Trump’s Nationalism Rebuked at World War I Commemoration
PARIS — President Trump’s brand of “America First” nationalism was repudiated on Sunday as leaders from around the globe gathered to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I and reaffirm the international bonds that have once again come under strain.
Stone-faced and unmoved, the American leader listened as President Emmanuel Macron of France used the ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe to denounce self-interested nationalism and extol the sort of globalism and international institutions that Mr. Trump has spent the last two years pulling the United States away from.
“Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism,” Mr. Macron said in a speech on a dreary, rain-soaked day. “Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism by saying, ‘our interest first, who cares about the others?’ ”
Remembering the forces that led to World War I, Mr. Macron warned that “the old demons” have been resurfacing and declared that “giving into the fascination for withdrawal, isolationism, violence and domination would be a grave error that future generations would very rightly make us responsible for.”
Mr. Trump, who recently declared himself “nationalist,” appeared grim as he listened to a translation of the speech through an earpiece and clapped only tepidly afterward. He had no speaking role at the ceremony, but planned to deliver an address later in the day at a cemetery for American soldiers killed in the war.
The ceremony encapsulated the tension in the international arena as Mr. Trump seeks to rewrite the rules that have governed the world in recent decades. Mr. Trump has argued that other nations have taken advantage of the United States, whether in economics or security, and that it was time to look after American interests first.
He has pulled the country out of a number of international agreements on trade, nuclear proliferation and climate change, and disparaged alliances like NATO and the European Union. He has denounced virtually every trade pact that the United States has ever agreed to and recently forced Canada and Mexico to revise the North American Free Trade Agreement in a way that he says will benefit the United States more.
On the campaign trail last month, Mr. Trump railed against what he called the “rule of corrupt, power-hungry globalists,” as he put it during a rally in Houston. “You know what a globalist is, right? You know what a globalist is? A globalist is a person that wants the globe to do well, frankly, not caring about our country so much. And you know what? We can’t have that.”
The tensions were on display during the president’s meeting with Mr. Macron on Saturday, a day after Mr. Trump issued a Twitter blast at his French host, calling a proposal for a European army “very insulting.” Mr. Macron explained that the idea was not to counter the United States but to relieve it of some of the burden for European security, a constant theme of Mr. Trump’s.
“We know where we disagree, and we are very straightforward in that — on climate, on trade, on multilateralism — but we work very well together because we have very regular and direct discussions,” Mr. Macron said later in an interview with Fareed Zakaria of CNN. Mr. Macron termed himself “a patriot” as distinct from a “nationalist.”
“I do defend my country. I do believe that we have a strong identity,” Mr. Macron said. “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 the strongest, which is not my case.”
Aside from their friction, Mr. Trump’s two-day visit to Paris was marred by his decision on Saturday to scrap a planned visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery at the foot of the hill where the Battle of Belleau Wood was fought. Aides cited the rain in canceling a helicopter flight, but it went over badly in Europe. Winston Churchill’s grandson called Mr. Trump “pathetic” and not fit to represent the United States.
Mr. Trump has another chance to pay respects to the war dead on Sunday, when he is scheduled to visit the Suresnes American Cemetery outside Paris. But he will not stay for a Paris peace forum that Mr. Macron is sponsoring to bring together world leaders to discuss ways to avoid conflict.
By contrast, Mr. Macron and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, representing the two nations that were once bitter enemies, demonstrated the close friendship that has emerged from the rubble of war. In appearances over the weekend, the French and German leaders appeared affectionate, and Mr. Macron later posted a picture of the two holding hands along with the single word “Unis,” or “United.”
Led by Mr. Macron, dozens of world leaders on Sunday marched down the Champs-Élysées under black umbrellas as a chill rain fell and soldiers wearing feathered helmets and bearing swords stood watch.
At the Arc de Triomphe, bells tolled exactly one century after the guns fell silent at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, but the moment of symbolism was lost as the leaders who were supposed to be standing together at that point were still taking their places, and neither the American nor Russian presidents had arrived yet.
Mr. Trump arrived in his own motorcade, traveling separately, aides said, because of security, and joined the world leaders under a transparent enclosure at the arch. Then President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia arrived, approached Mr. Trump, shook his hand and gave him a friendly pat on the arm before taking his place.
Absent from the ceremony were leaders of Britain, the other main ally during the war. Prime Minister Theresa May and members of the royal family attended their own country’s commemorations on Sunday, but Mrs. May made a point of visiting France and Belgium on Friday to lay wreaths at the graves of soldiers killed in World War I.
The war to end all wars, as it was called, did nothing of the sort — the world found itself in conflagration again just two decades later. But World War I marked the beginning of a new era of American leadership beyond its shores and, in some ways, kicked off a century-long effort to tie the nations of the world together in an interdependent way — the global order rejected by Mr. Trump.
Even a century later, World War I remains a resonant memory across a Continent that was ravaged by a conflict unlike any that preceded it. From its opening days in 1914, the Allies led by Britain, France and Russia fought with the Central Powers led by Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire in a brutal, beastly war that introduced trench warfare, chemical weapons and aerial bombardment.
The United States resisted being drawn in until 1917, when it joined the Allies and sent expeditionary forces that finally tipped the balance against Germany, which surrendered in 1918. In total, some 8.5 million soldiers and seven million civilians were killed. The war also shook up the map of the world as empires fell, colonies were redistributed and new nations created; the lines of the Middle East were redrawn, and Bolsheviks rose to power in the Russian Revolution.
The peace that came 100 years ago turned out to be a victors’ peace through the punishing Versailles Treaty, and the League of Nations created at that time failed to become the guarantor of peace it was intended to be. Instead, the world plunged back into war two decades later.
But Mr. Macron said that from the ashes of those two wars came hope. “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,” he said. “This hope is called the organization of the United Nations, which is a guarantee of the spirit of cooperation to defend the common good of the world that has its fate effectively linked and that has drawn from the lessons of the League of Nations and the Treaty of Versailles.”
Among the leaders present on Sunday were Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, King Felipe VI of Spain, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine and dozens of others. Five jets flew over the arch streaming the blue, white and red of the French flag.
The ceremony, in some measure Franco-centric by dint of being held in Paris, made a palpable effort to reach out to the countries that lost hundreds of thousands of people, or millions in the case of Germany and Russia.
The cellist Yo-Yo Ma performed the Sarabande from Cello Suite No. 5 by Johann Sebastian Bach, and Angélique Kidjo sang “Blewu,” a song of gratitude for the dedication of others, which was composed by a Togolese singer in the Mina language.
While the Marseillaise, the French national anthem, opened the ceremony, the most moving moments came when students in yellow scarves read century-old letters from eight men and women who either fought or lived through World War I.
The students, from Albert Schweitzer High School in Seine-St.-Denis, one of the grittier suburbs of Paris, read the letters in the language in which they were written: English, French and German, among others. Then a Russian conductor led the European Youth orchestra in playing a somber excerpt from Maurice Ravel’s “Boléro.”
“The traces of that war never have not faded from French soil. They have not faded from Europe, from the Middle East nor from our memories,” Mr. Macron said. “Let us not forget, because the remembrances of these sacrifices urges us to be worthy of those who died for us that we may live free.”