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Author : V. Chernega
Advisor at the Council of Europe, leading research associate, Institute of Scientific Information on Social
Sciences, Russian Academy of Sciences, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary, Doctor of
Science (Law)
THE FRENCH MEDIA wrote about the 2017 presiden-
tial campaign in France as unprecedented: for the first time
in the history of the Fifth Republic, it was neck-and-neck
race of four candidates in the first round of election.
Foreign policy was one of the battlefields: never had the
internal problems been intertwined in the eyes of the
French with the foreign policy course. This explains why
two out of four main candidates (Le Pen and Mélenchon)
and eight out of 11 candidates confirmed by the Constitutional Council promised radical changes.
The fate of the EU or at least its evolution depends on France: Brexit made inner restructuring
of the EU and revision of its foreign strategy inevitable. Brexit also means that the EU, very
much as before, is based on the Paris-Berlin axis but its durability has been constantly tested for
many years.
The Euro-Atlantic concept that Macron personifies is geared to the interests of the neoliberal
circles. It is based on the idea that the Paris-Berlin axis should be strengthened, that European
integration should be deepened and cemented up to and including the creation of a federal state,
the United States of Europe of sorts, an advanced variant of objectively inevitable globalization.
On the whole, the foreign policy course of Francois Hollande and, to a certain extent, Nicholas
Sarkozy will remain unaltered. The unprecedented unpopularity of Hollande and an absence of
a detailed foreign policy doctrine of the latter make some adjustments of the stated foreign
policy course inevitable although hardly important. For example, Macron, very much like Hol-
lande before him, insists on al-Assad's resignation - but only after the ISIS is liquidated.
In November 2015, after the monstrous terrorist acts in Paris that had claimed 130 lives, Hol-
lande, under pressure of public opinion, made a feeble attempt to set up a wide international
coalition with Russia to fight ISIS but Washington's opposition forced him to retreat. Later,
French diplomacy accused Russia of war crimes in Aleppo.
Today, foreign policy of France has become much more ideologized, its geopolitical aims are
overlaid with the "varnish of values." French experts have pointed out that "political activists"
rather than experts in countries and problems now figure prominently in the French diplomatic
corps.
The outcome of the struggle between two foreign policy concepts depends on the evolution of
the European Union and its ability to change and to be revived as a successful project. This is a
different story; the end of it is nowhere in sight, at least not in 2017.
France's Geopolitical Choice