French President Emmanuel Macron had steamrolled every adversary in his path -- until he tried to take on the military.
Macron has embarked on a spell of budgetary austerity, a move that will hurt growth but is being pursued out of a misplaced desire to meet the European Union's arbitrary 3 percent deficit target. As part of that effort, the previous government had announced cuts to the defense budget of $968 million for this year, which Macron pledged to uphold.
