© REUTERS/Olivier Matthys/Pool

Since the summer, Emmanuel Macron has made a sudden reappearance on the front lines of international politics. In August, he invited Vladimir Putin to Fort de Brégançon, the French presidential retreat, where the two leaders discussed the conflict in Ukraine and the possibility of Russia’s readmission to the G7 economic summit. Later that month, as G7 host, Macron welcomed leaders of the world’s largest industrial nations, but also brought along a surprise guest, Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif.

At the United Nations in September, the French president called on his fellow world leaders to show “the courage of responsibility.” This prompts the question: is Macron is speaking here on behalf of France or of the European Union as a whole, and can the two positions be reconciled?

A Sense of Urgency

Political observers in the French capital agree on this: Europe’s security architecture is under threat to a degree not seen in three or even four decades. In Macron’s own words: “The international order is being disrupted in an unprecedented way…for the first time in our history, in almost all areas and on a historic scale. Above all, there is a transformation, a geopolitical and strategic reconfiguration.” The French president was referring to the challenge to multilateralism from great powers like the United States and China, but also to intensifying armed conflicts close to Europe’s frontiers. Yet another worry for Macron is the distance the Trump administration has taken from questions of European security.

Macron believes the world now emerging will have a bipolar structure, with the United States on one side and China on the other. All other states will play a subordinate role; this includes Russia, which faces marginalization within this new bipolar order. For Europe, the outlook is little better: “We will have to choose between the two dominant powers,” he told the conference of French ambassadors in August. In other words, the choice open to a future Europe will be whom to serve as junior partner.

But Macron would not be Macron if he gave up in the face of adversity. Having made his bleak assessment, he concluded by demanding that Europe turn itself into an autonomous international actor. As outlined in his famous 2017 Sorbonne speech, Macron wants to see the construction of a sovereign Europe. This Europe would be able to live according to its own values (by no means identical to American values), safeguard its own political and economic interests, and, not least, defend itself militarily. For Macron, this is a matter of urgency.

A Common Front with Russia

France’s desire to improve relations with Russia should be seen against this backdrop. Macron is well aware of Moscow’s hostile stance toward the EU, but he continues to push for constructive cooperation in the relatively near future, for example on arms control and in space. The aim is to prevent Russia from further destabilizing the EU and its surrounding regions. Macron also has another goal in mind: he ultimately sees Russia as a possible ally for Europe in the emerging bipolar world system.

At the conference of ambassadors, Macron was explicit: “To rebuild a real European project in a world that is at risk of bipolarization, [we must] succeed at forming a common front between the EU and Russia.” The statement provoked anger, and not only among EU member states in Eastern Europe, where many fear that closer ties to Moscow inevitably spell danger. There is also a distinct air of skepticism among French political and diplomatic elites. Macron is well aware of this, hence his insistence that French ambassadors adopt a new and different mentality.

This is Macron’s vision of the future. But present-day realities look somewhat different. For a number of years, Islamist terror attacks have been a pressing, immediate danger to France. It is clear that the French government can only win out in the battle against terrorism through cooperation with partners and allies. The same goes for overseas military operations, where France rapidly comes up against the limits of its own power.

This explains French pragmatism on the question of allies. “We need to find support everywhere we can,” Defense Minister Florence Parly told a conference at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington in 2017. In this respect, the US remains indispensable to France. Particularly in the Sahel region of West Africa, France relies on Washington for logistical support and intelligence sharing. Considerable flexibility is needed to combine that sort of dependency with France’s aspirations to autonomy. All the more so when dealing with an unpredictable interlocutor like Donald Trump.

Disappointed with Berlin

Macron’s new foreign policy may seek to invoke the independent French position of previous presidents Charles de Gaulle and Jacques Chirac. However, the current president has added a new element to traditional Fifth Republic foreign policy. No president prior to Macron has ever made such a clear push for European integration, including foreign and security policy. This has particular relevance to the question of autonomy, something Macron desires both for France and for Europe. French policy elites still regard the EU as a force multiplier, useful for a country now without the capacities to match its ambition, despite its nuclear weapons and its permanent UN Security Council seat. But France also regards the EU as a community of interests that must present a united front in an increasingly turbulent world. For this reason, goes the argument, the EU must develop its capacities to operate autonomously in the long term, if necessary without its traditional American partner.

