French President Emmanuel Macron delivered his analysis of the United States’ latest diplomatic and martial actions in the traditional speech for his country’s ambassadors on Thursday in the Élysée Palace. The chief of state warned that Washington, “is gradually turning away from some of its allies and breaking free from the international rules that it was until recently promoting.”

After U.S. President Donald Trump mocked Macron and ridiculed other EU countries, who Macron accused of bowing to the American’s requests, the French president also alluded to “neocolonial aggressiveness” that is becoming more evident in U.S. diplomatic relations. “Multilateral institutions are functioning less and less effectively. We are living in a world of great powers, with a real temptation to divide up the world,” Macron said. “We are being subjected to neocolonial aggressiveness by certain parties.”

The president’s words arrive less than a week after the United States attacked Caracas and captured the Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife. Macron’s statement also comes after the Trump administration insisted on a possible annexation of Greenland. “We are in a very difficult moment for world order,” Macron recognized. “The law of the strongest seeks to impose itself [...] but deep down we must say that we are a lot stronger than many believe.”

Macron, who has always had a tense relationship with Trump — who seems determined to humiliate the French president in each of their public encounters — has been advocating for months for a gradual process of autonomy for the EU from the United States. In his speech, he recalled some of his reasons for this, such as the fact that “yesterday’s rules are increasingly weakened.” “There are still destabilizing powers,” he continued, citing Russia and Iran, and evoking “information interference”.

The speech also saw the leader striving for optimism, and offering a reminder of France and its allies’ achievements in the areas of defense, and support of Ukraine. He said that practically the entirety of that support comes from the so-called coalition of the willing, and warned that France rejects “new colonialism and new imperialism, but we also refuse vassalage and defeatism.”

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