business of “chips” on day two.īy then the French president had been mildly heckled by protesters questioning his democratic mandate for domestic pension reform, added to which he had made a charmingly cackhanded and widely tweeted attempt to speak Dutch after a royal banquet in his honour. It’s been a tenet of diplomacy since Machiavelli that leaders do their most crucial work in private while the public are distracted elsewhere.
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