Immediately after his election, Macron attempted to achieve this through close cooperation on fiscal and monetary policy with Germany. However, it rapidly became clear that Berlin had no intention of supporting his ambitious projects for the eurozone. For Paris, this German reluctance increased the importance of another aspect of bilateral relations: defense and arms industry cooperation. The Aachen Treaty, signed by the two countries in January 2019, committed them to “continue to intensify the cooperation between their armed forces with a view to the establishment of a common culture and joint deployments.”

Paris has now distinctly lowered its expectations of a grand alliance with Berlin. In any case, an arrangement like that can only be a project for the very long term. One recent move can been seen as a small first step. The Franco-German agreement at the countries’ most recent bilateral talks in Toulouse makes important changes to arms export regulation. Crucially, Germany will no longer claim the right to block exports of jointly-manufactured weapons systems if German components make up less than 20 percent of the arms in question.

In practice, however, Franco-German cooperation continues to occupy precarious political ground, not least because of stark differences in foreign policy traditions. This is why Paris has sought British participation in European security policy instruments, including the recently established European Intervention Initiative, a 13-nation military project outside both the EU and NATO. Brexit or no Brexit, the United Kingdom and France share a particular strategic outlook, as well as a long tradition of overseas military intervention. In this context, Britain will remain an important partner for France.

A Change of Strategy

Growing frustrations, above all the disappointment with Berlin, led Macron to change his European strategy ahead of May’s European elections. First, Paris now no longer shied away from confrontation with Berlin. Second, the French government intensified its involvement in EU institutional politics and wants to use this more strongly as leverage. Macron supported the formation of Renew Europe, a new liberal grouping in the European parliament, in which French parliamentarians are the biggest delegation (21 out of 74).

Macron also robustly intervened in the struggle over key EU leadership posts. He actively opposed the so-called Spitzenkandidat (“lead candidate”) system, by which the winning party in European parliamentary elections could claim the presidency of the European Commission. Instead, Macron backed Ursula von der Leyen for president. He was gratified that her Europe Agenda 2019–2024 borrowed key ideas from his Sorbonne speech, including ambitious climate goals, a European minimum wage, and the creation of an EU defense union. The French president also pushed for the appointment of Charles Michel as European Council president and Josep Borrell as the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. In Paris, both men are regarded as close to French positions.

Macron’s final tactical maneuver would have seen Sylvie Goulard appointed as a commissioner in charge of a beefed-up portfolio including internal market affairs, as well as industry, aerospace, digitization and culture. Goulard would have overseen the implementation of Macron’s preferred EU projects. But the European parliament rejected Goulard’s nomination, a severe blow to Macron.

In picking Thierry Breton, a businessman and one-time French Minister for Economy, Finance and Industry, as a substitute for Goulard, Macron signaled that knowledge of Germany and therefore the ability to explain his project to the Germans (which Goulard had) was no longer a requirement for the job. The top priority is now to maintain the portfolio that Paris had negotiated and which is in line with its European agenda. A top-level partnership between Goulard and von der Leyen could have been a dynamic driving force for Franco-German cooperation at the EU level. This is now a more difficult proposition, particularly since von der Leyen’s own position has turned out to be more fragile than expected, while the European Parliament seems set to remain riven by political tensions.

Difficult Road to Europeanization

In Paris, the unexpected obstacles in Brussels have been the cause of even more frustration. This French impatience is prompted by the general sense of urgency, along with the country’s aspirations to leadership. In response, the Macron administration has sought room for maneuver elsewhere, going beyond EU frameworks and other traditional diplomatic formats.

The recent rapprochement with Russia is a case in point. Paris will do what it regards as right for both itself and the EU, although where interests actually overlap is a matter for debate. France also hopes its actions will persuade other partners to get on board: French foreign policy is meant to be inclusive. The talks with Putin, for example, were regarded in Paris as a first step, to be followed by the continuation of the “Normandy format” Ukrainian peace talks, which also involved Germany and Ukraine. However, such solo activism may run the risk of offending France’s EU partners, fomenting unnecessary trouble.

