“Power of Balance” : I have been trying, since President Macron used the expression, to find a meaning for it since this new concept would be supposed to give coherence to French foreign policy. Is it a variant of the “refusal of bloc politics”, a great classic of French diplomacy since General de Gaulle? The formula allowed France to forge a singular image: an ally of the United States at the time of the Cuban crisis, but not aligned, as General de Gaulle demonstrated brilliantly in his speech in Phnom Penh in 1966, in which he expressed his disapproval of American involvement in Vietnam.
The word balance, however, has unfortunate implications that the previous expression did not have. It suggests equidistance. When the balance beam tilts in one direction, it would be up to France to put its weight on the lightest of plateaus, to regain balance. Does it have the weight necessary for such an ambition? Doesn’t she risk the same fate as the Frog in La Fontaine’s fable who wanted to be as big as the Ox (the image is not mine but a great diplomat who was secretary general of the Quai d’Orsay)?
And is this a legitimate objective? Among the multiple poles which define the field of forces of the world, some have our preference. We have every reason to express the greatest reservations about the Biden administration’s simplifying opposition between autocracies and democracies, which gives a patent of democracy to countries that do not always deserve it and rejects countries in the outer darkness who might come close. This cut is counter-productive.
inherently dangerous
But acknowledging all the shades of gray in a complicated world doesn’t mean celebrating the happy medium. Avoiding too rigid separations, opening the door to those who are not in the camp of democracies does not mean forgetting who we are. If the scales tilt in favor of democracies, should we hurry to get closer to autocracies? If Russia suffers setbacks in Ukraine, should we be concerned?
By putting the word equilibrium in the plural, French diplomacy no doubt hopes to escape this reproach. A multipolar world is not the zero-sum game of bipolar confrontation, and the plural, by recognizing the complexity of the world, seems to get us out of the unacceptable choice suggested by the image of the balance between two poles. It blurs the zero-sum game of the Cold War.
You have 51.61% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.