France's Macron positioning himself as leader of the world
Covid-19 puts French military in 'unprecedented' peacetime role 02:19
David A. Andelman, Executive Director of The RedLines Project, is a contributor to CNN where his columns won the Deadline Club Award for Best Opinion Writing. Author of "A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today," and the forthcoming "A Red Line in the Sand: Diplomacy, Strategy and a History of Wars That Almost Happened," he was formerly a foreign correspondent for The New York Times and CBS News in Europe and Asia. Follow him on Twitter @DavidAndelman. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.
(CNN)France's
42-year-old president, Emmanuel Macron, who has faced many challenges
governing his country, is now positioning himself to take over the
mantle of global leadership long reserved to the older leaders of China,
Russia or especially the United States. And right now, he has no real
challengers.
David Andelman
The
vehicle of this leadership campaign is Macron's proposal for a
worldwide ceasefire -- a truce everywhere from Afghanistan to Syria,
Iraq and Yemen.
And
he says he's a good part of the way there. There are five permanent
members of the UN Security Council (France, China, Russia, Britain and
the US) and four of the five are on board, according to Macron.
Macron also says he hopes to secure the agreement of the final member, Russia's Vladimir Putin, within hours. UN Secretary General António Guterres had already called for an "immediate, global ceasefire," observing that "the fury of the virus illustrates the folly of war," though with no real buy-in until Macron weighed in.
Clearly,
such an action would not eradicate some of the greatest challenges to
world peace. Even with the backing of the entire Security Council,
there's no assurance Afghanistan's Taliban or their supporters in
Pakistan will turn down the heat there. Russia and Turkey are maintaining their presence in Syria,
whose dictator Bashar al-Assad will be ill-inclined to give any
breathing room to the insurgents who continue their increasingly
beleaguered efforts to unseat him.
Iranian-backed militias will continue their operations in Iraq, despite Iran's desperate condition in the face of the pandemic. Chinese warships will continue to patrol the South China Sea to cement its hold over the long-disputed islands in this strategic waterway.
Still,
the truce initiative could be a start. And Macron indicated his
intention to raise it with the G20 during a worldwide conference call of
the group's finance ministers Wednesday evening. The concept was
broached in his interview on Radio France International when Macron also
debuted the idea of a moratorium on all debt payments by African nations
as a means of helping to control what promises to be potentially the
most devastating continent-wide target of the coronavirus because of the lack of resources.
But
where would such Macron initiatives leave the United States? Clearly
with a more diminished presence on the world stage than ever at a time
when only the greatest, most intense universal action can prevent global
catastrophe.
A global backlash has already greeted Trump's ill-timed and even more ill-conceived pledge to turn off all subsidies to the World Health Organization at the very height of the most profound challenge to global health in a century.
Macron
has already taken a tough stand against some of the world's leading
powers and their actions during the pandemic. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian summoned
to the Quai d'Orsay, the Chinese ambassador to France, who received a
tongue-lashing for criticizing Western response to the coronavirus, even
accusing French nursing home workers of "abandoning their posts overnight ... and leaving their residents to die of hunger and disease."
China's foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian quickly backed down,
repudiating his ambassador's remarks. Not long afterward, Macron added
Xi Jinping's name to his list of backers of his global truce. At the
same time, a number of European countries have complained about China selling them faulty medical gear and test kits. None of this calculated to cement Xi as a leader to whom the world can turn in its time of need.
All
this comes as China, particularly, has sought to raise its profile and
assume a larger role on the world stage, filling a vacuum it perceives
with the increasingly erratic performance of Donald Trump and his
increasingly go-it-alone positions.
Still,
Macron's initiative could not have come at a more opportune moment for
Europe. Of more than 2 million cases of coronavirus in the world, half have been registered in Europe.
Moreover,
a number of European countries have begun their first tentative moves
toward a lifting the quarantine regulations. Macron himself has
suggested May 11 for France. France could be a leader in this
initiative.
A number of European
countries also began closing borders -- long open for decades under the
frontier-free European Union -- to their neighbors, hoping to contain
the pandemic's spread. Macron has been in the forefront of those anxious
for the EU to maintain its integrity, its open borders and democratic
systems in the wake of Britain's exit from the continent.
At
the same time, he has taken the lead in pressing, successfully, for the
entire 26-nation European system to close its external frontiers, possibly until September. Right now, they are formally closed until May 15.
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At
the same time, far right governments in Hungary and Poland have seized
the chance to augment their already considerable, anti-democratic
powers. Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was given all but unlimited
power by his nation's parliament to rule by decree. And Poland seems set
to become, as Piotr Buras of the European Council on Foreign Relations
suggests, Europe's second coronavirus autocracy.
Indeed,
it would appear that the world could use a new leader in this time of
crisis -- one who is prepared to put global interests above personal or
political aggrandizement. And until the United States is prepared to
offer such an individual, there may be no better to fill that void than
France's young, fresh voice: Emmanuel Macron.
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