Thinking Citizen Blog — Is Macron (The President of France) Nuts? Who Cares? Who Should?
Thinking Citizen Blog — Monday is Foreign Policy Day
Today’s Topic: Is Macron (the President of France) nuts? who cares? who should?
The French stock market tumbled on the news. President Macron has called for a “snap election” on June 30 after getting a “drubbing” in the European Parliamentary election on June 6 through 9.
Will the Far Right of Marie LePen and Jordan Bardella triumph? Or will a united Left? Either way, not good for stocks. So how bad was the “drubbing”? Big picture: does France itself matter? Who knows? Who cares? Who should? What metric would you use? How about the size of its nuclear weapons stockpile?
Are you French? What do you know about French politics that the rest of us probably should but probably don’t?
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
WHAT IS MACRON’S CALCULUS? is he repeating the mistake of David Cameron in the UK? (below Emmanuel Macron)
1. “It was also vintage Macron: bold, risky and timed to catch his opponents off guard. Macron was operating under the assumption that he and his candidates for the National Assembly would benefit from the element of surprise, according to his aides. Leftist parties would have no time to form alliances crucial for making it past the first round of voting on June 30. That, in turn, would compel many of their voters to rally behind Macron’s pro-business party in the July 7 runoff as they had in Macron’s previous showdowns with Le Pen.”
2. “Those assumptions are now unraveling. A range of left-leaning parties have managed to quickly stitch together a coalition that will go toe to toe with Macron’s and Le Pen’s forces. Macron’s own party, meanwhile, is in disarray, with shellshocked lawmakers struggling to rally around a leader who they say acted unilaterally, without consulting them, much as he has since taking office in 2017. Polls taken this week show Le Pen’s forces qualifying for runoffs and finishing with up to 270 seats. Such a haul would be just shy of a majority in the 577-seat National Assembly, but about triple the number of seats that Le Pen won in 2022. National Rally would become the biggest party in the lower chamber, and Le Pen would have a strong argument for picking the next prime minister.”
3. Macron “ risks walking in the footsteps of David Cameron, who as British prime minister called a 2016 referendum on Brexit, expecting the public to vote it down. “David Cameron bet the house and lost. He bet Project Fear would win. He was wrong. Macron is doing the same.” (Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe for the Eurasia Group consulting firm.)
THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS — a little context and the results (below Marie Le Pen, President of the National Rally from 2011–2021, daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the party’s president from 1972–2011)
1. This was the 10th European parliamentary election since 1979 and the first since Brexit.
2. The “National Rally” (a French right wing populist party) won twice the number of seats as Macron’s “Renaissance” party: 31% versus 15%.
3. In the 2022, Presidential election the National Rally (then headed by Marine Le Pen) won 41.5% of the vote. That party is now by a charismatic 28 year old — Jordan Bardella.
MACRON COULD HAVE CHOSEN TO WAIT IT OUT — like Olaf Stolz in Gemany (below Jordan Bardella, the current leader of the National Rally)
1. “Macron wasn’t the only leader given a kicking by his voters in the European Union ballot. Olaf Scholz in Germany suffered a defeat that was almost as bad.”
2. “Like Scholz, Macron had the option to hunker down, ride out his moment of unpopularity, and bet that events might break in his favor.”
3. “A worst-case scenario would have seen him govern until 2027 with an awkward but manageable control over parliament, allowing him to push through key measures by cutting deals with different parties.”
NB: Bardella, 28, is a college drop out (he studied geography at the Sorbonne). Macron by contrast is the product of the super-elite Ecole National d’Administration (ENA). Macron is by contrast a geriatric (age 46). What a contrast with our beloved country with Biden (81), and Trump (78).
FOOTNOTE — from European Hegemony to National Humiliation to Somewhere in the Middle (below: Marechal Petain, the head of the collaborationist Vichy government from 1940–1944).
1. Napoleon is the ultimate symbol of the glory of France. He ruled Europe until he made the disastrous decision to invade Russia.
2. Marechal Petain, a World War One hero, is the symbol of the humiliation of France under the yoke of Nazi Germany during World War II.
3. DeGaulle is the symbol of post-war rejuvenation of France but also, for the far right, of its abandonment of the “pieds noirs” (the French born in Algeria during French rule from 1830–1962).
NB: France still has 12 overseas territories: Guadaloupe, French Guiana. Martinique, La Reunion, Saint Barthelemy, Saint Martin, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Wallis and Fortuna, French Polynesia, New Caledonia and the French Southern and Antartctic Territories. France’s nuclear arsenal includes 290 nuclear warheads down from a peak of 590 in 1992. This is the fourth largest nuclear stockpile in the world using this metric (after Russia, the US, and China).
Macron’s Gamble on Stopping Le Pen Now Risks Ushering Her to Power
Battered by Far Right in E.U. Vote, Macron Calls for New Elections in France
Jordan Bardella, the New Face of France’s Surging Right
French Stocks Tumble to Worst Week in Two Years Over Election Fears
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-06-17/macron-puts-himself-and-france-in-a-tight-spot
QUOTE OF THE MONTH — Have you made your own Bible yet?
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
ATTACHMENTS BELOW:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
Here is a link to the last four years of posts organized by theme: (including the book on foreign policy)
PDF with headlines — Google Drive
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest or most important thing you learned in the last week, month, or year related to foreign policy.
Or, even better, the coolest or most important thing you learned in our life related to foreign policy.
This is your chance to make someone else’s day. And to consolidate in your memory something important you might otherwise forget.
Or to think more deeply than otherwise about something dear to your heart. Continuity is the key to depth of thought. The prospect of imminent publication, like hanging and final exams, concentrates the mind. A useful life long habit.
