Welcome to Hard Talk from the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker.

My guest in this interview recorded in Paris on March the 10th is an elder statesman of French

politics and diplomacy, whose persona evokes memories of a bygone age of courtly manners and

nobles oblige. Dominique de Vilpa, the son of a diplomat, sometime poet,

served in the French Foreign Service before becoming a loyal aid and advisor to President Jacques Chirac.

He gained international recognition when, as France's foreign minister in 2003,

he delivered a powerful critique of America's impending invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein.

De Ville-Pat went on to serve as prime minister, but he lacked the common touch and failed in his bid to become president.

Now, France, like much of Europe, is consumed by a new set of foreign policy and security challenges

precipitated by decisions taken in Washington. Donald Trump has turned 80 years of assumptions about the

unbreakable bond between the U.S. and Europe's democracies upside down. Trump is determined to end the war prompted by Russia's invasion

of Ukraine. He's piling pressure on Kiev in a way that seems to serve Vladimir Putin's interests.

How should France and its European partners respond? Is Europe capable of becoming a global security

superpower in its own right? Well, Dominique

de Villopin joins me now. Welcome to Hard Talk. Thank you for receiving me. It's great to be talking

to you here in Paris. How would you characterize the relationship between the United States,

led by Donald Trump, and Europe's democracies right now.

It is a big historical swing between the US and Europe.

And of course, most of us do see the swing towards Ukraine, which is a huge issue and a big problem for all of us and for

Ukraine. But I think there is a second aspect, which is the fact that the US administration

is making also a big swing on democracy. Donald Trump is not defending the idea, the old paradigm of freedom

and democracy. This is not at the center of the objective of the U.S. administration.

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