The World Owes One to France, Big Time

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/27/opinion/macron-trump.html

Version 0 of 1.

WASHINGTON — I lived for a long time in a France where nothing was possible. Not that the country did not change; it did, but France was more interested in resisting change in order to cling to what it had. Words like “flexibility” were suspect. They denoted the Anglo-Saxon model, as it was quaintly called, of a competitive labor market where people could be hired and fired. Moroseness became the badge of honor of a beautiful, seductive can’t-do nation.

This France meandered into the 21st century, a still significant but increasingly marginal power, when, out of nowhere, along comes Mr. Flexibility. He is young, he’s restless, he’s had it with the tired hypocrisy behind Gallic paralysis; and, almost a year ago, he sweeps to victory in a presidential election. His name, of course, is Emmanuel Macron. Watching him the other day, speaking on the record and without notes to a small group of journalists at the conclusion of a three-day love-in with President Trump, the thought that came to mind was: The world owes one to France, big time.

Sure, there’s an ego, and, sure, the flexibility — the endless bobbing and weaving in search of solutions — can lead Macron into on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand labyrinths. But the vanity is tied to purposefulness and the adaptability is not evasion of risk.

Macron’s strange friendship with Trump is itself risky: the American president is unpopular in Europe, and Macron flirts with being seen as Trump’s poodle. Snuggling up to Donald can be a career-threatening move, as many people have discovered. Macron does not shy away from this danger because, in a world whose American-led order has frayed, keeping Trump from his worst America-first instincts is worth the fight (and coddling). Macron is playing the long game with an irascible Trump, whose views are not his.

“Every personal relationship is unique,” Macron said. “I have my own style and your president has his own style, I would say. So there’s a marriage of these two styles and if we are very different, um, and I think we have something in common, which is that we are definitely, probably, mavericks of our own systems. Look, I think for my people, for French people, they are very proud of that. I mean French people are very happy when France is considered, respected.”

This is a very Macronesque utterance — the “definitely” and “probably” juxtaposed — but, come on, here’s a French president speaking, with refreshing frankness, in English (how the unthinkable becomes commonplace!) about the bet he’s placed on Trump and the pleasure France gets from finding itself once more center-stage.

Britain has gone AWOL in its Brexit funk. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has passed the zenith of her power. Macron is what Europe’s got to sway Trump, reinvent the trans-Atlantic bond, and keep him from trashing the American-led multilateral order that has held humankind from world war since 1945.

Did Macron fail in Washington? His main goal was to stop Trump tearing up the Iran nuclear deal, which has reversed Tehran’s push for bomb-making capacity, on May 12. Macron said his view was that Trump “will get rid of this deal on his own for domestic reasons.” He added, “There is a big risk he will leave.”

He had protested to the president: “You will replicate past mistakes, because what is your perspective, you want to make war against Iran?” But, Macron suggested, to no avail. Trump, he said, “is very predictable.” He calls the deal “a catastrophe.” He’ll shred it. Trump’s North Korean experience has inclined him to think his erratic braggadocio works. The Mullahs will fold if he confronts them.

This looks like failure, or at least Macron setting the bar so low that nobody is surprised if Trump goes for another dangerous provocation. But the French president has planted various seeds. Trump is now “much more aware than a few months ago about the facts, that we have a common responsibility in order to preserve stability.”

Macron is pushing the idea — a long shot given Iran’s anger at America’s fickleness — that the nuclear accord can be integrated into a broader agreement covering Iran’s ballistic missiles, its regional (particularly Syrian) expansionism, and the curtailment of its nuclear ambitions in perpetuity. In other words he’s trying to make the deal what it was not, while pointing out that people should uphold accords they sign. That’s not easy.

It is, however, worthwhile. The expanded Iran deal is a useful mirage. At the very least, Macron pushes Trump out of his comfort zone; he’s some kind of counterweight to this unidentified flying object that ended up in the Oval Office.

What, Macron asked, was his alternative partner? China? Russia? Forget it. “I think our personal relationship, I think this is a reminder of two great histories, our links; and the historic role of the U.S. could help to enshrine the U.S. on this side — as the leader of this strong multilateralism and not the creator of a new political order of opposite powers.”

The world, teetering, but not over the cliff, owes one to Macron’s can-do France, big time.