{"id":45048,"date":"2022-03-07T10:00:09","date_gmt":"2022-03-07T09:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/libmod.de\/albrecht-sonntag-erklaerungsnot-aussenpolitik-franzoesischer-wahlkampf-praseidentschaftskandidaten\/"},"modified":"2022-05-06T11:00:54","modified_gmt":"2022-05-06T09:00:54","slug":"sonntag-france-2022-ukraine-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libmod.de\/en\/sonntag-france-2022-ukraine-war\/","title":{"rendered":"France 2022: And then there was war"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Wahlplakate von Le Pen, P\u00e9cresse, Zemmour, Montage: LibMod<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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French election campaigns are usually desper\u00adately navel-gazing. Foreign policy issues are all but absent from the debate. And even in \u2018ordinary\u2019 times, all mainstream evening news programmes consider inter\u00adna\u00adtional news a toxic audience killer. But the war in Ukraine has swept every\u00adthing else in the background and changed the campaign dynamic. It has also put quite a few candi\u00addates under pressure for pro-Russian stances and statements.<\/h2>\n

Inter\u00adna\u00adtional news? Foreign Policy? Yawn!!!<\/h3>\n

For a state that enter\u00adtains 160 embassies, 96 cultural insti\u00adtutes and 800 language centres all over the world, holds a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, belongs to the still rather small circle of nuclear powers and currently deploys over 30,000 soldiers in a variety of crisis zones abroad, geopo\u00adlitical issues are surpris\u00adingly absent when it comes to choosing the next President.<\/p>\n

For all its univer\u00adsalist beliefs, France is most of the time an intro\u00adverted, navel-gazing country. The most-watched French eight o\u2019clock evening news shows on TF1<\/a> (private) and France2<\/a> (public), which account for 50% of the audience both shun inter\u00adna\u00adtional news like vampires flee garlic. You learn more about what\u2019s going on in the world in the fifteen minutes of the German Tagesschau<\/em><\/a> than in half an hour with its French homologues. That\u2019s partic\u00adu\u00adlarly true for all things European: German public broad\u00adcasters have accredited a total of 35 journalists in Brussels, France T\u00e9l\u00e9vision<\/em> proudly boasts two.<\/p>\n

Admit\u00adtedly, there is ARTE, with a resolutely inter\u00adna\u00adtional outlook in their 7:45 evening news, and there is excellent and intel\u00adligent coverage of inter\u00adna\u00adtional news on the public radio stations, and still a good choice of quality daily newspapers and weekly magazines to get your infor\u00admation from. But mainstream television channels, still one of the main sources of infor\u00admation for the population, have system\u00adat\u00adi\u00adcally and brazenly shrunk their respective networks of foreign corre\u00adspon\u00addents over recent decades, as David Garcia recalled in a (depressing) recent inves\u00adti\u00adgation in Le Monde diplo\u00adma\u00adtique<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>If they have kept corre\u00adspon\u00addents in London and Rome, it\u2019s only because of the British monarchy and the Vatican. And Washington, of course: Trump\u2019s antics were a gift, and every four years, American elections are a dramatic delight.<\/p>\n

This is worrying. And it has even dawned on French policy\u00admakers. Due, perhaps, to the pro-European outlook of Emmanuel Macron\u2019s majority, the French parliament has even commis\u00adsioned an \u2018Infor\u00admation report concerning the consid\u00ader\u00adation of European issues in audio-visual media\u2019<\/a> (published in autumn 2021). Needless to say, there will be little effect. It\u2019s impos\u00adsible (and not desirable either) to impose quotas of EU coverage on French broad\u00adcasters. But it\u2019s about time to shake the old belief, based on dubious, and dated evidence, that foreign affairs are toxic for audience ratings.<\/p>\n

