Even the French reports of President Macron’s state visit to China last week were unflattering. The highly choreographed ceremonies with Xi Jinping – redolent of foreign emissaries paying homage to Chinese emperors – produced nothing on Ukraine, nothing on Taiwan. The only tangible outcome was Beijing graciously extending for another four years the loan of two giant pandas to France’s Beauval zoo.
From Putin to Xi, Macron has set out to be cleverer than all. Convinced of his own intelligence and persuasive powers he defies reality in believing that experienced autocrats can be charmed by face-to-face visits, long phone calls and bonhomie. While proclaiming the European Union should cease being naïve, he continues to display unchecked innocence. His lack of prior experience in international diplomacy – or even politics – renders him prey to guileful world leaders. And he is abetted by the quasi-unbridled powers afforded to the President of the Republic in international affairs by the Fifth Republic’s constitution, with no direct control or oversight from parliament. France’s ‘nuclear monarchy’ requires a skilful realpolitiker to promote and safeguard French interests like a de Gaulle or Mitterrand. Everything hangs on the President. Yet even when confronted with clear US and UK intelligence, Macron refused to believe Putin would invade Ukraine in February 2022, then sacked his head of military intelligence when he did.
Macron clings to a diplomatic ideal which was not even realised by a leader of the stature, experience and authority of de Gaulle – that of an international third way. De Gaulle willed France to be an independent actor from the two blocs of the Cold War, despite France’s membership of the Nato alliance and even after 1966. Macron hopes for a Europe independent of today’s contemporary superpowers, the US and China.
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