At times during President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to the United States last week, he may have seemed like President Trump’s French blind follower. But by the end, it was clear that he has his own character.
The French newspaper Le Monde captured the ambiguity with an editorial Thursday headlined: “A double-edged visit.” Macron’s touchy-feely encounter with Trump last Monday and Tuesday was “gesture,” the paper argued, but the baseline was in Macron’s speech to a joint meeting of Congress on Wednesday that was “on the edge of brutality” in its critique of Trump’s policies. Le Figaro put it more gently in a headline Thursday: “Macron seduces Congress.”
Macron emerges from his Washington trip as a clever, somewhat devious French counterpoint to Trump — a flatterer, manipulator and charmer. Most of all, Macron is an opportunist who sees a way, at a moment when Britain is down and Germany mute, to put France at the center of European diplomacy for the first time in many decades.
I asked Macron at a small gathering of journalists Wednesday afternoon whether he truly found the mercurial Trump a trustworthy partner. “Yes, I trust him very much,” he answered, “because I want him to move” to be a protector of multilateralism and Western values. In other words, Macron trusts Trump to the extent he thinks he can maneuver him.
Even some of Macron’s French diplomatic colleagues are skeptical that this new “entente cordiale” will end happily. Most people come away from Trump’s embrace tarnished by the encounter. During this visit, Macron’s stature was both diminished (by Trump’s domineering over-familiarity) and enhanced (by Macron’s undeniably charismatic public performances).
Macron already seems to have lost his battle to persuade Trump to remain within the Iran nuclear deal. His “bet” is that Trump will announce May 12 that he’s withdrawing from the pact. Macron is focusing on what comes next. He told us he accomplished two main things with Trump: getting his support for continued US “involvement” in stabilizing Syria; and encouraging his “openness to a new comprehensive deal” on Iran — a “bigger deal,” in Trump’s words, that would replace the “terrible” deal President Barack Obama signed and would last longer, cover ballistic-missile testing and address Iran’s regional behavior.
Macron is coaxing Trump toward a very big idea. He’s talking about a grand bargain that would draw in all the major players — Russia, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United States — to create a regional security architecture that would start with an agreement to revive Syria. This isn’t a new idea; diplomats have been exploring versions of it ever since the Syrian civil war began in 2011. And it has a kind of inevitability; when the Syrian war ends, it will surely be through some such formula.
But who can take on such a daunting project? Here’s where the weird synergy of Trump and Macron is interesting. A Middle East grand bargain is exactly the kind of “big deal” that Trump dreams of doing. Yet to get anywhere, he needs a smart, smooth-talking but unthreatening helper. Enter Macron.
The French president told us he sees his role as an “honest broker,” facilitating US diplomacy with Russia, Turkey and Iran. On his flight to Washington, he telephoned Russian President Vladimir Putin. After he left, he planned to call Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.
Listening to Macron spin his strategy, I was reminded of another smart, manipulative man whose diplomacy rescued a European status-quo power in decline: Count Metternich of Austria, who crafted the Congress of Vienna of 1814-1815, which stabilized Europe for nearly a century.
Henry Kissinger unforgettably described Metternich in “A World Restored,” his 1957 book based on his Harvard University doctoral dissertation: “His genius was instrumental, not creative; he excelled at manipulation, not construction.” Metternich was a man who “preferred the subtle maneuver to the frontal attack” and sometimes “confused policy with intrigue.” Does that sound like anyone who visited Washington this week?
Macron told us that he sees himself as a man like Trump, because both are “mavericks” within their systems. He might have added that both men are also users, and that they may have found a way to use each other.
The Washington Post