In election campaigns, the inward-looking becomes even worse. Ten years ago, after more than two and a half hours in the final TV debate of the presi\u00addential campaign between Fran\u00e7ois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy, the renowned moderator David Pujadas had to start begging for at least one word on foreign policy. They kindly accepted his request, at around half past eleven, discussing Afghanistan and the Sahel for 11 minutes.<\/p>\n

This year, a similar proportion was to be expected, despite de simul\u00adta\u00adneous French EU Council Presi\u00addency. This is actually paradoxical since the President to be elected will spend more than half of his\/\u200bher time on oblig\u00ada\u00adtions and crisis management in Europe and the world, delegating most of the domestic work to the prime minister.<\/p>\n

Putin\u2019s war has changed the perspective. The remaining five campaign weeks will be dominated and profoundly altered by the horrific pictures from Ukraine. Loud and enthu\u00adsi\u00adastic campaign rallies will seem inappro\u00adpriate, aggressive rhetoric will have to be handled with the utmost care by all challengers. Especially those who have been a bit too close to Putin in the past.<\/p>\n

In France V\u2011Days are W\u2011Days<\/h3>\n

In many European countries, people are puzzled by the military parade on the Champs-Elys\u00e9es on 14 July. To many, it feels like a Cold War ritual that befits author\u00adi\u00adtarian regimes but is unsuitable, if not ridiculous, for 21st<\/sup>-century liberal democracy.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a misap\u00adpre\u00adhension I can fully under\u00adstand. Having been socialised in the pacifist, anti-militaristic mood in Western Germany of the post-war decades, I needed twenty years to under\u00adstand how little the 14 July parade has to do with any kind of glori\u00adfi\u00adcation of the army, let alone the war. Rather than a nostalgic celebration of military grandeur, it\u2019s a heartfelt tribute to those who make sure the country can continue to enjoy freedom and self-determination.<\/p>\n

In its overwhelming majority, the French nation has absolutely no romantic longing for times when glory and honour were acquired on battle\u00adfields. Quite the contrary: since 1918, this country has been struck by a deeply-rooted war-weariness. So many of its regions are plastered with war cemeteries of so many different nations. The most remote village has a war memorial with the names of entire cohorts of boys engraved in it. When people gather around them on 11 November or 8 May they don\u2019t see much to celebrate, they simply want to remember the immea\u00adsurable blood toll that was paid. Rather than Victory Day, it\u2019s Weariness Day really.<\/p>\n

World War II was experi\u00adenced as a period of occupation through an overpow\u00adering, aggressive neighbour, during which society split up painfully into oppor\u00adtunistic collab\u00ado\u00adrators, passive followers, and brave resistant fighters. Thanks to the latter, honour was safe, but nothing to be partic\u00adu\u00adlarly proud of. And beyond some die-hard imperi\u00adal\u00adistic circles, there was not much enthu\u00adsiasm for the indepen\u00addence wars in the crumbling colonial empire of the 1950s.<\/p>\n

Clearly, there is little appetite in French society to link war to \u201cour finest hour\u201d. In the collective memory, dominated by the courage and deter\u00admi\u00adnation of Charles de Gaulle (as well as his selective rewriting of history), the term \u201cwar\u201d is a site of memory that rather than commem\u00adorate Napoleonic conquests, invokes a situation of existential, almost hopeless threat, in which resis\u00adtance becomes a moral duty.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s exactly the semantic conno\u00adtation conveyed by Emmanuel Macron when he used the term \u201cwar\u201d six times in his first big corona speech on French television<\/a> on 16 March 2020. To many foreign ears, this sounded definitely over-the-top. But for his citizens, it felt like a sober, down-to-the-point description of the circumstances.<\/p>\n

Incum\u00adbency advantage in times of crisis<\/h3>\n

In the ongoing election campaign, disrupted by the shock of an aggressive invasion on the European continent, French war-weariness will ensure that the President\u2019s vain attempts to dissuade Vladimir Putin with diplo\u00admatic means from attacking Ukraine, will not be perceived as a failure, but as a sincere, morally justified effort. His challengers would be well advised to avoid blaming him for his lack of success.<\/p>\n

