In 1964, when recognising “red” China was still career-death for a US president, Charles de Gaulle did just that. He later took France out of Nato’s integrated military command. On an epic, almost Homeric tour of Latin America, he pledged to that region his solidarity against an unnamed but not hard-to-guess hegemon. If never quite equidistant between the US and the USSR, he liked to draw a spurious equivalence between their overbearing power.

Put Emmanuel Macron in some perspective, then. Yes, in word and comportment, he got too close to China during his recent visit there. He has put distance between France and the rest of Europe, between Europe and the US, between the west and Taiwan. No leader in the democratic world is more in need of an editor.

It is just that any one of his predecessors or successors might have done the same, or worse. France often wants to be a “third force” in the world. (Before the cold war was quite over, Fran?ois Mitterrand proposed a European Confederation that would include Russia.) It also has more diplomatic and military clout than any other EU state. Put those realities together and “Europe”, to the degree that such an actor exists in world affairs, is never going to commit wholesale to the US line on China. The issue isn’t one impetuous man.