The deliberate push to alienate allies pushing them to the other pole (China), is setting up the stage for confrontation. It can then become self-evident China is out to eat the USs lunch so they need to be dealt with. And all the years of China this, China that, will become true and it will be much more palatable to go hot over China or anything else. China will become the new defacto evil empire and everyone in the US will nod in agreement and decide it's time to do something about it. It's gaslighting at a global scale and it's working fine. Probably something like 2027. I don't know if those Macron messages are real but in Europe we are cooked because it's okay to not want global domination, but it's bad when you're being manipulated and you don't even realize why.