Macron’s pyrrhic victory over Trump
The Washington Post, November 12, 2018
It was another embarrassing European visit for President Trump, who traveled to Paris on Friday for ceremonies marking the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. It might have been an easy opportunity to mend fences and honor the sacrifices of Washington’s traditional allies. Instead, Trump only underscored the widening gulf between the United States and its European partners.
“Rain was a regular feature on the Western Front,” quipped Tobias Ellwood, a conservative British parliamentarian and the country’s minister for veterans,
in a tweet. “Thankfully it did not prevent our brave heroes from doing their job.”
“Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism,”
Macron said. “By putting our own interests first, with no regard for others, we erase the very thing that a nation holds dearest, and the thing that keeps it alive: its moral values.”
In
an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, Macron insisted that his beliefs are not those of the jet-setting “globalist” caricature evoked by Trump and his far-right counterparts in Europe, but are instead those of a pragmatic internationalist aware of the shared challenges facing world leaders.
“I would say I’m a patriot. I do believe in the fact that our people are very important and having French people is different from German people. ... But I’m not a nationalist,” Macron said. “I’m a strong believer in cooperation between the different peoples, and I’m a strong believer of the fact that this cooperation is good for everybody, where the nationalists are sometimes much more based on a unilateral approach and the law of the strongest, which is not my case. That’s probably our difference.”
In that belief, Macron is joined by German Chancellor Angela Merkel — arguably the most important establishment figure in Europe but a diminished leader now
clearly in the twilight of her career. “It’s easy to destroy institutions, but it’s incredibly difficult to build them,” Merkel said on Sunday, once more defending the post-World War II international order that has guaranteed much of Europe decades of peace and prosperity.
On Saturday, Macron and Merkel went to Compiègne, where the armistice that ended World War I was signed — and where
Hitler compelled France’s surrender in 1940. At a site of national victory and defeat for both countries, they rallied for unity.
But such an emotional scene may not quite reflect the spirit of the present. Like Macron, Merkel has warned of Europe’s need to strengthen itself collectively in the face of an unreliable America. Yet both leaders face stiff political tests at home.
“Europeans are too deeply divided among themselves — and on the fundamentals,” said Dominique Moïsi, a foreign policy analyst at the Institut Montaigne in Paris and former Macron campaign adviser,
to my colleague James McAuley. “He’s weakened by the fact that he’s orphaned by Merkel and he’s weakened inside by the spectacular fall of his popularity.”
These divides — and his own domestic travails — hobble Macron’s attempts at global leadership, analysts suggest. “There is a clear north-south division over the euro crisis and an east-west division over migration and Russia,” said
Mark Leonard of the European Council on Foreign Relations to The Post. “You also have highly polarized societies in most member states, and that does mean that having a single leader of Europe is kind of utopian at the moment.”
As part of the pleasantries of the visit, Macron declared his “great solidarity” with Trump. But the true bond they share may simply be that of presidents fighting uphill battles.
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