FIGAROVOX. - What conclusions can we draw from Joe Biden's debut as President of the United States? Has he succeeded in establishing himself as the leader of a coalition of democracies, as he aspired to be?
Renaud GIRARD. -
By putting sometimes more forms, Joe Biden only prolongs the foreign policy of his predecessor, which is
America First.
Biden said he was making foreign policy for the American middle class. This is a sentence that Donald Trump could very well have said. In its foreign policy, America has decided to focus on its historic match with China. That is why, apart from unwavering support for Israel, she no longer shows much interest in the complicated Middle East. She shows even less interest in Africa, which she perceives, through a sort of intellectual fog, as a desperate continent made up of violence, dictatorships, civil wars, informal economies. In contrast, the game with China is a game that the American middle classes fully understand. With all his intelligence, all his strength, all his energy, all his cunning, theAmerica will do everything to prevent China from taking the first place of the world podium in the geopolitical, technological and financial spheres. China considers the Americans to be intruders in Asia. She tries to drive them away. But Americans are not ready to accept the prospect of such a crowding out. No matter what, they want to maintain a leadership position in Asia-Pacific.
Joe Biden is building a coalition of democracies against China in Asia-Pacific.
Renaud Girard
As for your second question, I do not believe that the populations of democratic countries see Joe Biden as their great protector. They pondered the lesson of his hasty departure from Afghanistan. They realized his fundamental indifference to the plight of Afghan women and that of pro-Western students in Kabul. The French, meanwhile, feel more despised than protected by Biden, especially after the Australian submarine affair - but this is marginal. What is certain, however, is that Joe Biden is building a coalition of democracies
against
China in Asia-Pacific. Its most important members are the United States, Japan, South Korea, India and Australia.
Is its foreign policy radically different from its predecessor?
It is not because it prolongs it.
It is said that Trump was gentler on Russia than he was.
But it's wrong.
Never have so many new US sanctions been created against Russia as under the Trump administration.
Read also Biden-Trump: two presidents, the same foreign policy
The year 2021 was marked by the capture of Kabul by the Taliban, does this event symbolize the failure of the West? In what ?
To fully understand the recent history of Afghanistan, it is important to understand that there were two Western wars there, not just one. The first, very short, began on October 7, 2001 against the Taliban regime after it refused to hand bin Laden to the Americans. This war ended in November 2001, with the fall of Kabul to the forces of the Northern Alliance, allies of America and financed by it. American special forces then cleared all the nests of Arab Islamist internationalist fighters. The Taliban leaders have taken refuge in Pakistan. But America has neglected to demand from Islamabad a complete purge of the Taliban movement.
[The Americans] committed the sin of hubris, the geopolitical excessiveness already analyzed by the Greeks 2,400 years ago.
Renaud Girard
Drunk with such a swift and resounding victory in major Afghan cities, the Americans then called an international conference on Afghanistan in Bonn.
There, on December 5, 2001, they committed the sin of hubris, the geopolitical excess already analyzed by the Greeks 2400 years ago.
They announced that they would “rebuild, democratize, develop” Afghanistan.
It was as beautiful as Jules Ferry's "civilizing mission of colonization".
Except that Westerners no longer have the moral, diplomatic, political and human resources to accomplish such a mission.
The reconstruction of Afghanistan has been entrusted to NATO, which has established PRTs (Provincial Reconstruction Teams) everywhere. But after four years, the Afghan peasants had had enough of the corruption of the government in Kabul set up by Washington and they could not bear to see armed foreigners patrolling their homes. Riding on this movement of discontent, the Taliban gradually returned. Westerners have not found the recipe to counter this movement; then they lost patience; then they left abruptly, abandoning their unfinished site. The Afghan adventure marked the death of the neoconservative movement, which puts democracy above peace, to the point of believing that it can be imposed by force.
You denounced the hypocrisy of Europeans in the migration crisis at the Polish border. Why does the EU fail to tell the world how many migrants it is prepared to welcome? How to get out of the permanent blackmail of other States on the migration issue?
The most crucial decision was that of Angela Merkel, on August 31, 2015. That day, under the influence of emotion, after the drowning of a boy on a Turkish coast, the Chancellor decided to open wide the borders of Germany to migrants, mostly from the Middle East. It is a historic decision, which the German leader took alone, without consulting her Parliament or her European partners. It has given an extremely strong signal to hundreds of millions of destitute people across Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa: if you manage to reach European territory, you will be found accommodation, we will educate and we will will take care of your family free of charge, and you will receive an allowance representing ten times the amount of the salary you would receive at home while working.This is why so many young men are embarking on the adventure, despite its obvious dangers, and the large sums that must be raised to pay the Mafia networks of smugglers.
