Emmanuel Macron’s half-censored interview with POLITICO aboard the plane back from his state visit to Beijing was a bombshell of geopolitical gossip just when the world needed it most. As China conducted bombing raids over Taiwan and encircled the island with its navy, the French president seemed to signal that some—if not all—of Europe’s leaders will remain equidistant in the escalating Sino-American dispute over Taiwan’s status, admittedly in pursuit of some version of “strategic autonomy.” One cue to make sense of the interview harkens back some 70 years, not to World War II itself but to the oft-resurgent historiographic quarrels over France’s exact role vis-à-vis the Nazi machine in 1939-1945. Granted, the Nazi parallel ill-befits Xi Jinping’s China in most ways, but the positioning dynamics across the West prompted by China’s rise are not altogether dissimilar. While it could hardly occupy any portion of French territory even if it wished to (and with the Holocaust still dwarfing China’s policy of massively interning its Uyghur minority for now), Europe is similarly torn between appeasement and confrontation in ways that evoke just such a parallel.
The parallel is rooted in France’s and Europe’s dissonant approaches to the enemy. While the Vichy regime chose neutrality in the war and appeasement of Germany by lending logistical support to its genocidal masterplan, General de Gaulle rallied France’s colonies and its onshore resistance cells to strike when it mattered. As the war receded into memory, historians and the truth-seeking public were left wrestling with a burning question: by which of the two conducts should France be judged? With most of the country in thrall to résistencialisme (the ludicrous belief that most of its people had not collaborated but in fact resisted), the distinguished historian Robert Aron reinforced this fallacious feeling by arguing that the two stances weren’t so much in contradiction as in symbiosis. In tune with the triumphalism of the immediate postwar, Aron’s famous monograph Histoire de Vichy (1954) coined the metaphor of the shield and the sword (le bouclier et le glaive). By cultivating an appearance of neutrality that buffered anti-Nazi activity, Vichy hadn’t so much undermined the resistance as enabled its struggle against the common German enemy.
A similar contrast between the textual content of edicts and pronouncements and the actual substance of policies seems at work in the EU’s posture vis-à-vis China. On one hand, Macron’s weekend interview telegraphed Europe’s ambition to carve itself out a role as a sovereign pole in an increasingly multipolar world order, thus avoiding being “dragged into” the American hegemon’s confrontations with a rising China, in the French president’s own words. His remarks contrasted sharply with those of other EU leaders, not least his companion on the trip, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. In a speech to the European Policy Center and the Mercator Institute last Thursday, shortly before joining Macron’s state visit, von der Leyen announced the Commission’s plans to subject the bloc’s ties with China to a strategy of ‘de-risking.’ Although the statement fell short of the ‘decoupling’ that U.S. President Joe Biden has been pressuring his European counterparts to adopt, von der Leyen’s speech marked a watershed of EU policy in its hawkishness—a watershed that was diametrically canceled out by Macron’s dovishness.
As the commentariat is left guessing who exactly speaks for Europe, most seem to have missed that the two strategies aren’t so much at odds as working in tandem, with the equilibrium falling somewhere in the middle. Macron has attracted a flurry of outcry from EU lawmakers and Eastern European leaders, outcry that referentially points to him as a yardstick of sellout mendacity. The two stances thus invest one another with meaning: Von der Leyen’s defensive speech froze the proverbial ice between the bloc and China, an ice later broken for maximum effect by Macron handing out an unprecedented olive branch. Macron’s innuendo that Europe will stand idly by as China moves towards annexing Taiwan wouldn’t have had the same groundbreaking effect if it hadn’t been preceded by a tone-setting philippic where von der Leyen decried China’s worrying military build-up. It mattered because of what preceded it. Much as de Gaulle’s resistance breathed in the operational room cleared by Pétain’s official connivance with the Nazis, Macron’s peacemaking trip worked as a pressure relief valve after von der Leyen’s conflict-escalating antics.
This cognitive dissonance is hardly new. In fact, it’s become a staple of the EU’s China policy, with the different institutions—the European Commission, EU Council, and European Parliament trio—rotating roles between dovish appeaser, hardline hawk, and neutral balancing act. In the final days of 2020, a similar cacophony arose between the Parliament on one side and the Merkel-von der Leyen duo on the other, with a lame-duck Merkel in the China-appeasing role that Macron is playing currently. Though the Parliament was toughening its position on account of China’s labor-rights record and its treatment of the Uyghurs, Merkel (with von der Leyen’s last-minute assist) rushed through to adoption—a few days before President Biden took office—the EU’s so-called Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, a treaty that would have gone some way towards protecting European investors in China from state abuse. In other words, the roles change but the game being played stays the same: while one node in the EU’s institutional maze signals a toughening stance, another one undercuts it by handing out an olive branch.
