Should Macron Be Barred From Seeing ‘Napoleon’ and Sent, Instead, to the Modern Equivalent of Elba?

When British prime ministers sense that voters’ confidence in them is sinking they do logical things like shake up their cabinets or simply jump ship. Yet when things like riots over pension reform and long winded phone calls with dictators make the public sour on a French president, the thing for said Gallic leader to do is pretend the discontent doesn’t exist.That’s certainly the modus operandi of Emmanuel Macron. Mr. Macron’s stubbornly blasé response to global events, few of which are pleasant, is increasingly problematic. Behind the Cheshire cat grins which in some Parisian quarters might pass for charm, consequential Continental tensions simmer.That could mean that a leader whose reverence for Napoleon borders on idolatry should be discouraged from seeing the eponymous film directed by Ridley Scott that everyone’s talking about. Doing so might give the current steward of the Fifth Republic ideas that risk turning a Napoleon complex years in the making into something more toxic.Earlier this month Mr. Macron skipped a significant march in the heart of Paris against antisemitism, saying that he would attend it in his “thoughts.” He sat it out, as antisemitic activity in France is off the charts. Two former presidents, Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande, managed to rise to the occasion to participate in what Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin termed a “great civic march.” So, for that matter, did Mr. Macron’s chief rival on the right, Marine Le Pen. Bickering among political parties is almost an art form in France, but the more Mr. Macron tries to stay above the fray the more he risks getting dragged down by it. Recent polling shows that Mr.Macron trails Ms. Le Pen in popularity, but a bigger headache is his lack of a parliamentary majority. That is compounded by the fact that the heads of three parties, including the leftist France Insoumise and Gaullist-right Républicains, refuse to work with the president altogether. According to murmurs in the French press, some of the rank-and-file of the president’s own Macroniste Renaissiance party were stunned that he refused to join the march against antisemitism on November 12. Hence the proliferation of articles like this one in Le Monde declaring that Mr. Macron has four years to go before the elections in 2027, an “end of the reign” atmosphere has already settled into the Palais Élysée. It was almost a year ago that President Biden welcomed Mr. Macron to Washington with American cheese and lobsters. Why should he not? After all, the Franco-American alliance is almost as old as (insert eyeroll emoji here) Mr. Biden himself. Another president, Vladimir Putin of Russia, has pretty much written off Mr. Macron. The French president’s fruitless, now infamous phone conversations with Mr. Putin in the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine may have served Mr. Macron’s ego, but by going it alone he also chipped away at the West’s political capital. Were it employed otherwise, say in a more unified position, Russia might feel more pressure and France’s sagging standing in NATO would only be bolstered. Other world leaders appear to be increasingly fed up with Monsieur Macron. Paris’s ambassador to Niger had to cut and run in September, bringing no particular glory to the Quai d’Orsay. That followed a coup d’état in the African county in July. Shortly afterward French lawmakers accused Mr. Macron of “giving up” on Africa. France still has troops in Niger and needs its uranium to keep those Left Bank cafes twinkling at night. So maybe Mr. Macron knows something we don’t. Yet the French lack of coherence and resolve in Africa on Mr. Macron’s watch is spreading. Add a matter nearer to Russia and embattled Ukraine to the list of French flubs authored in one way or another by Monsieur Macron. On Tuesday the Azerbaijani president, Ilham Aliyev, accused France of stoking “new wars” in the Caucasus by arming Armenia. Baku and Yerevan have, of course, been locked in a decades-long territorial conflict over the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh on Azeri territory, which Baku reclaimed in September after a lightning offensive against Armenian separatists.In written comments to an international conference at Baku last week, Mr. Aliyev said that France “is pursuing a militaristic policy by arming Armenia, encouraging revanchist forces in Armenia, and laying the groundwork for provoking new wars in our region.”He added that Paris was “disrupting stability not only in its former and current colonies, but also in the South Caucasus, where it is supporting separatist trends and separatists.”France is home to a sizable Armenian community and has been routinely criticized by Azerbaijan for harboring what they say is a pro-Armenian bias in the Caucasus countries’ territorial conflict.For his part Armenia’s prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, said last week that Yerevan’s “political will to sign a peace agreement with Azerbaijan in the coming months remains unwavering.”That might happen, despite or because of the fact that the traditional regional power broker, Russia — bogged down in its Ukraine war — has seen its influence wane in the Caucasus.But France has shown it doesn’t really have the mettle to step into Moscow’s empty shoes, and that is another missed opportunity not just for Paris but for Europe as a whole. Last month, Mr. Aliyev, citing French bias, refused to attend negotiations with Mr. Pashinyan in Spain.Add Prime Minister Netanyahu to the list of leaders who don’t love being snapped at by Monsieur Macron, though, the Israeli leader has more pressing issues with which to contend than tangling with Paris. “The French don’t even like themselves,” the director Ridley Scott says in defense of his film that not everyone in France is loving. In any case, in spring of 1814 the dashing emperor of the French was corralled to Elba, for him just a temporary command post. Would it, though, be an exaggeration to think that in terms of the soft power he seems unable to wield, Emmanuel Macron is having an Elba-esque interlude? In that case, his Waterloo may not be far behind.

Should Macron Be Barred From Seeing ‘Napoleon’ and Sent, Instead, to the Modern Equivalent of Elba?

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