Macron’s three chapters
In La France dans le bouleversement du monde, I outline three distinct periods that break up Macron’s five-year term.
The leader of international liberalism (2017-2019)
Given Donald Trump, and given the weakening of the German Chancellor and the British and Italian leaders, Emmanuel Macron is skillfully establishing himself as the legitimist opposition leader to the White House, while still being the one to whisper in the ears of the American president. This show of funambulism is seen in moments such as "make the Planet Great again" or of the battle to save the JCPOA, which did not nonetheless impede Trump from walking down the Champs Elysées or Macron from visiting the White House.
In the meantime, Macron is firmly managing Brexit negotiations and making European defense or "strategic autonomy" markers of his plea for "European sovereignty."
The turning point of summer 2019
The Yellow Vests crisis forced the president to step back on the global stage, but the Biarritz G7 summit at the end of August 2019 opened a door for him to "re-emerge" and boost his standing. He launched the dialogue with Putin in Brégançon, without prior consultation with EU partners, failed to facilitate a Trump-Rouhani meeting, and a few weeks later (in November), in an interview with The Economist, made the famous diagnosis of "NATO’s braindeath". From this moment onwards, his stance on Erdogan's Turkey also hardened.
The conjunction of the Russian initiative and the NATO comments shook up the President’s credibility amongst his EU partners and the Americans (especially the Democrats). That was only reinforced by the fact that the failed dialogue with Moscow did not lead Macron to change his attitude.
The moment of truth (Covid-19 and the election of Biden)
In early 2020, the outbreak of the pandemic brought a change of scenery. This confirmed the validity of Emmanuel Macron's intuition on the need for international cooperation ("effective multilateralism"). Above all however, the Covid-19 crisis led Germany to agree to a massive European recovery plan, including a certain mutualization of debts. This was a major step forward for Macron's project for greater European integration.
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