The Shield and the Olive Branch
French president Emmanuel Macron welcomes President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen prior to their meeting in Paris, on June 3, 2022 (Photo by JULIEN DE ROSA / AFP)
Emmanuel Macron’s half-censored interview with POLITICO aboard the plane back from his state visit to Beijing was a bombshell of geopolitical gossip just when the world needed it most. As China conducted bombing raids over Taiwan and encircled the island with its navy, the French president seemed to signal that some—if not all—of Europe’s leaders will remain equidistant in the escalating Sino-American dispute over Taiwan’s status, admittedly in pursuit of some version of “strategic autonomy.” One cue to make sense of the interview harkens back some 70 years, not to World War II itself but to the oft-resurgent historiographic quarrels over France’s exact role vis-à-vis the Nazi machine in 1939-1945. Granted, the Nazi parallel ill-befits Xi Jinping’s China in most ways, but the positioning dynamics across the West prompted by China’s rise are not altogether dissimilar. While it could hardly occupy any portion of French territory even if it wished to (and with the Holocaust still dwarfing China’s policy of massively interning its Uyghur minority for now), Europe is similarly torn between appeasement and confrontation in ways that evoke just such a parallel.
The parallel is rooted in France’s and Europe’s dissonant approaches to the enemy. While the Vichy regime chose neutrality in the war and appeasement of Germany by lending logistical support to its genocidal masterplan, General de Gaulle rallied France’s colonies and its onshore resistance cells to strike when it mattered. As the war receded into memory, historians and the truth-seeking public were left wrestling with a burning question: by which of the two conducts should France be judged? With most of the country in thrall to résistencialisme (the ludicrous belief that most of its people had not collaborated but in fact resisted), the distinguished historian Robert Aron reinforced this fallacious feeling by arguing that the two stances weren’t so much in contradiction as in symbiosis. In tune with the triumphalism of the immediate postwar, Aron’s famous monograph Histoire de Vichy (1954) coined the metaphor of the shield and the sword (le bouclier et le glaive). By cultivating an appearance of neutrality that buffered anti-Nazi activity, Vichy hadn’t so much undermined the resistance as enabled its struggle against the common German enemy.
A similar contrast between the textual content of edicts and pronouncements and the actual substance of policies seems at work in the EU’s posture vis-à-vis China. On one hand, Macron’s weekend interview telegraphed Europe’s ambition to carve itself out a role as a sovereign pole in an increasingly multipolar world order, thus avoiding being “dragged into” the American hegemon’s confrontations with a rising China, in the French president’s own words. His remarks contrasted sharply with those of other EU leaders, not least his companion on the trip, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. In a speech to the European Policy Center and the Mercator Institute last Thursday, shortly before joining Macron’s state visit, von der Leyen announced the Commission’s plans to subject the bloc’s ties with China to a strategy of ‘de-risking.’ Although the statement fell short of the ‘decoupling’ that U.S. President Joe Biden has been pressuring his European counterparts to adopt, von der Leyen’s speech marked a watershed of EU policy in its hawkishness—a watershed that was diametrically canceled out by Macron’s dovishness.
As the commentariat is left guessing who exactly speaks for Europe, most seem to have missed that the two strategies aren’t so much at odds as working in tandem, with the equilibrium falling somewhere in the middle. Macron has attracted a flurry of outcry from EU lawmakers and Eastern European leaders, outcry that referentially points to him as a yardstick of sellout mendacity. The two stances thus invest one another with meaning: Von der Leyen’s defensive speech froze the proverbial ice between the bloc and China, an ice later broken for maximum effect by Macron handing out an unprecedented olive branch. Macron’s innuendo that Europe will stand idly by as China moves towards annexing Taiwan wouldn’t have had the same groundbreaking effect if it hadn’t been preceded by a tone-setting philippic where von der Leyen decried China’s worrying military build-up. It mattered because of what preceded it. Much as de Gaulle’s resistance breathed in the operational room cleared by Pétain’s official connivance with the Nazis, Macron’s peacemaking trip worked as a pressure relief valve after von der Leyen’s conflict-escalating antics.
This cognitive dissonance is hardly new. In fact, it’s become a staple of the EU’s China policy, with the different institutions—the European Commission, EU Council, and European Parliament trio—rotating roles between dovish appeaser, hardline hawk, and neutral balancing act. In the final days of 2020, a similar cacophony arose between the Parliament on one side and the Merkel-von der Leyen duo on the other, with a lame-duck Merkel in the China-appeasing role that Macron is playing currently. Though the Parliament was toughening its position on account of China’s labor-rights record and its treatment of the Uyghurs, Merkel (with von der Leyen’s last-minute assist) rushed through to adoption—a few days before President Biden took office—the EU’s so-called Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, a treaty that would have gone some way towards protecting European investors in China from state abuse. In other words, the roles change but the game being played stays the same: while one node in the EU’s institutional maze signals a toughening stance, another one undercuts it by handing out an olive branch.
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