The EU does not say how many migrants it would be ready to welcome per year because its members do not agree on this question.
The countries of the Visegrad group (Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia) are the most reluctant to welcome non-European people into their homes.
In 2015, they said publicly that they only wanted to take Christians from among the refugees from the Middle East crises.
These are countries which consider that the assimilation of Muslim immigrants in Western Europe has not been successful.
Attached to their Christian traditions, they denounce what they call the creeping Islamization of Europe and they are not prepared to participate in it.
People have never been consulted on whether or not they want to live in a multicultural society.
Renaud Girard
In other EU countries, the migration issue has never had the right to a real democratic debate.
People have never been consulted on whether or not they want to live in a multicultural society.
Do we want a right of asylum limited to politically persecuted people at home for their defense of European values?
Or do we want a right of asylum extended to all people living in countries experiencing war, political dictatorship, poverty?
"We cannot accommodate all the misery in the world"
, said Michel Rocard.
But the question of knowing how many extra non-European foreigners French, German or Italian companies are ready to accept has never been decided democratically.
It is as if, in Western Europe, immigration was a taboo issue, on which we cannot discuss in depth, on which it is difficult to decide, on which the rare decisions taken are not applied.
As long as this vagueness persists, the countries bordering the EU will be able to continue their various migratory blackmail, as Turkey, Morocco and Belarus have done in recent years.
Read alsoRenaud Girard: "Mass immigration is a lose-lose scenario"
At the end of the year, Putin is deploying his troops on the Ukrainian border, is the hypothesis of an invasion credible? What is Russia looking for?
Putin does not intend to invade Ukraine. If he had wanted to do so, he would have done so in May 2014, after 42 pro-Russian militants were burned alive in Odessa. He had a golden pretext and no one would have stopped him then. But it is true that Russia is obsessed with the never-ending extension of NATO to the east. It considers Ukraine as a march of its territory, a buffer state which cannot belong to an opposing military alliance. Putin demands security guarantees from the West. A US-Russian security dialogue is forming, which began with a long telephone conversation between Biden and Putin on December 30, 2021. I don't think America is ready to bring Ukraine into the country.NATO and thus give it the guarantee of military intervention provided for by Article 5 of the North Atlantic Charter. America wants stable relations with the Russians, she has no intention of going to war with them, she wants to focus on the Chinese dossier, and she is counting on some kind of Russian neutrality in the Indo-Pacific. As for Russia, I do not believe for a second that it is ready to ally sustainably and militarily with China. Geographically and historically, they are rival countries. But I find it sad to see this great European country, so close to us by its culture, still deprived of a rule of law. I regret to see him turn to authoritarianism and curl up more and more on himself. II saw a very bad sign in the recent condemnation of the remarkable Memorial association, which fights for the rehabilitation of the victims of Stalinism.
In 2022, France will take the presidency of the Council of the EU, what can we expect? After Angela Merkel's departure, can Macron finally become the leader of Europe as he hopes?
There will never be a leader of Europe. The last time the European space had a single ruler was in 1942, when Berlin controlled the equivalent of today's EU territory, minus the Iberian Peninsula and Ireland. This chiefdom had begun in aggression, it continued in crime, it ended in defeat and ruin. But there can be leadership in Europe. Schuman, De Gasperi, Adenauer, de Gaulle, Brandt, Mitterrand, Kohl, have shown this. Macron also showed this through his speech at the Sorbonne on September 26, 2017. But when he began to act as a leader and to lecture Italy, and also the countries of the Visegrad group, he was immediately rejected. . He learned the lesson from it. This is the reason why hevisited their summit in Budapest on December 13, 2021, in order to constructively prepare for the French presidency of the EU.
Read alsoPresidency of the Council of the EU: will Emmanuel Macron really lead Europe?
During these six months, many cases can progress if France shows good leadership: the pursuit of fiscal and budgetary harmonization; a European energy policy (in order to correct the catastrophic German decision to abandon nuclear power); mediation between Iran and America; empowerment of Europe in the field of armaments; a specific social and environmental VAT for imported products, particularly from Asia; strengthening of Europe's borders; an asylum policy reserved for refugees sharing European values, etc. Nobody knows today who will be President of the French Republic in May 2022. But the diplomatic fundamentals will not change. If she wants to keep any influence in Europe,France will first have to put its public finances in order. France can only shine through her example, never through the lessons that she sometimes likes to inflict on other nations of the world.
