Macron: The Anti-Trump?
Macron and Trump can be a winning duo.
Getty Images.
By Joshua Tartakovsky, 26.4.2018
After French forces aided the attack on Syria, French President Immanuel Macron is now the new player on the block. But even he could not win over Trump when it came to Iran (1). According to The Sunday Times (2) the 2015 agreement whose signatories included the US, UK, France, Germany, Russia, China and Iran, “lifted crippling sanctions on Iran in return for its limits to its nuclear programme. This included agreeing to stop enriching uranium, to ship out plutonium and to submit to rigorous international inspections.” Macron does not want to unravel the current agreement and suggested an additional, complementary one, which had the unrealistic expectation of seeking to cut off Iran’s ties with Hezbollah in Lebanon and with the Houthis in Yemen. Trump, of course, wants to trash the current agreement. Not only is he pushed by his two allies, Saudi Arabia and Israel, but he does not want to commit himself to an agreement signed by his predecessor Obama.
While Macron may have failed to win over Trump on Iran, his charm offensive may have been  more successful than many have assumed. It appears that Trump is that desperate for being loved that Macron’s kisses and hugs seem to do it (up to a point). Some Germans have been envious. Der Spiegel wondered aloud (3) why France is now a major world player while Germany is left behind. Merkel has chosen instead to moralize and preach against Trump. “Trump hasn’t forgotten how Merkel lectured him while congratulating him over his election, admonishing him not to lose sight of values like democracy, freedom and human dignity. Now it’s Macron who is his friend and Merkel is left looking like the school teacher,” Der Spiegel wrote.
Syria remains a major issue.
When it comes to Syria, Macron is as war-hungry, or even more so, than Trump. Whereas Trump advocated US forces withdrawal from Syria, Macron said the US must remain there (4).
Macron was a strong supporter of attacking the government of Bashar al Assad if a chemical attack takes place. Then, an attack supposedly did take place in Doumaonly that Assad would have no reason to bother with a chemical attack that will kill about 54 people, especially not while his forces were successfully driving out jihadists. Macron was eager to attack Syria, which he did,  while not waiting patiently for the visit of a scientific mission from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Macron now says that he wants to bring all parties to the negotiation table on Syria, but since no proof has been found yet for a chemical attack, one wonders what kind of future he envisions for Syria. Is it perhaps the same kind of chaos that resulted in Libya following the killing of Muammar Gaddafi in a campaign supported by French President Nicolas Sarkozy? While Sarkozy is now under investigation for having received money from Gaddafi (5), it is a bit too late for Libya. Even now, as placing soldiers from Gulf countries on Syrian land is being discussed, Macron is speaking about how a “new Syria” must be established.
Chaos as a Solution
There seem to be two errors critics of destructive US wars make. The first, is assuming that imperialism will always operate from and through the US. Alas, now we have a French president who wants to occupy Syria even more than the American president, wrapping his words in a romantic vision of a “new Syria.” (If one looks only at the external manifestations of power and the traditional players, one may be rightly confused. But this confusion can subside once one realizes that pro-war financial interests may be trying to call the shots despite not being elected). But the second error is even more significant. Many dissidents of US war policies, such as Stephen Gowans for example, assume that the US would like to remove the current government of Assad but not replace it by jihadists. While he explains that the US wants to create a “Vietnam” for Iran in Syria (a goal shared by Israel and Saudi Arabia as well), Gowans writes that (6) “fearing the consequences of the Syrian government’s collapse, Washington has never intended Islamist insurgents to topple Assad. Instead, it has sought to pressure the Arab nationalists in Damascus to accede to an orderly transition to a government acceptable to Washington, while ensuring the Arab nationalists’ rule was never actually truly threatened.” But Gowans provides no evidence for the “orderly transition” claim, nor to the argument that what is being sought is “a government acceptable to Washington.”
Gowans can be forgiven for making this mistake. Traditionally, in the 1970s and 1980s for example, Washington was looking to have its own ”son of a bitch” in power. But at least since the war in Iraq of 2003 – in which the western coalition went at great length to destroy the exisiting Iraqi state, its institutions and its structures, leading inevitably to collapse and to the rise of ISIS -the policy seems to have been leaving destruction and chaos behind as an intentional, not accidental, design. What could have been an isolated mistake, the looting of the national museum in Baghdad, was indeed followed by the violent acts of war-lords filling the vacuum created by the disposal of Gaddafi in Libya, and the emergence of slave-trade.
A former Pentagon official, Michael Lieden, supposedly said that “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show we mean business” (6). But it goes deeper than just showing who is the boss. Chaos in strategic locations can be profitable and beneficial. It disturbs trade routes between China and Europe, thereby weakening rising economies. It creates conflicts that cannot by their nature have a logical end, thereby necessitating the need for NATO forces to control the territory on their own. Chaos provides the industrial-military complex with a nonending raison d’etre as well as a constant source of revenue. Chaos results in an influx of refugees  resulting in cheaper labor for companies and in the breaking-down of national identities. In the case of Syria, the collapse of state institutions will grant western companies a permanent foot in the region and will be followed by the collapse of other Arab states that had a vestige of sovereignty.
French President Immanuel Macron is the opposite of Trump, but only by superficial apparences. Whereas Trump is abrasive and blunt, Macron is charming and diplomatic. While Trump is tactless, Macron is a master of gestures. (Needless to say, not only is Macron’s wife is far older than him, and Trump’s wife far younger but the two relate in very different ways to the other sex.) But precisely due to their differences, short Macron and bully Trump can be a winning pair. Macron may have failed to manipulate Trump completely, but he knows how to flatter the love-hungry narcissist president who melts in his prescence. Will Macron manage to win over Trump to a “Syria first”?Â
Footnotes:
- http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43903897
- https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/q-a-can-the-iran-deal-be-saved-wdgtr6vkh
- http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/sidelined-a-shrinking-international-role-for-angela-merkel-and-germany-a-1203978.html
- http://www.news.com.au/world/breaking-news/trump-reverses-on-syria-after-macron-talks/news-story/ea1dbc486208ec91211eabd4b94b3d59
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/nicolas-sarkozy-under-formal-investigation-in-gaddafi-cash-case/2018/03/21/6bfed338-2d4f-11e8-8dc9-3b51e028b845_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.ccbb82cb594a
- https://gowans.wordpress.com/2018/04/16/a-prolonged-war-in-syria-is-on-the-us-agenda/