One example of this was France’s recent veto of Albania’s and North Macedonia’s application to join the EU, in what would have been a further expansion, this time into south-eastern Europe. Macron’s arguments on the subject are actually entirely legitimate. He is quite right to suggest that the EU’s accession process is problematic: the prospective new members gave inadequate assurances on the rule of law, where improvements are clearly required. Moreover, it is doubtful whether the EU, already embroiled in a painful Brexit saga, would be prepared to admit new members before it has reformed its own institutions and internal processes.

Macron’s veto was meant to signal that expansion would endanger integration, risking the EU’s cohesion and unity. Here, he continued a long-standing tradition in France’s European policy that regards deepening and enlargement as mutually contradictory. Opponents of Macron’s position argue that the EU’s borders should be stabilized, demanding a more pragmatic approach. The French president understands this objection. However, he has maintained his veto, which has come at a high price. The issue has seen him isolated, and has weakened his pro-European credibility.

Be Patient, Be Polite

For all his pro-European convictions, Macron has no intention of silencing France’s voice on the world stage. Like all French politicians, he is not prepared to hand over the country’s permanent UN Security Council seat to an EU representative. At best, Macron may coordinate policy with other European members of the Security Council, thus fulfilling the Aachen Treaty’s stipulation that France and Germany should act “in accordance with the positions and interests of the European Union.”

Given this logic, it is unsurprising that Macron welcomed Borrell’s appointment as High Representative. Borrell is familiar with France’s strategic culture, but also with the sensitivities of member states that are jealous of their prerogatives, the result of many years serving as Spanish foreign minister. He realizes it would be an error to seek the limelight. Of course, he will set the tone for his own department, but his main focus will be on internal coordination processes. All foreign affairs issues will probably be discussed in the Council of Ministers, where larger states tend to have greater visibility. Nonetheless, the EU needs unity in order, for example, to impose economic sanctions as a foreign policy instrument. The voices of the larger states only dominate if the entire EU goes along with them and implements their decisions. This interplay of forces will determine what happens.

For Macron this means that he must constantly strike a balance between national self-assertion and integration within EU structures. If he wants to exert influence within the EU, he cannot go it alone. That’s no easy task for a man of Macron’s impatience. Here, he runs a twofold risk: first, he may offend his partners and come across as arrogant, especially to smaller EU states, who feel he patronizes them. The second risk is that Macron will lose credibility if his well-publicized plans end up going nowhere. In both cases, it is a question of reliability and trust, a basic requirement if the project of European autonomy is to gain sustainable momentum.

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Artwork © Claude Cadi

On paper, France and Italy seem like lovers destined for each other. The “sister republics” are each other’s second biggest trading partner, and perhaps more importantly, they have a natural cultural affinity. It doesn’t need an equivalent to the Franco-German TV channel Arte for Italy and France to become their film industries’s respective biggest foreign audiences.

Still, the EU’s two largest Latin countries have rarely formed a power couple. After World War II, France’s political elite did not trust post-fascist Italy and wanted the Italians kept out of NATO. In the 1960s, Charles de Gaulle felt offended when Rome did not follow his lead but rather welcomed American military bases and supported a supranational Europe instead of his vision of a “Europe des États.”

It didn’t help that the French and Italian left cultivated close ties in the 1980s and François Mitterrand gave asylum to members of the terrorist Brigate Rosse. And in 2000s, at the height of the Iraq crisis, Jacques Chirac snubbed then Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, telling him, “One doesn’t export democracy with an armored car.” In France, the one-liner is part of every Chirac Greatest Hits album. But this did not prevent his successor Nicolas Sarkozy from ousting Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011—against Rome’s express protests.

Stand-Off

If recent European history is full of Franco-Italian skirmishes, the recent years under Emmanuel Macron have been no exception. Long before the Five Star Movement and the far-right Lega acceded to power in June 2018, Macron repeated France’s classic mistake of taking Italy’s support for granted or simply not caring about antagonizing Rome.

