If Taiwan is attacked by the Communist Chinese count France on the sidelines, or worse.

So said French President Emmanuel Macron during suck up talks with Chinese dictator Xi on Wednesday. The private reasoning for this may be complex. But the public case Macron makes, given the history of the 20th century, is outrageous.

“We, Europeans, must wake up. Our priority is not others’ agendas in all regions of the world,” Macron said. “The question we need to answer, as Europeans, is the following: is it in our interest to accelerate (a crisis) on Taiwan? No,” he said during a groveling confab with Xi in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou. “The worst thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the U.S. agenda…”

Funny, it is easy to recall three times in about the last one hundred years that the US put “other’s agendas”, a large part of that being those of France, over purely parochial American interests. WWI, WWII, and American support for the unsuccessful French postwar effort in Vietnam speak volumes as to the short historical memory of the French.

Now, I am no Francophobe. I’m rather a Francophile. I have tremendous respect for French culture and history. I have relatives in Paris and have not forgotten the vital French intervention in our War of Independence, a move that cemented an American victory.

However, this craven surrender, in keeping with their not so glorious tradition of 1940, is shaming to the French and indicative of the forlorn international clout of the Biden administration.

Ted Cruz comments, “Even the left-wing leaders of Europe — whom Biden has assiduously courted (and obsequiously a—kissed)—are openly screwing the U.S. Could Biden possibly have screwed up foreign policy more?”

And that may be the real reason for Macron’s capitulation to Beijing. It’s easy to talk of cheese-eating surrender monkeys and the French tank that only has gears in reverse. But in places like Africa the French wield a big stick and they were no slouchs as our ally in Afghanistan. While wussing out in public, the French, by their France First attitude at the expense of everything and everybody, are only acting with their usual modern indifference to many Western allied concerns.

After watching our disgraceful bugout from Kabul and looking at our decreasing defense budgets, can we blame them for cutting a very public deal in the face of American weakness? Well, yes.

Because a behind the curtains word or two to the Chinese is one thing. But an in your face appeasement of aggression as we try to deter the Chinese and avoid a war is something else altogether.