Thanks Manuel, great pleasure to discuss this with you. Here 3 points in response.
1/3 Taking action isn't possible if there is no agreement about goals. There is a fundamental difference between Germany and France; France wants to deploy military in the South while Germany wants deterrence in the east. Hard to reconcile as political cultures very different.
2/3 "Autonomy" is often used as a synonym for independence, I'm afraid. For France this works (at least in theory), but for Germany it's pretty clear that it cannot even use its own military autonomously, it can only do so "in systems of collective security".
3/3 France may today have no ambition to compete with the US but the use of "strategic autonomy", like it or not, reminds many of Gaullism and a French ambition to demonstrate independence. For Germany there's only interdependence; talk about "autonomy" misleading.
