It is perhaps no surprise that Emmanuel Macron is in the middle of another big international row. France’s president likes to stir things up. It is his penchant, his trademark foible. Re-elected in 2022 despite a disappointing first term, he has four years left to make a difference. After that, political oblivion beckons – and Macron will still be under 50 in April 2027. Maybe this ticking clock helps explain why he courts danger like a bare-chested surfer riding the waves on the beach at Biarritz.
At home, Macron has caused uproar in recent months by pushing through controversial pension reforms opposed by two-thirds of the population. The row has contributed to a plunging personal approval rating, down to 30% this month. Facing a confidence vote in March, his government survived by bypassing parliament. The reforms are under legal challenge, while violent nationwide protests are continuing. Yet insouciant Macron seems almost oblivious at times.
The latest explosion was ignited by an interview Macron gave after a visit last weekend to Beijing, where he was showered with flattering attention by President Xi Jinping. On China policy, European countries were too subservient to the US and should not be Washington’s “followers”, he suggested. “Being an ally does not mean being a vassal… [or] mean we don’t have the right to think for ourselves.” Macron also implied that defending democratic Taiwan from a Ukraine-type Chinese invasion was not Europe’s business.
That was more than enough to put a lot of backs up. Yet two other aspects of his visit caused even greater alarm, and anger, among France’s friends and allies.
One was that Macron again appeared to represent himself as speaking for all of Europe, which he definitely was not.
This misleading impression was enhanced by his decision to take Ursula von der Leyen along for the ride. The EU commission president was reduced to playing second fiddle, sidelined by her hosts while he hogged the limelight. She must regret it now.
Objectionable to many, too, was Macron’s lauding of the idea of Europe as a separate geopolitical “pole”, or third superpower, on an equal footing with China and the US.
His championing of this concept is nothing new. It is rooted in Gaullist thinking. Macron frequently promotes what he calls European “strategic autonomy”. The idea of keeping Americans, and Anglo-Saxons in general, at arm’s length has longstanding appeal in France, especially on the left. Hence his past criticism of Nato.
China, on the other hand, just loves Macron’s ideas about rescuing Europe from America’s smothering embrace. His comments were wildly applauded in state-controlled media. Since taking power a decade ago, Xi has often been portrayed in the west as an inscrutable, unknown quantity. That’s really no longer the case. He makes no bones about his intention to create an authoritarian new world order orchestrated from Beijing. And that necessarily entails supplanting the US.
The launch of this new order is being undertaken in close collaboration with Putin – although, as Xi sees it, Russia will play a supporting role, essentially a tame provider of arms, energy and raw materials to China. Other, lesser autocracies such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria and some African and Asian regimes are being lined up as founding members. Xi’s target: the current, US-led, UN-endorsed, democratic international rules-based system.
A second cold war is in no one’s interest, Macron’s supporters say. Given rising anti-China sentiment in Washington, and hyper-nationalism in China, any leader who can bridge the dangerously widening east-west gulf performs an essential service.
More immediately, it’s pointed out that Europe, in particular, has a keen interest in undermining the developing Sino-Russian axis and persuading Xi to distance himself from Putin and his Ukraine catastrophe.
France had a bad habit of starting things then expecting others to clean up their mess. Macron envisioned himself as some sort of gifted being and xi will use him like an old wash cloth and throw him in the trash after he’s done using him.
ReplyDelete