What they will criticise is the quasi-automatic advantage that the incumbent draws from the most serious crisis situation of recent years (in a country that has had no shortage of crises recently). It allows Emmanuel Macron to cultivate his profile as an inter\u00adna\u00adtionally recog\u00adnised statesman and simul\u00adta\u00adne\u00adously remain far above the lowlands of campaign rhetoric. With only five weeks to go until the first election round, he simply refuses to enter the ring. Even his official announcement of running for re-election was almost done offhandedly: in written form, in the regional daily newspapers that still cover the territory.<\/p>\n

The electoral system with its two rounds is playing into his hands: it enables him to play the role of the chess champion who watches with interest the semi-finals of his future contenders for the crown. And thanks to the relentless fragmen\u00adtation of the party spectrum, a voter base of roughly 25% is a guarantee for the second round anyway.<\/p>\n

The challengers will also have serious diffi\u00adculties in criti\u00adcising their foreign policy choices for the last five years. True, he has failed in his attempts to establish a constructive personal relationship with the likes of Trump or Putin. And he has not been able to obtain massive tangible successes beyond the admit\u00adtedly massive and tangible EU recovery plan, of whose necessity and scope he managed to convince both the Germans and the Even-More-Frugals. But in hindsight, many of his provocative state\u00adments and ambitious visions are rather vindi\u00adcated by the events.<\/p>\n

Calling NATO \u201cbrain dead\u201d<\/a> may have been a wee bit exaggerated, but it also was a helpful whistle-blower\u2019s alert. His repeated calls for \u201cEuropean sover\u00adeignty\u201d<\/a>, for more respon\u00adsi\u00adbility in building capabil\u00adities of self-defence, turn out to be well-founded. And domes\u00adti\u00adcally, he was the first in a long list of presi\u00addents who addressed the costly (and therefore always postponed) moderni\u00adsation of the French armed forces by sched\u00aduling a progressive increase of the defence budget<\/a>.<\/p>\n

All this leaves little oppor\u00adtunity to attack Macron in the area, European and foreign policy, which not only is bound to overshadow the rest of the campaign but also serves as a painful reminder to everybody that the youngest of the candi\u00addates (44 years old) is the one with the most experience in these matters.<\/p>\n

Pictures of Putin<\/h3>\n

Not to mention the fact that the war in Ukraine puts all four main challengers of Macron in a difficult position with regard to past state\u00adments and attitudes towards Vladimir Putin and Russian great power politics.<\/p>\n

Among them, Val\u00e9rie P\u00e9cresse<\/strong>, from the (formerly moderate) R\u00e9pub\u00adli\u00adcains<\/em><\/a> is the least concerned. She has never been part of the clique of Putinophiles in her party, vocally led by Nicolas Sarkozy. And she managed to defuse the next Fran\u00e7ois Fillon scandal. The former prime minister and presi\u00addential candidate in 2017 occupied two well-remunerated seats on the board of the energy firms Sibur and Zarubezhneft. He withdrew from both now<\/a> \u2013 appar\u00adently following a phone call with Val\u00e9rie P\u00e9cresse \u2013 and declared in a newspaper article he had been deceived about Putin\u2019s real intentions.<\/p>\n

