Story highlights David A. Andelman: Trump's visit to France on Bastille Day is taking on dual significance

While it will celebrate historically strong relationship between the nations, it also will draw attention to current tensions

David A. Andelman, a contributor to CNN and columnist for USA Today, is the author of "A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today." He formerly served as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times and Paris correspondent for CBS News. Follow him on Twitter @DavidAndelman. The views expressed in this commentary are his own.

Paris (CNN) If there is one sacred holiday in France, it is what Americans call "Bastille Day," and the French simply call "the Fourteenth of July." It is the Fourth of July, Veteran's Day and Presidents Day all rolled into one. Now, on the invitation of France's new President Emmanuel Macron, Donald Trump is coming to celebrate it with the French people.

This year it has a double significance -- a celebration by the French of all America has done through the years to preserve French democracy and the cloud of some profound issues that have threatened to undermine the brief relationship of Trump and Macron. From climate change to Qatar, Damascus to Moscow, there will be no shortage of wounds to bind or fester.

David Andelman

It was 100 years ago this month that the first 14,000 "Doughboys" landed on the south coast of Brittany -- the vanguard of what would be 1 million American men and women, the largest military deployment America had ever seen abroad until that point. Under the leadership of the redoubtable Gen. "Black Jack" Pershing, they would turn the tide against the Germans and win World War I for the side of democracy. The French have never forgotten this demonstration of loyalty.

Not only symbols and atmospherics, but politics and diplomacy as well -- indeed, the entire future of American-European relations -- will be at play as Trump and his 39-year-old host mount the viewing stand at the Place de la Concorde.

The subtext, however, may be lost on Trump. In reality, this visit is yet another brick placed quite craftily in the edifice of French leadership of Europe, even the world, that Macron has been quietly, skilfully building. Here's the French President sitting proudly in the central position of power, the military forces he commands pirouetting deftly before him and screaming overhead in the skies. And then there's the apparent acolyte, Trump, at his feet (or elbow depending on where the Elysees protocol folks put him on the dais).

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