Realism and Macron's Moment
French Diplomacy and Reality Doesn't Care About Your Feelings
Living in Reality
I received great feedback on my response piece yesterday. Go take a look.
Those in the Republican party need to adopt a geopolitical realism instead of ideology. Even if the ideological framework is in some ways better than contemporary Neoconservative war-against-all, it’s still a product of a pure, all-encompassing ideology. The real world doesn’t work like that, where these bend and finally break to the constraints of reality.
The American Conservative movement is not as reasonable or logical as it sells itself, especially on foreign policy, as we’ve seen during the Bush ’43 years. There are a handful of reasons for this. For starters, the United States is so wealthy, powerful, and has many talented people that it can usually act on very dumb impulses and pull off wins. Secondly, Conservative media behaves insularly, detached from the rest of the voter base or policymakers in the United States. This behavior is best seen domestically with its endless agitation toward mostly libertarian ends. The third is its complete absence from American and international institutions. These institutions are vital, especially in foreign policy, and the ideological basis of Conservatism prohibits its “stickiness,” let alone the personal biases of the persons currently inhabiting these institutions.
The notion of Civilizational Equals is a concept that only can be dreamt up by professional critics.
We need to have a conversation about foreign influences in domestic American politics in this country. Not every one of these will involve literal agents of foreign powers or social media accounts run by foreign countries, but often these appear more benign. Currently, it’s most apparent on the center-left with news channels producing videos about Ukrainian women joining irregular formations to fight Russian invaders. Other countries continue to launder bleeding-heart rhetoric in American and other English-speaking media. These may even be true (Ukraine is actually facing a full-scale invasion). Others are more peculiar, like the French Presidential election.
Macron’s Moment and French Politics
President of France, Emmanual Macron, met with the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin yesterday to discuss the recent Russo-Ukrainian Crisis. There they discussed the “Finlandization” of Ukraine. We will not know the full details of the conversation for a while, but we can speculate what that would mean for Ukraine.
Finland is a neutral country that is friendly to all its neighbors, including its sometimes-enemy combatant Russia (in permutations as the Soviet Union and Tsarist Russia). Finland is a member of the European Union. Ukraine, in this scenario, would occupy a similar space where it won’t enter NATO, perhaps not joining the EU as well. These could satisfy Russia’s publicly stated goals of guarantees Ukraine won’t be admitted to NATO and NATO missile systems won’t be stationed in Ukraine. Furthermore, it would reduce the risk to the gas and grain supply in Europe.
Will Ukraine go for this solution? Is Russia negotiating in good faith?
We shall see as Emmanual Macron meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. No matter what, Western Powers and Russia won’t tolerate a middle manning Ukraine in the long term. There’s also that pesky issue of substantial corruption that needs to be solved.
Emmanual Macron is up for reelection this year. This move by Macron is what I’m dubbing the “Macron Moment,” where he gets to flex his ability and the power of France in a very public way. This moment comes on the heels of diplomatic battles with Turkey and his efforts to reassert French regional power in the Mediterranean.
This “Macron Moment” can be decisive in this Presidential battle. The election is set for April this year, and Macron is polling strongly above his competition. However, a colossal blunder could cripple his efforts to remain in power. Despite what many Americans believe, scandal does matter in French politics – it depends on what kind of scandal.
Also don’t forget that Macron is better looking than most candidates, which does matter in politics. Voters are political animals too.
The election and media discussion raises another question of why author and presidential candidate Eric Zemmour have so much English-language media. I think part of it his stances are popular among Americans, and he appears to be a candidate who can popularize these stances among the French. The other aspect that we cannot be discount is the use of the global bully pulpit, especially in English, where many more can see what he stands for and follow him during and after the campaign. Right now, he is not pulling above the center-right Gaullist parties.