At the dawn of this end of the five-year term, the diagnosis sheds a harsh light on the balance sheet of “Macron l’Oriental”. In their latest book, The French Decommissioning (Éditions Michel Lafon, 2022) (1), Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot deliver the fruit of two years of investigation into the French diplomat. From Algeria to Iran via the Arabian Peninsula, the two great reporters and specialists in the Middle East, respectively at France Inter and Figarofed their remarks with a hundred interviews with leaders, advisers and high-ranking intelligence figures.
Intelligence without method
To draw up their inventory of fixtures on this very personal diplomacy of the French president, the work passes by the comparison, sometimes hard, with its predecessors. But this “great downgrading” which is in question over the course of some 320 pages began at the end of the mandate of Jacques Chirac, who, after the thunderous “no” French to the American invasion in Iraq, a slow rapprochement with Washington and with Israel, the authors recall. It is then accentuated under Nicolas Sarkozy, and continues under François Hollande – who boasted, we learn moreover, of never having read a single diplomatic telegram during his mandate.
→ REREAD. Lebanon: Emmanuel Macron promises 100 million euros in additional aid
Emmanuel Macron certainly wanted to stop it (in Algeria, Lebanon, Iraq and the Gulf), but his voluntarism and his eagerness did not pay off, the book shows. The president, omnipresent and extremely needy, is also clumsy. He has the intelligence, but not the method, sum up the authors, who return, for example, in detail to his great eagerness to try to resolve the crisis in Lebanon… without taking into consideration the unavoidable Iranian parameter.
The Middle East, this “universe of complexity”
If the book revolves a lot around the personality and the approach of Macron in what he himself calls this “universe of complexity” Middle Eastern, it also recounts the tensions between the Élysée and the Quai d’Orsay “devitalized”dont “the North Africa and Middle East Directorate, or ANMO for insiders, was one of the largest departments of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs”. The findingwider is bitter: France is no more than a “medium power”losing influence, including with its closest allies such as the United Arab Emirates, despite the more or less assumed primacy of the economy over diplomacy. “France’s main vector of influence in the region remains its military tool and its arms sales”notes the book.
As in his previous books, Our dear emirs (2016) or Qatar Papers (2019), the duo slips in some scoops,such as the misadventures of a French ambassador in Tehran, one of the elements “explaining” the arrest of Frenchman Benjamin Brière in Iran or even the eight-figure hospital arrears of Algerian nationals with the AP-HP.
Macron compared to… Louis XIV
Two months before the presidential deadline,the book of course raises the question of the consequences of a possible re-election of Emmanuel Macron on these issues, with this concern expressed by several of the interviewees: “If he is re-elected, will he be able to listen more? »
“At the end of our investigation, conclude the authors, one of our interlocutors dared to compare Emmanuel Macron with… Louis XIV! At the beginning, the work force of the Sun King was a precious asset, but it ended up serving him at the end of his reign when, monopolized by the management of current files, this absolute monarch no longer had these great strategic visions. who made France great. »