They could weaken NATO and the West.
EVER SINCE France returned to NATO’s integrated military command structure in 2009, reversing Charles de Gaulle’s decision to quit it in 1966, it has been a broadly solid partner for America and the Atlantic alliance. Today the French contribute troops and fighter jets to alliance operations and air policing along the eastern flank with Russia; they also patrol the Black Sea with manned aircraft. As president, Emmanuel Macron has turned into one of the European Union’s most outspoken advocates for bringing Ukraine into NATO. He promises a coalition of military instructors to train newly mobilised recruits inside Ukraine, and to send the country French Mirage 2000-5 fighter jets.
Within weeks, however, France’s conduct of foreign policy may enter an uncertain, and even turbulent, period that could call such commitments into question. This is because of Mr Macron’s unexpected decision to call a snap parliamentary election, to be held on June 30th and July 7th An Ifop poll on June 24th confirmed the strong lead for Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN), on 36%, followed by the left-wing alliance, New Popular Front (NFP), on 29.5%. Mr Macron’s pro-European centrist grouping is stuck in third place, with 20%.
The French president could end up a diminished figure in diplomatic affairs, overshadowed by a Eurosceptic or NATO-sceptic government, comprising parties with historical ties to Russia. On June 23rd a group of 170 (anonymous) French diplomats warned in Le Monde of the particular dangers of a hard-right victory: “Our adversaries will read the victory of the extreme right as a weakening of France and an invitation: to interference in our national politics, to aggression against Europe, including militarily.”
On the hard right, the election campaign has in fact moderated some of its formerly radical positions. Ms Le Pen has long ditched her most Eurosceptic proposals, such as pulling France out of the euro, or advocating Frexit. She now advocates a “different” Europe, which would be an “alliance of nations” in which countries control more of their affairs (and France gets a rebate). The RN leader has denounced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and her party has paid back a €9m campaign-finance loan it took from a Russian bank with links to the Kremlin.
In recent days Jordan Bardella, her 28-year-old protégé and nominee for the job of prime minister, has rowed back on other former diplomatic pledges, too. While Russia is at war with Ukraine, he says, his party would no longer advocate France’s exit from NATO’s integrated military command. Speaking in Paris on June 24th Mr Bardella announced that he would respect the military budget for 2024-30. That will please the French armed forces.
The party’s underlying instincts, however, could still mark a distinct break. One reason is the party’s many Russia links. In a television documentary in 2022 Jean-Luc Schaffhauser, a former party Euro-MP, who says he negotiated the party’s bank loan, said: “The interest for the Russians was to find Western allies.” At times, party figures sound as if they are reading from a Moscow script. A group of them took part in the “monitoring” of Russian elections. At a parliamentary hearing in 2023 Ms Le Pen defended the referendum held in Crimea after Russia annexed the Ukrainian territory in 2014, and argued that “Russian paranoia” about NATO on its borders should be “taken into account”.
Indeed the RN is unapologetic about its hostility to Ukrainian membership of either NATO or the EU, both of which Mr Macron supports. “We support Ukraine, that’s very clear,” says Laurent Jacobelli, an RN leader. But, he says, the party does not want to be drawn into an Article Five (mutual-defence) commitment: “We don’t want world war three.” Mr Bardella has also ruled out sending any troops to Ukraine, something Mr Macron has refused to exclude, or continuing to supply it with long-range missiles that can reach Russian soil.
The left-wing alliance is far more robust in its support for Ukraine, despite the historic ties to Russia of some of its member parties; indeed, this was a condition for the Socialists to sign up. Their electoral pact explicitly backs weapons deliveries to Ukraine, the seizing of Russian oligarchs’ assets, and making Vladimir Putin responsible before international courts. It ducks altogether, however, the question of France’s tie to NATO, a source of internal division. In 2022, when running for president, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the former Trotskyist whose party dominates the alliance, called for France to leave NATO, which he described as “a useless organisation”. The electoral programme of the left-wing alliance devotes a page to Gaza, but makes no mention of NATO, America or even China.
Indeed, the NFP’s most vocal cause is its support for Palestinians, hugely popular among the young and in particular in France’s multi-cultural banlieues. The alliance promises that France would recognise “immediately” the Palestinian state, and sanction Binyamin Netanyahu’s Israel. Mr Mélenchon’s party’s reluctance to call the attacks by Hamas on October 7th “terrorism” has caused much friction among the alliance’s constituent parties. Raphaël Glucksmann, a Socialist member, who was clear about the use of the label “terrorist”, has been branded “the Zionist candidate” by a member of Mr Mélenchon’s party.
Up to a point, under France’s Fifth Republic constitution, such divergent positions might not matter. It is the president who is commander-in-chief of the armed forces, presides over national-defence councils, and can deploy French forces abroad. The government is responsible for domestic affairs. Moreover, it may well be that neither the right nor the left secures a parliamentary majority in second-round voting. In which case legislative deadlock and political instability may preclude much foreign-policymaking by the government.
Yet, as François Heisbourg, of the Foundation for Strategic Research, points out, the division of labour is more blurred than many observers assume. A defence minister and finance minister who wanted to block financing for, say, further weapons deliveries to Ukraine, could make things difficult for Mr Macron. Were the RN to enter government, it could prove almost impossible for the president to push publicly for Ukraine’s membership of either NATO or the EU.
“The president’s constitutional powers over foreign policy are more limited than people assume,” says Mr Heisbourg. If French voters do return a majority government dominated by either extreme, the country could be in for a complicated tussle between the two executives. At best, this will cause confusion, for allies as well as the French. At worst, it will seriously enfeeble France’s diplomatic standing abroad and weaken NATO itself. ■
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