France : new diplomacy for a global age

France feels insecure about its present place in the world, and is tempted to turn from a foreign policy that embodies the Gaullist values of independence, influence and equilibrium towards an approach that is militarist, moralistic and occidentalist. If France is militarist, it is not so much because it frequently resorts to military intervention(in Libya, Mali, the Central African Republic, Iraq), but because it plays a major role in military interventions, sometimes alone and without a proper strategy. Intervention often means that a feeling of powerlessness is replaced by a temporary sense of victory: media coverage substitutes war stories for the more shocking spectacle of suffering.

The justification for this policy is that it is the moral thing to do. The many possible responses to crisis are reduced to condemnation, sanctions and exclusion. Moralising fills the vacuum left by diplomacy, as it is difficult in a democratic system for diplomacy to make secrecy and justification on the grounds of higher national interests acceptable. We talk only to those who are like us and reject others such as Iran and Russia, even if that risks increasing their isolation and drift towards authoritarianism.

This moral view has its roots in occidentalism, which has overtaken French exceptionalism as a justification. Many people in France feel they belong to an outpost of a declining civilisation and willingly align themselves with the US, as the “leader of the free world”, second-guessing its wishes. This is a return to France’s attitude at the time of the Socialist prime minister Guy Mollet (1956-57), the Suez crisis and the Atlantic alignment; it is a continuation of the Third Republic’s response to the Fashoda incident in 1898, as France and Britain competed in Africa, or the Second Empire’s reaction to the Crimea in the mid-19th century (1). Every age has its way of masking silence with empty rhetoric. Politicians count for little. All these examples are characteristic of moments of existential doubt — the loss of Alsace-Lorraine in 1870; the defeat of 1940; the pain of decolonisation. France is a thin-skinned nation that has always had trouble distinguishing the world’s problems from its own decay.

Today’s collective fear is globalisation. France’s self-doubt comes from a feeling of powerlessness. European integration means rethinking national sovereignty, while globalisation deprives a country shaped by mercantilism of economic control. Democracy inflected through the media favours inertia, interest groups and the sterility of power alternating between the same parties. France’s self-doubt is also caused by change it does not feel it can control. Lifestyles have radically altered in the past 40 years, as family, religious and social structures have succumbed to individualism and consumerism. Because of immigration, France’s population now represents the diversity of the world, and its conflicts. The doubt also stems from the weight of France’s past in a world where history counts for less; it is paralysed by the heritage in which it has such pride, while shameful memories of slavery, colonisation and collaboration make it feel hated.

Multipolar world

This is even more tragic because radical global change exacerbates identity questions and challenges every role. As the world becomes multipolar, new great powers jockey for position, often old nations that have been humiliated and are now determined to give nothing away: China in its disputes in the China Sea; Russia on eastern Ukraine and the former Soviet republics; and India on Kashmir.

Globalisation in the digital age increases interaction and interdependency; it also dissolves nation states, leaving them prey to hysteria based on race, religion, language or group allegiance, including Islamism, European populism and Chinese and Japanese ultra-nationalism. There are more failed states — Libya, Iraq, Syria — and others on the brink of collapse, and they have in common their challenge to an order thought of as western.

Sovereignty, the bedrock of a state’s identity, is being eroded, which weakens international law. The US unilaterally breached international law in 2003, invoking moral obligations that included the responsibility to protect, and effect regime change. Russia did the same in Crimea, citing the self-determination of the peoples of Ukraine. Sovereign states no longer have a monopoly on control; they are being challenged by giant multinationals that play by their own rules, and by NGOs, organised crime and transnational activist organisations such as WikiLeaks and Greenpeace. We are living in an unpredictable world without rules.

France needs to stop focusing on its place in the pecking order — its seat on the UN Security Council and its nuclear deterrent — and strengthen its role as spokesman, interlocutor and crisis mediator. France’s identity should derive not from its defence of the established order, but from its acute consciousness of the need to build a universal community in which every life counts. France’s strength lies in its openness to the world — the Francophone community, its contribution to culture. That means restructuring French foreign policy as a diplomacy that creates networks through local communities, educational institutions and thinktanks: a democratic diplomatic mission that balances state-to-state relations with people-to-people ones.

Reacting in not enough

Addressing crises must be central to the agenda, reacting to them is not enough. Faced with deteriorating situations — from a third Intifada to violence in Ukraine — we need to tackle the often-neglected political causes, such as the situation of the Tuaregs in Mali or Iraq’s Sunnis.

Ditching instinctive reactions requires new methods and principles: respect for international law, despite all its shortcomings; use of force only as a last resort; placement of primary responsibility with regional players. The key is putting politics first, from which will come dialogue (and with people we disapprove of), and adherence to process based on timetables, contact and compromise solutions. But France’s distinctive contribution in a world based on short-term views is to take into account history, geography and culture.

In Iraq and Syria, Islamic State (IS) seems an opportunist phenomenon with totalitarian ambitions, co-opting Sunnis terrified by Shia militias, which has created a territory in the ruins of the Middle East by mobilising Islam for its own ends. So the war on terror is a major blunder: it legitimates IS by giving it global visibility, strengthens its support among Sunnis, and removes responsibility from regional powers that have their own agendas.

What is needed is a long-term strategy to cut off IS, to deprive it of its oil revenues and access to funds from trafficking and the Gulf; to check its expansion, through air support for the Kurds in Iraq and Syria, and the Jordanians and Lebanese; and to contain it politically, depriving it of support. In Iraq, this will need not only a government of national unity, but constitutional reform to give Sunnis more military and government positions. In Syria, it will mean an end to the civil war through a gradual political transition, with firm guarantees from the international community and the option of intervention. A regional conference involving Iran, the Gulf monarchies and Russia is essential.

Negotiations on Iranian nuclear proliferation are at a critical stage. Between 2003 and 2005, France, the UK and Germany secured the only significant agreement. Last November’s interim accord, and its extension, are positive signs. But a final agreement is proving hard to achieve, because of the Republicans gaining control of the US Congress and the confirmation of the US failure in the Middle East, and because of the poor health of the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. Yet the technical grounds already exist for an agreement on the Arak reactor and the number of centrifuges that Iran can use. Suspending negotiations would be very risky, since Iran is vital to the regional equilibrium; it needs a role that recognises its importance as a bridge between two worlds.

Ukraine crisis

Ukraine depends on Russia for gas and Europe for trade, and is so divided it is almost a failed state. What did the Euromaidan demonstrations in Kiev (2) indicate? That the people were sick of the corrupt elite, stagnant economy and ineffective government. They sought recovery through closer ties with Europe, yet did not reject Russia. But that interpretation failed to take account of the mistrust between the West and Russia, which has worsened since the Orange revolution of 2004 and the gas war of 2009, and has been made more toxic by US behaviour and divisions in Europe. The association agreement between Ukraine and the EU, which was badly presented and exacerbated Russian fears of NATO expansion, proved intolerable to Russia, which felt humiliated after the collapse of the USSR and has been looking for symbolic revenge. Ukraine is too important to become a frozen conflict. The only way forward now, as I said to President Putin, is to resume dialogue in a new contact group whose permanent members would be Ukraine, Russia, Germany, France and Poland — and the UK and US. This group could gradually negotiate Ukraine’s constitutional reform, military neutrality, economic recovery and administrative and legal reconstruction.

We also need a vision of how to deal with tomorrow’s flashpoints. For nearly 30 years the Middle East has been going through a crisis of modernisation: secular post-colonial nationalists have clashed with Islamists who reject western modernity and with the young middle classes, who want democratic freedoms, equality of opportunity and openness to the world. Europe and the Middle East define themselves in opposition. Europe’s inconsistency has worsened the situation in North Africa and the Middle East, sometimes siding with the revolutionaries of the Arab Spring, sometimes with authoritarian regimes for fear of the Islamists. The region’s transition can only be long and hard. It will require European economic and political input beyond the promises of the Deauville Partnership with Arab Countries in Transition, which have not been kept (3). For France the stakes are high, as it has a large population of North African origin whose memories are scarred by the Algerian war of independence.

We cannot stand by while the Israel-Palestine conflict poisons the whole region. For 20 years, the international community has tried to maintain the fiction of negotiations around a two-state solution, while this has become ever more remote — in people’s minds and in reality — because of Palestinian terrorism and Israeli settlement building. Following Israel’s bombardment of Gaza in 2014, it is time the international community put itself in a position where it can impose peace by accepting Palestine’s membership of the International Criminal Court, full UN recognition of Palestine, and a peace plan based on the Oslo accords, to which all parties should adhere, with provisions for international intervention and administration.

‘Politics first’

Africa is another key region for France. By 2050 it will have a population of 2 billion — the main location of global population growth — and many will be French speakers. At present France allows other powers to participate in Africa’s economic lift-off, while its own incoherent policy is based on military intervention. We need to say “politics first”, and promote — and genuinely support — national unity governments, constitutional guarantees for minorities and political oppositions, and good governance.

The forthcoming strategic confrontation between the US and China will take place in Asia, even if it is mitigated by their economic interdependence. The commercial clash between the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership), built around the US, and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), organised around China, involves nearly half the world’s population and trade (4). The US and China are watching each other — and the US pearl necklace is mirrored by Xi Jinping’s maritime silk road.

