After Nicolas Maduro, could the American president kidnap Emmanuel Macron? This is what the online edition of the French newspaper L'Express asks in a commentary on Washington's policy in recent weeks.
The question seems absurd: unlike the Venezuelan dictator, the French president was elected legitimately; he leads the country that is Washington's oldest ally; Donald Trump has not accused him of drug trafficking, nor has he asked him to leave office.
On closer inspection, however, such a scenario, however improbable, helps to understand the scale of the abyss into which transatlantic relations have sunk since Trump returned to the White House a year ago.
Europe and America have experienced periods of tension since World War II, for example during the Suez Crisis in 1956 or the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. But never before have the members of the Atlantic alliance, which until recently boasted of being "the strongest alliance the world has ever known", been so close to divorce.
In its National Security Strategy, published in December, the United States declared its intention to destabilize progressive European governments in favor of populist national forces.
They accompany their continued presence in NATO with a demand that the interests of their partners be fully aligned with their own national interests, to the point that in Greenland they claim the right to appropriate the sovereign territory of a loyal ally like Denmark.
In these circumstances, an attack on France, considered the country most reluctant to bow to Washington, could tempt the 47th American president.
The Trump administration has shown that it can act in a completely unpredictable manner on the international stage. It respects no form or principle except force.
"America is gradually withdrawing from some of its allies and freeing itself from the international rules that until recently it still promoted", complained Emmanuel Macron on January 8 to the Conference of Ambassadors.
In fact, Trump does not classify countries as democracies or autocracies, nor as allies or adversaries, much less as friends or enemies, but simply as strong or weak.
The former can be treated as partners, while the latter deserve only to be trampled. Europe, unfortunately, is classified in Washington as weak.
Its decision not to retaliate against the American tariffs imposed last summer, in the hope of keeping Washington on its side in support of Ukraine, has reinforced this pitiful image.
Of all the leaders of major European countries, Emmanuel Macron is the weakest. Germany's Merz relies on a fragile governing coalition, Britain's Starmer is at the bottom of the polls, Spain's Sanchez is embroiled in a corruption scandal, Poland's Tusk is living with an ultra-conservative head of state...
But no one has as little room to maneuver as the French president. Macron, who will not be able to run for re-election next year, has endured the humiliation of having his pension reform blocked by parliament.
After a failed attempt to dissolve parliament, he no longer controls it. He faces record unpopularity. In Washington, he is called a "lame duck", a leader with his hands tied.
That makes him an ideal target for Donald Trump. Of course, he probably won’t succeed in removing him.
But one would think that even if he did, it would hardly change the face of Europe, so much so that Macron’s misjudgments have undermined France’s position in Brussels.
There was a time when France’s voice carried considerable weight there. That is no longer the case.
Macron’s impasse over the EU’s free trade agreement with the Common Market of the Americas (Mercosur), which he initially supported and then tried in vain to oppose, cruelly illustrates the impotence of the man who once boasted of reshaping Europe to his liking.