Speaking in Poland on Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron showed his great mastery of hypocrisy.
Just two months after he blamed America for what he described as NATO’s “brain death,” Macron lamented Western powers which oppose sucking up to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Macron said he’s “convinced that we can build an architecture of stability, of peace, of trust in Europe only if we talk with Russia. Not yield things to Russia, not forget what it did or what it does, but demand a de-escalation.” Macron continued, “I think it a major error to distance ourselves from a part of Europe that we don’t feel comfortable about.”
Note the duplicitous language here: Macron says the West should “not yield things to Russia,” but also that it’s a “major error to distance ourselves from” Russia.
Coming from a national leader, this is nonsense. What does it mean to say we shouldn’t yield to Russia, but also need to move closer to Russia?
The problem with Macron’s statement, as he well knows, is that the current political distance between Russia and the West is not a consequence of chance. Instead, it is a consequence of Putin’s decisions. A consequence of Putin’s sustained attacks on the democratic international order, his spreading of high-toxicity nerve agents against innocent people, and his assisting in the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
Again, Macron knows this. So why the platitudes? Macron wants to placate French industrial interests that are desperate to increase trade with Russia. Macron knows that he cannot make the case for their interests directly, as doing so would require him to relinquish European Union sanctions imposed after Russia’s seizure of Crimea. And that would prove the fallacious foundation of Macron’s self-presentation as the guarantor of the liberal international order in the era of Trump.
So instead, Macron is hiding his policy behind a false pretense of practicality, of reasonableness. Macron’s strategy here is just the same as that which he applies to Communist China: plainly disingenuous claims to seek mutual interest and peace while sacrificing Western values in homage to Beijing.
Regardless, the truth is abundantly clear. Macron might claim he is the great defender of liberal internationalism. But in the end, he’s just another politician.
