Addressing the United Nations General Assembly on September 23rd last year, Emmanuel Macron was one of the most warmly-applauded speakers of the day. The French president had stood at the rostrum to warn of the “major risk at this moment”: that of “seeing the law of the fittest prevail”. He took aim at “a few” individuals and their “selfishness”, which led them to “think that they alone can decide the course of the world”.
In the corridors of the New York-based international institution, diplomats and journalists welcomed a speech that adopted an assertive stance against the expansionist urges of Russia and the United States. That day, France fulfilled its role as a permanent member of the Security Council, committed to multilateralism and the institutions that govern it. But what are grand speeches worth if they shatter against the wall of reality at the slightest opportunity?
On January 3rd, Emmanuel Macron missed the chance to turn the principles set out just four months earlier into deeds. After seeing the United States bomb Venezuela and capture its president, France's head of state called on the Venezuelan people, in a post published on the social network X, to “rejoice” at the American operation and denounced the end of the “dictatorship” of Nicolás Maduro.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
Seeing the French president so eagerly endorse an illegal operation, an obvious violation of a state’s sovereignty, was all the more striking given that just hours earlier France's diplomatic service had adopted a far more cautious line. “The [United States] military operation runs counter to the principle of non-use of force on which international law is founded,” stated foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot on the same social network.
While denouncing the regime of Nicolás Maduro, the head of French diplomacy also wrote: “France points out that no lasting political solution can be imposed from outside and that sovereign peoples alone decide their future. The proliferation of violations of this principle by nations invested with the primary responsibility of permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council will have grave consequences for world security, from which no one will be spared”
Submitting to the law of the strongest
Jean-Noël Barrot’s reaction was timid. It did not name the American aggressor. It envisaged no form of response from the international community. And it stressed the responsibility of Nicolás Maduro before describing the nature of the operation carried out by Washington. But it had the merit of keeping France on the path that has guided its diplomacy for eight decades: that of international law and the United Nations Charter.
The divergence between the two positions adopted by the French authorities makes Emmanuel Macron’s failure all the more culpable. Competition, if not tension, between the diplomatic unit at the Élysée presidential palace and France's Ministry of Foreign Affairs is as old as the French institutions themselves. Priorities sometimes differ, as do sensibilities and words. But seeing the executive adopt two so poorly-aligned approaches outside of a period when the presidency and the government are of different political hues – and even then it's rarely this bad! - in the face of such a historic event is unprecedented.
Because it came from the president, and because it came later, Emmanuel Macron’s reaction inevitably overrides the rest. It even has the look of a reprimand, especially when the Élysée let it be known that the president's statement followed phone calls with the US president, Donald Trump, and his far-right Argentine counterpart Javier Milei.
So this is France’s line: a posture as culpable as it is blind, where what is left unsaid weighs a thousand times more than what is said. What Emmanuel Macron applauds is nothing other than another nail in the coffin of the international law he claimed to cherish only yesterday. It is submission to the law of the strongest, in an age of empires and imperialism. It is a permanent member of the Security Council bowing to a new global reality: one in which a handful of powers make their own rules in what they deem to be their zone of influence.
With fifteen months left of his presidentialism term, Emmanuel Macron is taking on an immense responsibility. He is condemning France to losing its diplomatic voice and is stripping the nation of the last role it could still play on the world stage: that of a long-standing, mediating power, a staunch defender of the institutions to whose creation it helped give birth. Successive generations of French diplomats have clung tirelessly to this legacy, with a touch of sometimes outdated romanticism.
That legacy no longer has the force it once did, weakened by successive retreats performed by French governments. It has nonetheless endured, kept alive at intervals by initiatives that have been widely praised. What will remain of it now that double standards have been made official policy at the highest level of the state? What voice can France still carry in Ukraine, in Gaza, in Taiwan, and everywhere else where the sovereignty of peoples, the inviolability of borders and international law, are being undermined by the imperialism of various countries?
Trump’s kiss of death
In the short term, France's surrender is easy to explain. Calculating by instinct, Emmanuel Macron knows how unfavourable the balance of power is with the United States. During the economic negotiations of the past two years, in particular, he has keenly felt just how dependent he is on a Donald Trump more determined than ever to bend the old European powers to his will. The head of state knows the anger that even the slightest criticism of the operation chosen by his counterpart in the White House would provoke.
So he has kept quiet. Never mind about regime changes imposed from outside, the disasters of the past and the lessons of history. Never mind about the crudely mercantile and predatory motives behind the American operation.
Emmanuel Macron is here pursuing a strategy already sketched out in the summer of 2025, when Israel decided - with Washington’s backing - to strike Tehran outside any legal framework. In Emmanuel Macron’s mind, keeping good relations with the United States is worth a few concessions when it comes to French diplomatic tradition, international law and a sense of French diplomatic dignity.
All of that has now been swept aside. The cruellest symbol of French vassalage came from Donald Trump himself: on his social network, the president of the United States shared Emmanuel Macron’s post without a word. Like a trophy, as if to say: “Look, France supports us.”
In New York, while giving his discourse on the “eternal question of freedom in the face of imperialism”, Emmanuel Macron had found an apt phrase. “The authority of law is our best chance against the law of the strongest; applying principles is the only remedy to double standards,” he declared.
It's a pity that he has already forgotten that.
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- The original French version of this op-ed article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter