Macron is a going through a crisis.

On the one hand he is a creature of the technocratic neo-liberal order which is committed to unilateralism and “post-nation-statism”. On the other hand he is a creature of France – a nation with strong (though easily forgotten) nationalist traditions stretching back to King Louis XI, the founder of the first modern nation state, Cardinal Mazarin who organized the Peace of Westphalia that established modern thoughts on nation states, Jean-Baptiste Colbert who’s economic theories gave meaning to economic sovereignty in the modern era, to Sadi Carnot who’s application of Colbertist economics and resistance to British manipulation got him killed in 1895, to Charles de Gaulle, who established the 5th Republic and devoted his life to resisting the Deep State on the basis of peaceful relations with Russia and China.

Then there is the populist rage of the French which dates back to the colorful days of the French revolution which established a unique tradition of mass revolts against the established order when it becomes abusive of the people… this provides a “bottom up” factor which any politician desirous of keeping their heads attached to their necks must keep in mind.

For these two reasons (top down traditions of statecraft and bottom up traditions of freeing corrupt leaders’ of their heads from their bodies), Macron has found himself joining President Trump’s call to re-introduce Russia back into the G8, and has made major maneuvers to re-orient France towards a pro-China policy becoming the guest of honor at China’s International Expo where $15 billion of deals were signed on energy, aerospace and agricultural initiatives.

Macron has even enraged Europe’s technocratic elite by questioning the foundations of the European Union’s viability while at the same time aptly criticizing NATO of ‘brain death’. The crisis caused by the unravelling of the globalist vision of a post-nation state world order has resulted in an emergency conference in London to figure out how NATO can be saved from its total irrelevance. Faced with the anti-NATO sentiment expressed by Macron and Trump in recent months, and the emergence of the new multipolar order which is attracting ever more nation states (including NATO members) into its sphere of influence, Jens Stoltenberg made the desperate assertion that China must be made a target of the military alliance saying that China “is coming closer to us, investing heavily in infrastructure. We see them in Africa, we see them in the Arctic, we see them in cyber space and China now has the second-largest defense budget in the world.”

The NATO Disorder and the Economic Meltdown

Today, after decades of neoliberal practices have undermined the once powerful agro-industrial capacities of France under the “post-industrial” Euro, it has become evident that austerity and increased taxes are the only solutions which the technocrats running the European Central Bank will permit. Since Euro membership forbids any nation to create a debt which is greater than 3% of GDP, the means to generate sufficient state credit to build large scale projects needed for an economic recovery do not exist.

In other words, from the standpoint of the Trans-Atlantic rules of the game, the situation is hopeless.

For all of his problems, Macron isn’t blind to this fact and can see that Russia and China have successfully transformed the international order with the advent of the Belt and Road Initiative. He can see that this system uniquely offers western leaders (who wish to keep their heads in the face of the oncoming economic collapse), the only viable means to provide jobs, security and long term economic growth to their people since it is rooted in long term, open system thinking which is not connected to Hobbesian closed system geopolitics. De Gaulle would be happy to see this shift.

The Revival of de Gaulle

Charles de Gaulle was among a network of leaders who fought valiantly against the cancerous deep state that had formerly supported fascism in WWII. While Franklin Roosevelt had to do battle with such pro-fascist organizations such as the JP Morgan-funded Liberty League and Council on Foreign Relations from 1933-1945, President De Gaulle had to contend with the pro-Nazi Petain government whose agents immediately took over controls of France in the wake of WWII, and didn’t go away upon the General’s ascension to the Presidency during the near collapse of the 5th republic in 1959.

De Gaulle strategically fought tooth and nail against the pro-NATO fascists led by General Challe who attempted two coup attempts against De Gaulle in 1960 and 1961 and later worked with MI6 and the CIA using private contractors like Permindex to arrange over 30 assassination attempts from 1961-1969.

De Gaulle was not only successful at taking France out of the NATO cage in 1966, but he had organized to ensure Algeria’s independence against the will of the entire deep state of France who often worked with Dulles’ State Department to preserve France’s colonial possessions. De Gaulle also recognized the importance of breaking the bipolar rules of the Cold War by reaching out to Russia calling for a renewed Europe “from the Atlantic to the Urals” and also an alliance with China with the intent of resolving the fires lit by western arsonists in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam whose independence he was committed to guaranteeing. De Gaulle wrote of his plan in his Memoires:

“My aim, then, was to disengage France, not from the Atlantic Alliance, which I intended to maintain by way of ultimate precaution, but from the integration carried out by NATO under American command; to establish relations with each of the states of the East bloc, first and foremost Russia, with the object of bringing about a détente, followed by understanding and cooperation; to do likewise, when the time was ripe, with China”

After arranging a treaty with China’s Prime Minister Zhou Enlai, India’s Prime Minster Nehru and the leadership of Cambodia in 1963 to create a China led block to resolve the crisis in Southeast Asia with France’s help, De Gaulle became the first western head of state to recognize China and establish diplomatic relations with the Mainland on January 31, 1964. He saw that China’s growth would become a driving force of world development and saw a friendship based on scientific and technological progress to be a source of France’s renewal. Attacking the false dichotomy of “Free liberal capitalism” vs “totalitarian communism”, De Gaulle expressed the Colbertist traditions of “dirigisme” which have historically driven France’s progress since the 17th century when he said “We are not going to commit ourselves to the empire of liberal capitalism, and nobody can believe that we are ever going to submit to the crushing totalitarianism of communism.”

The De Gaulle-Kennedy Alliance

De Gaulle had great hopes to find like-minded anti-colonialist leaders and collaborators who were fighting against the deep state in other countries. In America he was inspired by the fresh leadership of the young John F. Kennedy whom he first met in Paris in May 1961. Of Kennedy he wrote “The new President was determined to devote himself to the cause of freedom, justice, and progress. It is true that, persuaded that it was the duty of the United States and himself to redress wrongs, he would be drawn into ill-advised interventions. But the experience of the statesman would no doubt have gradually restrained the impulsiveness of the idealist. John Kennedy had the ability, and had it not been for the crime which killed him, might have had the time to leave his mark on our age.”

De Gaulle’s advice to Kennedy was instrumental in the young President’s decision to stay out of a land war in Vietnam and led to Kennedy’s National Security Action Memorandum 263 to begin a phase out of American military from Vietnam on October 2, 1963. Kenney and De Gaulle both shared the view (alongside Italian industrialist Enrico Mattei with whom both collaborated) that Africa, Asia and South America needed advanced scientific and technological progress, energy sovereignty and sanitation in order to be fully liberated by the colonial structures of Europe. All three fought openly for this vision and all three fell in the line of battle (one to a plane crash in 1961, another to several shooters in Dallas in 1963 and the last to a staged “colour revolution” in 1969.) [1]

If De Gaulle, Kennedy and Mattei were alive today, it is guaranteed they would recognize in the Belt and Road Initiative and broader Eurasian alliance, the only viable pathway to a future worth living in and the only means to save the souls of their own nations. The question is: Will Macron continue on this Gaullist path and will other nations grow the balls to follow suite, or will those imperial fascists who overthrew De Gaulle’s vision in 1969 succeed once more?