Once in the Elysée, Macron barred rescue vessels carrying migrants from docking in French ports and decided to maintain checks on the Italian border, which left asylum seekers stranded at Ventimiglia. Macron also did not hesitate to block an Italian takeover of a French ship-building yard and undermine Italy’s long-standing Libya policy.

Rome supports the UN-recognized government in Tripoli. It dominates Libya’s west, which is key to controlling migration across the Mediterranean. Macron’s primary Libyan concern, however, was to secure the Sahel region. This led Paris to throw its weight behind Khalifa Haftar. The general, once an exile in the United States, vowed to go after Islamic terrorists and even seems to have received French arms to that purpose. But Haftar used them to march on Tripoli in the spring of 2019 in an attempt to overthrow the government.

While across the Rhine, the French president is seen as a great European, the Italians discovered Macron’s Gaullist and unilateralist side early on. In Italy, anti-French rhetoric has come to replace anti-German sentiment.

“A Chance to Be Seized”

It is only now that Macron seems to have finally understood that Italy—more than any other country—is the decisive battleground for the EU’s future.

There is of course the economic question. Italy’s 132 percent debt-to-GDP ratio is the bomb that could blow up the currency union—and French companies are Italy’s largest foreign investors. But in a world of ultra-low interest rates, the debt elephant in the room can be ignored for a while.

The real problem is political. The specter of a far-right prime minister taking over in Rome has focused minds in Paris. Lega leader Matteo Salvini would not only have frustrated most of Macron’s plans in Brussels. Perhaps more crucially, the Italian far-right ditching coalition partners and rising to power on its own would have allowed Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National to lose its stigma of unelectability, which is what got Macron into the Elysée in the first place.

That Salvini locked himself out of power this summer is, in this context, seen as a godsend that comes with responsibility. As French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said, “We believe having a new Italian government is a chance, and chances have to be seized”.

The Elysée is keen to make sure the Italians regain confidence in the EU. The French president was the first head of state to pay a visit to Giuseppe Conte’s second government, formed by M5S and Italy’s Social Democrats (PD) in September. Paris is lobbying Brussels to allow Conte some fiscal breathing space. On Libya, Macron has let Berlin take over to try to mediate a solution as Paris has lost its pretense of neutrality.

Paris is also the main force behind a renewed push for a mechanism distributing incoming asylum-seekers across the EU—an old Italian demand. This is not completely without self-interest on Macron’s part. France is recording rising numbers of asylum-seekers. Those rejected by other EU countries come to France hoping for better treatment. Macron realizes that shutting the border with Italy doesn’t solve the problem.

No Time for Renzi

Lastly, Macron has stopped playing  domestic politics in Italy. In parallel to the government of the day in Rome, Macron had entertained a relationship with Matteo Renzi, the former PD leader. Macron even flirted with the idea of allying with Renzi in the European elections. He was a constant factor of insecurity in Italy’s political landscape.

Last month, Renzi exited the PD to found his break-away Italia Viva party. Importantly, Macron chose not to meet Renzi when he jetted to Rome. Italy’s government is notoriously unstable. But the Elysée has no interest in Renzi breaking away from Conte’s second government and provoking snap elections—at least not before Macron faces his own rendezvous with the French electorate in 2022.

Europe is slowly realizing that Conte must be helped if Salvini is to be kept out of power. In this context, a Franco-Italian allaince may finally become a viable force in Brussels.

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© Sputnik/Alexei Druzhinin/Kremlin via REUTERS

Two weeks ago, a wormhole seemed to have opened up at the Élysée Palace, transporting us back to the 1960s. Addressing France’s assembled ambassadors, Emmanuel Macron sounded at times like a 21^st century Charles de Gaulle.

Fresh off his diplomatic success at last month’s G7 summit in Biarritz, the French president proclaimed: “We are not an aligned power… We need to work with our European friends, which we have to respect… But to put it in simple terms, we are not a power that considers that the enemies of its friends must also be ours.” For history buffs, that was nothing short of a direct riff on de Gaulle’s foreign policy tenets.

