US ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison | Mark Wilson/Getty Images US ambassador to NATO questions Macron’s rationality Kay Bailey Hutchison, addressing French criticism of alliance, says ‘we firmly disagree.’

U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison rejected Emmanuel Macron's scathing criticism of the alliance and warned EU leaders against thinking that they could manage global security threats on their own.

"I’d like to start by addressing the issues with President Macron and say that we firmly disagree with President Macron’s assessment of NATO," Hutchison said at a news conference on Tuesday, ahead of a meeting of NATO foreign affairs ministers.

"And I believe NATO is absolutely essential if we are going to assess the risks that we face altogether and the thought of only one of our countries, our one of our groups of countries, facing the enormous risks to our populations alone is not even rational," she continued.

Macron's remarks — that "what we are experiencing is the brain death of NATO," which he made in a recent interview with the Economist — have set off a firestorm, including at the alliance headquarters in Brussels, where several countries, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, have reacted to the French president with alarm and fury.

Macron and his advisers have insisted that he was forcing NATO leaders to confront and discuss a reality that they don't want to face, pointing most immediately to unilateral military action by the United States and Turkey in northern Syria that critics said undermined the collective interests of the Western allies and certainly caught them by surprise.

"I don’t think Europe would be as safe without the transatlantic bond that we have" — Kay Bailey Hutchison

Several leaders have spoken out against Macron's comments, including Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who called them "dangerous," and German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who accused Macron of seeking to "replace" NATO, and said the French view did not match Berlin's focus on strengthening the alliance and its "ability to act."

Macron's remarks were intended at least in part to prevent U.S. President Donald Trump from dominating the conversation about NATO ahead of a leaders' summit in London next month to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Washington Treaty establishing the alliance.

Trump has repeatedly bashed NATO allies, especially Germany, for not spending enough on their militaries, and the Trump administration's initial response to Macron was to use his remarks to reiterate their demands that European nationals increase spending as quickly as possible.

Hutchison's remarks on Tuesday represented a more forceful pushback against Paris, and there was no mistaking her pointed warning about the limits Washington sees in any effort to increase EU defense and security coordination.

"We are stronger together," Hutchison said. "America brings the leadership of NATO. We have the capacity to lead. We do our part and more, and we share what we do. I don’t think Europe would be as safe without the transatlantic bond that we have and that’s why the bond was formed in the first place."

Privately, NATO officials accused the French president of blatant hypocrisy, noting that he often acts unilaterally at his own whim, and that France had opposed NATO becoming more involved in military operations in Syria, only to then turn around and complain that France was not sufficiently informed or consulted by Washington and Ankara. Several officials expressed sarcastic pleasure that suddenly a French president was in support of NATO functioning as much as a political alliance as a military one, noting the historical objection of French leaders to such an approach.

At his own pre-ministerial news conference, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg was not as directly critical, but insisted that the alliance was stronger than ever, and he said that he would meet Macron in Paris next week.

"My message is that NATO is adapting. NATO is agile. NATO is responding," Stoltenberg said. "The reality is Europe and North America, we are doing more together than we have in decades."