The diplomat Gérard Araud has spent the last eleven years in the United States, where he still lives (in New York). French representative to the UN from 2009 to 2014, he was then his ambassador until last year. He was therefore at the forefront of seeing Hurricane Trump sweep across America and the world.
Now free to speak, he drew up an inventory as the first term of the Republican ended, hit hard by mobilisations across the country in memory of George Floyd, killed during his arrest by the police in late May.
Did Donald Trump make America weaker?
GÉRARD ARAUD. His election was the victory of populism. The victory of a de-industrialized Midwest America, which felt neglected and despised. The lower middle class and workers have seen their standard of living stagnate for decades. In 2016, it was also the victory of a man without any political experience but with very assertive ideas, which he implemented with a somewhat primitive brutality. And it had results: before the virus, the economy was doing very well, only 3.5% unemployment (rate deemed impossible before), and growth at more than 3%. Everyone agreed that any president other than Trump would be re-elected triumphantly.
Its former defense minister, James Mattis, says that for the first time a president plans to divide American society. It is reality ?
For him, politics is a struggle. Its logic is that of confrontation. He never tried to unite the Americans. His vision of the world is us against the enemies. In this country, two Americas clash, no longer speak to each other, no longer understand each other. The voters of Trump are the alliance of yellow vests and the Manif pour tous. Evangelists furious at societal modernity, and victims of globalization. He further increases the divisions, by character and by calculation: 95% of his voters in 2016 are also ready to vote for him, it is a loyalty never seen. He has a knack for galvanizing his camp.
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And the other America, the other camp?
For blacks, Trump is an enemy. He never showed the slightest interest in the problem of racism, and he even encouraged, through his tweets, racist organizations. He will never say "Black lives matter", but always "All lives matter". It is to deny that there is a dark question. Among the demonstrators that we saw this week, there are also many white people, many young people - the electorate of Sanders - very marked by anti-racism. Added to this is the generation known as "millennials", aged 25 and 40, who are experiencing their second economic crisis. In 2008, they left university, with their student debt, in the midst of the subprime crisis. And there, new shock! This generation has experienced uberization, companies have become less generous on medical coverage. She is quite bitter, veered to the left: for them, the word socialism is positive. In the United States, it's not trivial!
The fracture between these two Americas feeds the riots?
What explains them even more is the coronavirus, its shock both viral and social. 40 million Americans have lost their jobs, that is to say nearly one in four active Americans! Especially in small trades, services, which employ a lot of black workers. Losing a job here means misery, loss of health insurance. The soup kitchens are overwhelmed. The virus, moreover, struck much more blacks: a third of the dead, whereas they represent only 13% of the population. Trump then throws fuel on the fire every morning. He hasn't had a word of appeasement from the start.
Can the country tip over?
No. It is paradoxical, but the United States is one of the most solid countries in the world, more than France in any case. Basically, they believe in the American dream. If they sometimes revolt, it is because reality is not compatible with this dream. It is a hard, violent society, without social shock absorbers, with terrifying inequalities, a real misery. As soon as the engine stops, it's terrible. But they continue to believe in it, to work to succeed ... until they tell themselves that it is necessary to repair. In American history, there have always been moments of awakening.
VIDEO. Historic protests in the United States, two weeks after the death of George Floyd
What can come out of this tumult?
Everything will depend on the presidential election. I don't see Trump taking appeasement. He is incapable of it, he is a pathological narcissist, incapable of compassion. And he makes an electoral calculation, as in 1968, when the party of order had united behind Nixon. For the moment, the polls do not show that. But if we have a summer of troubles, a rotten climate with incidents hidden every two weeks… No one can predict what will happen in November.
How will this election play out?
We already felt a dynamic on the left, a return to the idea that the state must take care of the poor, that inequalities are unacceptable. During the Democratic primaries, the party apparatus had to mobilize behind Joe Biden to avoid a very left turn. And Biden had to give pledges, for example on health insurance or student debt.
The choice of his or her vice-president will count a lot?
Blacks push for a Black. And the left tries to impose Elisabeth Warren on him for the presidential ticket. But she is so strong that Biden would disappear. His problem is whether he wants to attract voters on the left or those in the center, that is to say the independents but also the moderate Republicans who can no longer bear Trump. With Warren, he will not have them.
Is he so unenthusiastic?
Its program is not identifiable. Not easy to win by presenting yourself just as "anti-Trump". Biden is the grandfather that we put at the end of the table, a very old gentleman who is a little muted. He has no identifiable program except this one: I am the anti-Trump. Not easy to be elected on this creed, even if his opponent is so divisive that everything is possible. The campaign spots of the Republicans, which point to his supposed beginning of senility, are as such murderers.
Trump had promised in 2016 to return his "greatness" to America. On the contrary, isn't it weakened four years later?
It all depends on how you define the strength of America. The soft power of the United States, flagship of the world, defenders of liberties, of democracy ... it doesn't care! For him, America's strength is the economy - which was doing very well before the virus - and military power. Furthermore, when he questions paying for Germany, Japan or South Korea, he hits the nail on the head of the average American: it's true, he tells himself, what what we make there? Experts will say it has weakened the United States. His constituents believe that the United States does not have to be the world's policeman. If the military budget has reached heights under his mandate, it is to have a big stick so threatening that he does not have to use it. It is the right of the strongest.
The all-powerful American seems to have been defeated by China, or even by Europe or the emerging powers. Is the American Empire declining?
There is a relative decline, but Trump is not responsible. We are coming out of a completely unusual period, which began in 1990 with the collapse of the USSR, where there was only one power left, the United States. We are coming back to a rebalancing, which the American president wants to manage on the balance of power. On China, it is obvious. It had been said for years that China was cheating, but nobody was doing anything. Trump arrived, and smelled Beijing's weak spot: its 360 billion trade surplus with the United States. He struck with customs duties and the Chinese had to negotiate.
So you lend him a certain talent ...
Trump is inexperienced, manages very badly and is alone after having emptied his administration. There is no longer an American bureaucracy, it's amazing! But he has intuitions that his successors - Biden if that's him - will take over. For example vis-à-vis China: we have left for a Sino-American strategic confrontation for the next thirty years.
And with Europe?
If Trump is re-elected, he will start a trade war with the European Union. He hates the EU, repeats, completely wrongly, that it was created against the United States. The question will be whether Europe will remain united, and whether it is capable of defining a policy vis-à-vis America and China.
Emmanuel Macron tried to build a relationship with Donald Trump. In vain obviously ...
He has no illusions about him. But Macron is a cold realist. He understood that in Washington, Trump decides everything. So he's the only one to talk to, and he's the most powerful man in the world. Whatever he thinks, for the interest of France, he therefore does not want to cut ties, especially if he is re-elected in November. He kept this direct link, so, I would say well played! Does he still have an influence on Trump? Frankly, apart from Fox News, what influences him ...