2023-04-20 18:45:53
President Macron’s visits abroad follow one another, speeches pile up, contacts become denser but nothing helps, Emmanuel Macron seems to have lost his touch internationally.
Of course, its diplomatic image, at first sparkling, gradually tarnished. He is no longer the dynamic young president of 2017 who could make people believe that he was capable of giving birth to a new international order in front of interlocutors amazed by his ability to reconcile opposites. He is no longer the young president with the devastating charm, sure of himself, believing himself capable of bending the positions of a Trump or a Putin, even a Xi Jinping. He is no longer the young president who, thanks to his voluntarism, could hope to resolve the crisis in Lebanon or bring peace to Africa. He is no longer the young president in Europe capable of uniting energies to build a powerful Europe, in the face of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
From smile to tenseness
His positions are today at best smiling, at worst triggering many tensions even among the traditional allies of France. Because his propensity to cover his tracks by his media projections saddens even his friends.
With hindsight, a small inventory of his diplomatic failures is now possible. He chooses to reserve without precaution all the honors to an uncommon Donald Trump during a July 14, 2017 on the Champs-Élysées. He attended the funeral of dictator Idriss Déby in Chad on April 23, 2021, while championing the end of Françafrique. He poses as Putin’s interlocutor in the midst of the invasion of Ukraine at the end of February 2022, asking that he be given an honorable way out, so as not to risk humiliation for the latter.
On November 7, 2019, he declared NATO brain dead, while many countries were knocking on his door today. In China, at the beginning of April 2023, he presented himself in the media as President of Europe accompanied by Ursula von der Leyen, which irritated his European partners. He makes statements on Taiwan showing that he imagines himself in charge of a third force of balances, while France is more than ever part of a Western world tightened against Chinese appetites and the Russian aggressor.
Lessons in diplomacy
This is indeed a lot for a president who likes to dispense his diplomacy lessons in public on the international scene. He still defends today dreams of greatness for Europe. But who still dares to believe in the concept of Europe as a power apart from itself? The Germans and all of Europe to the east and north feel very comfortable in NATO, under an American umbrella.
The Germans have no desire to travel to China or elsewhere, accompanied by President Macron. They intend to defend their interests alone and enjoy again, thanks to their economic power, their rediscovered sovereignty. The British decided on Brexit, which further weakens the idea of a future European bloc. The Italians are currently in the arms of Giorgia Meloni. They are above all nationalists like the Hungarians and the Poles, and therefore not particularly willing to keep pace with Macron. More generally, European countries do not want a Europe led by France, as they hated in the past a Europe dominated by Napoleon.
The sense of reality
So what can be done to restore to President Macron, already weakened on the domestic scene, a little sense of reality on the international scene? Tell him first to avoid communicating like this, to stop monopolizing the ministry of the word by playing the requiem of the at the same time that doesn’t work internationally, any more than it doesn’t work domestically. The concepts invented by the magician Emmanuel Macron prove to be ineffective.
A European sovereignty can only be built on abandonment of national sovereignties, as it has been until now, and not prosper at the same time than national sovereignties. A new power of balances cannot claim to be in the western block and at the same time outside the Western bloc. We cannot claim to ensure the security of certain African countries and at the same time turn the page of Françafrique.
When it comes to international relations, you need to know where you’re talking from and choose your allies carefully. Diplomacy requires restraint, patience, balance. The fort does not need a media audience to exist.
A great country
President Macron should also be told that he is reassured. He is indeed at the head of a large, powerful country, part of the very closed club of five permanent members of the Security Council, possessor of nuclear weapons. From the moment we are the ally of the Americans, there is no place or use for two rival Western blocs, when other powers emerge. We French people have nothing to be ashamed of being part of the western bloc that defends democracy, even if we can demonstrate our autonomy and independence vis-à-vis American leadership when our interests diverge.
Non-alignment, France’s traditional position since General de Gaulle, is not a diplomatic position of balance between the superpowers. It is rather the demonstration that the effective exercise of sovereignty is possible for all, outside or inside a bloc, as explicitly provided for in the United Nations Charter of 1945.
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