Marine Le Pen<\/strong> will have a much harder time freeing herself from the image of a typical radical right Putin groupie. Perma\u00adnently under financial pressure, she had contracted a 9\u2011million Euro loan at Moscow bank for her 2017 campaign. What\u2019s even more embar\u00adrassing is the ballyhoo she then made about her personal audience with Vladimir (at the time, he still sat down at small round coffee tables<\/a>). It was an oppor\u00adtunity for her to sharply criticise EU sanctions against the Crimea annex\u00adation: \u201cMy viewpoint on Ukraine is perfectly congruent with Russia\u2019s\u201d, she said. Good to know. And the handshake photo taken at the occasion can be found in the glossy election brochure already printed in 1.2 million copies, as Lib\u00e9ration <\/em>hastened to tell us this week<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Genuine hymns of praise for Vladimir Putin can also be found in Eric Zemmour\u2019s<\/strong> writings and talk-show clippings. In particular, his \u201cdream of a French Putin\u201d and repeated expression of admiration for the \u201ctrue patriot\u201d and \u201clast bastion of resis\u00adtance against the tempest of political correctness\u201d, are now coming home to haunt his campaign. Zemmour also had explicitly adopted Putin\u2019s doctrine stripping Ukraine of any right to exist in the first place and has been casti\u00adgating for years the West for its alleged aggression against Russia. The exhumation of all these skeletons, as well as his attempts at rebranding Putin as an \u201cauthor\u00adi\u00adtarian democrat\u201d, may not sink his campaign, but can hardly be helpful.<\/p>\n

The situation is different for the leader of the radical left, Jean-Luc M\u00e9lenchon<\/strong>, who despite his uncon\u00adtested erudition and eloquence has never managed to nuance his funda\u00admental Anti-Ameri\u00adcanism. In his world, Russia, Cuba, or Venezuela can only be victims of US imperi\u00adalism, and his empathy for Putin\u2019s concep\u00adtions of \u201csover\u00adeignty\u201d and \u201csecurity\u201d have been a steady staple of his state\u00adments over the years. It would be unfair to grant him much sympathy for the state of Russian democracy, and when in Moscow he also met with dissi\u00addents. Now that he\u2019s under pressure for taking sides, he half-heartedly condemns the invasion of Ukraine and keeps attacking his favourite object of scorn, the European Union, as well as its sanctions that he considers both illegit\u00adimate and ridiculous. All this is only convincing to his party members and die-hard followers but hardly conducive to finding the voters he needs to reach the second round.<\/p>\n

What all these case studies highlight is the efficiency of pro-Russian lobbying in French politics over the last two decades. Even Emmanuel Macron, who does not lack intel\u00adli\u00adgence and critical lucidity, could not help but be fasci\u00adnated by the Bonapartist career of this leader of great military power. It is almost ironic that he now gathers an informal European Council at the Ch\u00e2teau of Versailles (10\/\u200b11 March), exactly the place where he welcomed in great pomp Vladimir Putin for a state visit at the occasion of an exhibition on Peter the Great<\/a>. Macron is also lucky that his party, La R\u00e9publique en Marche<\/em>, is simply too young to be conta\u00adm\u00adi\u00adnated by any attraction to Putin\u2019s Russia.<\/p>\n

Shocked and paralysed<\/h3>\n

Global politics has invited itself into the French election campaign and does not seem willing to leave any time soon. Fever\u00adishly, Macron\u2019s challengers are seeking the right tone and a good strategy to attack the incumbent, instinc\u00adtively knowing that the last thing the vast majority now wants is petty polemics.<\/p>\n

All the more so as even the mainstream evening news programmes seem up to the challenge. Not only do they cover the war inten\u00adsively, but they provide actually good expla\u00adna\u00adtions of complex issues, mobil\u00adising competent reporters and truly brilliant experts. It\u2019s almost paradoxical: created for providing sustainable peace, the EU may actually be better under\u00adstood and appre\u00adciated by many for its current activ\u00adities in the war.<\/p>\n

Not so navel-gazing, after all, France in the 2022 election campaign. There seems to be a widespread under\u00adstanding that this is not just a Russian-Ukrainian conflict, but a proxy war for democracy and self-deter\u00admi\u00adnation the outcome of which will have a lasting impact on Western democ\u00adracies, too. In  his televised speech of 2 March, Macron summarised very clearly what\u2019s at stake: \u201cDemocracy is no longer considered an incon\u00adtestable regime, it is put into question, right before our eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

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