France’s presidential election on Sunday could spell chaos for the foreign policy of the United States and its allies, as devotees of “overturning the establishment” have a bevy of disruptive, non-status quo choices courting their votes, and its unclear even now which unconventional choice will win.
“Basically, France is in a very messy situation,” Vincent Sabathier, a businessman and former French diplomat, told the Washington Examiner.
Voters head to the polls on Sunday to choose from a crowded field of candidates in the first of what is likely to be a two-round process; if no candidate gathers at least 50 percent of the vote, the top two candidates will advance to a runoff, similar to some U.S. legislative races.
But the peculiarities of the French political system and a scandal-plagued election season has empowered a wide range of candidates, from the far-right to the Communist far left. And for all the differences on display, the run-off could easily feature two candidates who agree on little except their opposition to conventional western national security priorities, and support for policies that Russian President Vladimir Putin would like to see implemented.
“It’s close to a dead heat among the four leading candidates,” Jeffrey Rathke, deputy director of the Europe program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Washington Examiner. “The runoff election will have big consequences for U.S. interests, for U.S. cooperation with France, and for U.S. foreign policy, especially policy towards Europe on defense and security, but also on economic issues.”
Just how big depends on the outcome of Sunday’s voting. The latest polling shows four candidates with a realistic chance at making the run-off.
Former Prime Minister Francois Fillon has waffled on the wisdom of punishing Russia for annexing Crimea and invading eastern Ukraine. His status as the only major contender running on an established political party ticket might have secured him a spot among the finalists, but allegations that he embezzled public funds for his wife and children have hindered his candidacy.
Emmanuel Macron supplanted Fillon as the mainstream favorite, and he even received a supportive phone call from former President Barack Obama on Thursday. But even Macron felt compelled to found his own political party before running.
The two other contenders are very “interested in challenging the mainstream and overturning the establishment,” said Charles Kupchan, a professor at Georgetown University and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. They are the National Front’s Marine Le Pen, who has drawn comparisons to President Trump, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whose brand of far left politics is “very close to Trotskyism in the Communist approach of things,” according to Sabathier.
Both have taken aim at the European Union and criticized NATO throughout their campaigns, while signaling a desire to make major concessions to Russia.
The prospect of a Le Pen victory inspires the most alarm among western foreign policy experts. “It would represent a historical inflection point,” said Charles Kupchan, a professor at Georgetown University and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “It’s a safe bet that the project of European integration would collapse . . . a project that has led to an integrated Europe at peace; a project that has meant that you can drive across the border of France and Germany and instead of seeing dead soldiers, you see sheep.”
Mélenchon has less overt hostility to the EU, but he outstrips Le Pen in his stated desire to withdraw France from the NATO alliance. Le Pen, a comparative moderate on this issue, would pull French officers only from the integrated command of NATO. Neither leader would want to end a military alliance with the United States or the United Kingdom, the experts agreed, but their policies would still have significant ripple effects.
“The damage to NATO of France withdrawing, even if it’s just withdrawing from the military command, it would be a significant symbol and I think it would weaken the overall assurance within NATO that the alliance is militarily capable, is willing to defend all allies,” Rathke said.
Any movement away from NATO by Le Pen or Mélenchon would likely coincide with a decision to abandon the economic sanctions imposed on Russia following the annexation of Crimea — a top priority for Putin’s government. And if France were to walk away, it would make the sanctions regime so ineffective that most other western countries would probably give up, allowing Putin to get away with the first military land grab in Europe since World War II.
“When one brick comes out, the sanctions will fall,” Kupchan predicted.
Fillon is hardly more reassuring on that front. Russian state-run media has floated the idea that “Fillon would make the best option for Russia.” He told German Chancellor Angela Merkel that “the economic sanctions are totally ineffective.” The fact that the Merkel meeting took place, however, causes international foreign policy thinkers to view him more positively than Le Pen or Mélenchon.
“The difference between both Fillon and Mélenchon and Le Pen is they don’t care very much about maintaining the tight working relationship between Germany and France, and Fillon does,” Rathke said.
Past experience suggests that Le Pen and Macron will make the run-off, but then Le Pen will lose to Macron as her political enemies coalesce around the more moderate alternative. Distrust of the EU, combined with yet another terrorist attack in Paris that plays into her tough-on-Muslims rhetoric, might allow her to draw unlikely support from usual moderates and leftists, however.
“The extreme left, the communists, they are the workers who lost their jobs, and some of them are likely to vote for Le Pen,” Sabathier said. “Because at the end, they meet — it’s like a circle.”
That scenario assumes, perhaps too optimistically, that Sunday’s vote totals won’t produce the startling outcome: a runoff between Le Pen and Mélenchon. “I wouldn’t want to make that choice, let’s put it that way,” Kupchan said.