There are also unresolved regional conflicts, because of China’s painful memories of Japan and a nationalism agitated in the China Sea by a regime that wants to preserve unity despite slowing growth. General de Gaulle restored diplomatic relations with China in 1964 and gave France an aura of difference, but how long will that last? France must not follow in the US’s footsteps, but take advantage of a China that is opening to the world and wants to assume greater responsibility (on the Ebola crisis, climate change and cooperation against terrorism).

What France can do

Instead of a living out a fantasy of its past, France needs to be itself — a democracy in a world where democracy cannot be taken for granted; a European country in a Europe unsure of its destiny; a universalist culture in a world that has lost touch with the universal. At France’s core lies the idea of progress, based on two centuries of inventions, enterprise and a rich social model. France’s vision of culture is based on progress, on a vision of bettering lives through the advancement of arts and sciences. Our belief in progress means rejecting the established order and sterile disorder.

France’s self-doubt is no surprise, since human progress has been replaced by technological progress; culture has turned into heritage or commodity; wellbeing is an economic imperative; and liberal democracy is the only horizon. We must get back on the road to progress, nationally as well as internationally.

That means the progress of the European idea. If European progress stops, Europe will fail. Europe is not widening or deepening but falling apart in the euro crisis. It is guarding its borders, fearful of unstable or authoritarian neighbours. Europeans reject regulation from Brussels because it lacks democratic legitimacy. France’s post-war relationship with West Germany needs to change now that Germany is reunified and strengthened by its own economic power and the EU’s eastward enlargement. Germany is now the natural centre of the European economic space, but does not want to assume its political leadership. I have long been a proponent of a Franco-German alliance, harmonising policies, institutions and legislation. It could begin with a single market for employment and training, which other countries could join, forming the kernel of a Europe of integrated circles: the eurozone, the European Union, the pan-European region linking Europe with Russia, Turkey and North Africa, to augment our weight in a multi-polar world.

Europe has the means to get out of its deflationary spiral, dependent on the will of the European Central Bank, wage rises in Germany and a European infrastructure and innovation investment plan. Tax harmonisation — in particular corporation tax — and social harmonisation are vital, including an EU unemployment insurance scheme for young workers. The creation of European universities in each country would enable the gradual integration of the sector. There has to be a Commission fully accountable to the European Parliament, or a European Council president elected by direct universal suffrage, as real guarantees of European democracy.

Europe cannot make a global impact without common foreign and defence policies. We need pragmatic advances such as central arms procurement and a joint command structure to be independent of the US, whose interests are diverging from Europe’s as it pivots towards Asia. NATO is an obstacle: I opposed France rejoining its integrated command (5). But as it is now impossible to rescind that without appearing indecisive, France should set out its conditions: an adjustment of the relative weight of Europe and North America, a fair distribution of jobs and a defensive mission for the organisation.

That still leaves the challenge of inventing a diplomacy for a democratic age. Democracy is powerless and under threat from a new global oligarchy disconnected from the people, and by the rising power of authoritarian regimes that offer nations a refuge from globalisation (Russia, China and even Erdoğan’s Turkey). It is powerless in its external actions (because changes of government, and the weight of public opinion, make our democracies short-termist, volatile and moralising) and domestically, where it is set in its ways and often dominated by money and class. In 1989 the western democracies mistakenly believed they had won the cold war, although the dissidents’ persistence had won it from within, and they believed they were unassailable.

A new, democratic, diplomacy would assume the attractions of our democracies, especially in Europe. The Occupy movement, Arab Spring and others have flourished recently, thanks to the growing middle classes and the economic crisis. But they have only toppled governments and regimes in a few countries bordering Europe. This is no accident, but shows European influence, though it also shows Europe’s inability to support and guide democratic change on its doorstep. Why have we been indignant on behalf of these demands for democracy yet paid no attention to domestic demands for democracy? Our actions must speak louder than our fine words.

Diplomacy in the democratic age cannot be based on secrecy or the logic of interest, so it must use the pressure of public opinion as a strength. People-to-people diplomacy must be enriched, to give impetus to foreign policy, too often a presidential hobby. It needs more strength and unity, through a national security council that involves and coordinates all. We need a pluralist national debate. Our national life is determined in a global context, at the time of the economic recovery and re-entry into the world of a France that is losing its economic élan, competitiveness and confidence.

Let us use all France’s advantages: our high-quality diplomatic service, our lycées abroad, our universities and grandes écoles, our social model. Let us be true to our strengths: France must be a country that moderates, mediates and facilitates; a country of economic innovation, social and human development, a country of culture and openness.