Once Paris had buried its imperial ambitions in the course of the 1950s and early 1960s, President de Gaulle reimagined France’s role as an independent geopolitical power, removed from the Cold War schism. “Having given independence to our colonies, we have to retake our own independence,” de Gaulle famously said in 1963. France should be a free agent on the world stage, which led de Gaulle to create the force de frappe, France’s independent nuclear deterrent. In 1966, the general ordered Washington to close its French army bases.

In the diplomatic sphere, this so-called “policy of free hands” translated into an early recognition of communist China (1964) and above all a rapprochement with Moscow. In a bid to further distance himself from Washington, de Gaulle embarked on a “Ostpolitik” avant la lettre, travelling from Kiev to Novosibirsk in 1966 and making the case for a détente. “Soviets and French, we can shake hands!” he told a roaring crowd.

“Useful Idiot”?

It seems Paris is gearing up to embrace Moscow once again. The Iranian nuclear deal, the Syrian civil war, the stalemate in Libya and Eastern Ukraine—Russian President Vladimir Putin has made himself indispensable to resolving all these issues. Moreover, with US President Donald Trump pulling out of the INF treaty, the threat of a new arms race is returning to Europe with a vengeance. In Macron’s mind, isolating Putin simply doesn’t work anymore.

In Paris, many doubt that Macron’s overture toward Russia will yield any tangible returns. In 1966, de Gaulle did not obtain much from Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in return for his Soviet pivot. His diplomatic somersault was rewarded with a couple of trade agreements and a direct telephone line from the Élysée to the Kremlin.

Much like in the 1960s, Putin may simply see Macron as a “useful idiot” that might help him to break up the joint US-EU sanctions front. The Kremlin’s gambit seems to be paying dividends already: France supported Russia’s return to the Council of Europe this year.

Return to Grandeur

But like de Gaulle, Macron seems to be thinking above all about his domestic audience. In 1966, the general’s triumphant Russia trip was also a giant propaganda show. It was supposed to signal that France was de retour and—perhaps more importantly—the French themselves were keen to forget the memories of the disastrous Algerian war.

Macron presented himself to French voters in 2017 as a vigorous leader who would reform the European Union and create, in tandem with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a “Europe that protects.” Politically and fiscally more integrated, such a “sovereign Europe” would be able to resist Trump’s unilateralism and to ring-fence China’s state capitalism.

But Berlin and a coalition of northern and eastern European countries soon frustrated Macron’s ambitions. A eurozone budget was agreed on in name only, and a EU-wide tax on America’s digital giants seems dead in the water. Macron’s powerlessness in Europe became more and more visible, most of all to the French.

But by positioning himself at the center of the global diplomatic game, Macron is now attempting to recover some of his fading authority and standing at home. It seems to be working: after the G7 summit in Biarritz, Macron’s ratings reached their highest level since the start of the “yellow vests” crisis late last year.

A Gaullist European

Banking on Merkel has proven a flawed strategy for Macron. Consequently, talk of Franco-German cooperation was noticeably absent his latest Élysée speech. Instead, Macron could not help pointing out once more that Berlin is much better at organizing support for its views within the EU. His marching order to the assembled ambassadors was clear: go and strengthen France’s bilateral relations, particularly with eastern and Nordic EU countries.

It is these countries that are most worried about a rapprochement with Putin’s Russia—especially since Trump, now that his hawkish national security advisor John Bolton is out of the picture, cannot be trusted to be tough on Putin. The Baltic countries are well aware that in a crisis, France is the only EU nuclear power with a president at its helm that can send troops across the continent on a whim.

Macron is playing billiard diplomacy. By rekindling his relationship with Putin and becoming Europe’s geopolitical wheelhouse, he hopes to increase his leverage within the EU and upend the rivalry with Germany—an old trick in French foreign policy. Ironically, in a Europe where many are still reticent about further integration, Macron seems to hope that going for a walk with Putin may do more wonders than charming Merkel. If Macron is taking a Gaullist turn, he still has his sights firmly set on Europe.

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