France is angry, and one man in particular has been thundering with rage. Last Saturday evening, French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian was given the mission of appearing on the evening news programme of public TV channel France 2 to play the ‘bad cop’ over Australia’s decision to abandon what had been dubbed “the contract of the century”.
Le Drian, 74, a former Socialist Party hierarch and who is a past master in the art of sealing weapons deals with dictatorships, likened US President Joe Biden to his predecessor Donald Trump – but “without the tweets”. The nuance was hardly diplomatic, just like the words he employed: “lies”, “duplicity”, and a “major breach of trust”.
On Monday, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York, the French minister repeated his view that, “What counts now is firstly the question of a breach of trust between partners”, and that, “Today, all that requires clarifications”.
The pill was a bitter one to swallow for Le Drian, who in June in Paris greeted the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, a fluent French speaker and Francophile, with the words, “Welcome to ‘your place’!”.
Transatlantic crisis
There is well and truly a crisis between Paris and its American and Australian allies – highlighted by the recall of France’s ambassadors to Washington and Canberra – following the announcement of the “AUKUS” alliance established between the Australia, the UK and the US, destined to counter China’s strength in the Indo-Pacific region but which, in the first instance, has led to the abandoning of Australia’s purchase of French submarines.
As for Britain, it took a question from a journalist for Le Drian to even mention the country. When he did, his anger switched to contempt. “We know their permanent opportunism, so there’ no need to recall our ambassador in order that she explains that to us […] and Great Britain, in this case, is a bit like the fifth wheel on the carriage”.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
The French have objective reasons for not accepting a humiliating decision taken by countries that are supposed to be its allies. “In a true alliance, one talks together,” declared Le Drian.
In an editorial article published on Monday, Australian daily The Age also argued that Australia should have treated France better. “Mr Macron is facing a tough election and there might be an element of nationalist posturing in this [French] response,” the editorial read. “Even so it’s clear the decision has created bad blood. If left unremedied by our Defence Minister and diplomatic corps, it carries the potential to cause long-term damage to our interests both in the South Pacific, where the French remain influential, and in the EU, where they are pivotal – something we do not need when trying to negotiate a post-Brexit free-trade deal.”
In the US, The Washington Post also attributed next year’s French presidential elections as a reason for the theatrical moves by Paris.
But now, just seven months before those key elections in France, this crisis, prompted by the geopolitical game playing out in the Asia-Pacific region – now called the Indo-Pacific region, a conception that has taken hold these past years to the backdrop of China’s rising power – should serve to open a debate about French diplomacy in the 21st century.
A shifting of 'geopolitical tectonic plates'
Because, beyond the emotion of the moment, we are seeing a profound geopolitical change. As the British weekly The Economist observed in its analysis of the AUKUS pact: “Just occasionally, you can see the tectonic plates of geopolitics shifting in front of your eyes. Suez in 1956, Nixon going to China in 1972 and the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 are among the examples in living memory. The unveiling last week of a trilateral defence pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States (introducing the awkward acronym of AUKUS) is providing another of those rare occasions.”
The crisis surrounding the transatlantic pact might just contain a silver lining, providing the occasion to at last redefine France’s foreign policy, as positioned in between today’s two superpowers, the US and China. Quite obviously, that can only happen alongside the reinforcement of a common European policy because, as we’ve seen very well with the submarine controversy, France is a middleweight power – albeit one that has a permanent seat on the UN Security Council – which, on its own, does not have the means to meet its ambitions: namely, to be a counterbalance.
It could of course be said that the French elite never fail to call for European strategic autonomy. As France’s ambassador to Washington, Philippe Étienne, put it in an interview on Monday with RTL radio: “We are a power [that provides a] balance, we are an important power, we have the means, the means of France. We also have a European Union which has, more and more, the means to ensure its contribution to local security. We want to continue on this path.”
But to achieve this shift, some painful choices must be made. As well as raising once more the question of NATO’s role in this new world, France must put an end to the myth of its grandeur, one which still conditions the actions of our elites; it stands as an obstacle to a true commitment to Europe by a France which likes to cultivate its own “exceptionalism”.
General Charles de Gaulle imposed this myth of grandeur onto a nation that was traumatised by the loss of its empire. He trumpeted this French exceptionalism, denouncing the “fierce competition of ideologies” between the US and the Soviet Union and their “passionate rivalry”. This idea of grandeur – of influence without power – went hand in hand with an economic policy centred on investment, often public, in prestigious projects aimed at maintaining France in the international “race for progress” which was raging during the post-war boom period, what in France is called the three “glorious” decades – Les Trente Glorieuses.
A humiliated France
But, half a century on, this edifice is now cracking, because the bipolar world of the Cold War has lived its time. If the general’s successors tried to distinguish themselves by employing, according to events, different diplomatic approaches (sovereignism, realism, internationalism and so on), Charles de Gaulle’s stance of the grandeur and singularity of France remains very much in play.
That was illustrated by French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Lebanon last summer, amid the chaos and anger that followed the August 2020 mega-blast in the port of Beirut, when he presented himself as the country’s saviour. One year later, the results speak for themselves.
Indeed, an end must also come to the all-powerful presidential role in foreign affairs, one that is rooted in the constitution of France’s Fifth republic. This private preserve of the ‘republican monarch’, which serves to smother debate and blocks any collective construction of what might be the role of France in a world dominated by the superpowers that are the US and China, must be done away with. As must also the flamboyant Gaullism which perpetuates posturing and pre-conditioned reflexes that are totally out of step with the evolutions of this new world and its challenges, which include the global rise in inequalities, the climate crisis, and the power of the digital platforms, the so-called GAFA.
In the current transatlantic crisis, the French media relay the story of a humiliated France, but few ask questions about the responsibilities of those involved. This was underlined by French socialist senator Hélène Conway-Mouret, secretary of the upper house’s commission for foreign affairs, defence and the armed forces. “All the lessons of this affair must be understood, not in order to blame the ones and the others, but to understand our flaws,” she said.
“Either the information was passed on to the Élysée [presidential office] which decided to do nothing, or they were not passed on and we must review our economic and political monitoring and avoid repeating the same mistakes concerning ongoing or future contracts,” Conway-Mouret told Mediapart.
But a commission of enquiry into the affair by the Senate or the National Assembly, the lower house, will not suffice in itself. One might dream that the subject will be debated during the presidential campaign.
Everything is up for discussion and re-imagining, in particular on the Left of the political spectrum. As the domination of western powers that began almost two centuries ago comes to a close, the Gaullist heritage must reach an end, and that cannot come about without clashes and controversies. The task proves to be a complicated one for France, such is the difficulty in abandoning its messianic mission.
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The original French version of this op-ed article can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse