Emmanuel Macron is right.
The French president set off a veritable shit storm this week when he raised the possibility of sending troops to Ukraine.
Members of NATO rushed to rebuff the idea. And Vladimir Putin was so shook by the threat he once again threatened a nuclear war over the comments.
But again, Macron is right.
Speaking at a conference in Paris that was called to show unity and support for Ukraine, he made the following comments:
We discussed this. There is currently no consensus on sending troops on the ground in an official, accepted and endorsed manner. But in dynamic terms, nothing should be ruled out. We will do everything we can to ensure that Russia cannot win this war.
In a way it’s ironic that France — the country saddled with the stereotype of being defeatist — is the country taking the firmest stance against Russian aggression.
But it’s also appropriate, because the country that’s traditionally stood up to Europe’s biggest bully — America — has abdicated that responsibility.
That, too, is jarring to me.
Maybe it’s because I grew up watching movies like Rocky IV and Red Dawn — in a time when Ronald Reagan’s triumphant call for Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall was still ringing through our collective conscience.
But I always thought we were the good guys, willing and able to defend democracy and freedom across the globe, and they were the bad ones — the scheming communists who infiltrate, invade, manipulate, murder, and oppress their opposition.
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Not in Russia, where a murderous dictator spent the week assassinating his chief political opponent in a Siberian jail and torturing a former Soviet satellite state that dared to embrace democracy…
But in the United States, where one of our two main political parties continues to withhold aid from that besieged ally and its leader brags that he’d encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want.”
That is the full context for Macron’s comments, and he made that plain, as well.
“We cannot wait for the outcome of the American elections to decide what our future is going to be,” he said. “It is the future of Europe that is at stake, so it is therefore up to the Europeans to decide.”
Macron knows this well, too, because he was president during Donald Trump’s last term in office.
Trump’s antipathy to NATO was so pervasive that Macron basically called the alliance “brain-dead.”
Trump “doesn’t share our idea of the European project,” he said. Thus, Europe needs to “reassess the reality of what NATO is in the light of the commitment of the United States.”
It was then that Macron called for a “true European army” to “defend itself on its own without relying only on the United States.”
And that’s really where all of this is going.
Europe can no longer rely on the United States.
NATO probably won’t survive another Trump presidency — or at the very least, it won’t function under one.
Europe needs its own army. And Macron isn’t the only one who thinks so.
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said the same thing.
Read Tajani’s full quote; it’s illuminating:
If we want to be peacekeepers in the world, we need a European military. And this is a fundamental precondition to be able to have an effective European foreign policy.
In a world with powerful players like the United States, China, India, Russia — with crises from the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific — Italian, German, French, or Slovenian citizens can only be protected by something that already exists, namely the European Union.
Italy’s former chief of defense also serves as chairman of the European Union Military Committee.
He, too, is working to build and shape an EU army.
Under his leadership, the EU is developing a Rapid Deployment Capacity that’s capable of deploying a modular, multidomain force of up to 5,000 troops that can intervene in nonpermissive hostile environments.
That’s just the start.
What Macron and Italy’s military brass are pushing for will come to be.
It’s facing resistance now, but it’s inevitable — especially if Trump gets reelected.
And it’s not just going to take a massive political commitment; it’s going to take a massive financial commitment.
It’s going to take hundreds of billions of dollars — trillions, even.
And that money is going to pour into defense terms — some of them European, but mostly U.S. defense contractors.
In fact, it’s already begun.
Collectively, the countries that form NATO are on track to spend more than $1 trillion collectively on defense.
They’re spending more now than they were in 1989.
That is something investors ought to pay attention to.
It’s something they ought to respond to.
And the best way to do that is to invest in companies that are on the cutting edge of defense tech…
Like this one — an AI company that’s already active in both Ukraine and Israel.
It’s companies like this that are going to profit from Europe’s new approach to collective defense.
Fight on, Jason Simpkins Simpkins is the founder and editor of Secret Stock Files, an investment service that focuses on companies with assets — tangible resources and products that can hold and appreciate in value. He covers mining companies, energy companies, defense contractors, dividend payers, commodities, staples, legacies and more… In 2023 he joined The Wealth Advisory team as a defense market analyst where he reviews and recommends new military and government opportunities that come across his radar, especially those that spin-off healthy, growing income streams. For more on Jason, check out his editor’s page. Be sure to visit our Angel Investment Research channel on YouTube and tune into Jason’s podcasts. Want to hear more from Jason? Sign up to receive emails directly from him ranging from market commentaries to opportunities that he has his eye on. 
