- Daniel Nicolas Foubert
France's east policy debated.
When dissecting the failure of European support for the Ukrainian cause during the war with the Russian Federation, two countries come to mind first - Germany and France. While Berlin has historically sought consolidation with continental Russia, which may, in a way, explain its choices today, Paris has usually sought to break this arrangement by, among other things, entering into close relations with Poland. Today, for various reasons, France supports the Eurasian concept, which can be called "Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok," of which Russia is an irreplaceable participant. Daniel Foubert of Excalibur Insight debates the wisdom of this choice, from the point of view of French national interest.
De Gaulle’s Prophecy
France seems to ignore two recent facts: the reunification of Germany and the emergence of an independent Central Europe. It continues to act as if it did not need a counterweight to Germany, as if Russia were still a major political and economic power that could help it in its quest for independence from the United States, and as if Central Europe were a political desert. This is wrong. Let us recall a few neglected elements of the French geostrategic tradition.
Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, France's main ally to the east of what was then Germany was Poland. Relations with the Grand Duchy of Muscovy, apart from some occasional alliances, were disastrous. There were two reasons for this. First, the eternal anti-Prussian and anti-Austrian interests of the French monarchy to which the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was the preferred remedy. The second, were the cultural, economic, political, and social backwardness of Russia.
The 19th century was not much brighter politically for Franco-Russian relations, with the background of the ephemeral Treaty of Tilsit and the Crimean War. The brutal repression of Polish uprisings by Tsarist Russia as well as the deportation of the Polish elite to Siberia led to French support for the Polish cause and to the recurrent deterioration of Franco-Russian relations.
France maintained strong ties with Poland, despite the latter’s disappearance from the map of Europe. Some salient examples can be found during the Napoleonic era through the creation of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw and even the fact that Polish troops constituted the best cavalry in the French Empire - the charge of Polish uhlans at the battle of Somosierra is among the most brilliant feats of arms of the Empire. Additionally, Polish political and cultural emigrants systematically chose Paris as their destination. The Père Lachaise cemetery has about 600 Polish graves, including that of Frédéric Chopin, who is perhaps the best representative of Franco-Polish friendship.
Faced with the Polish elite's Francophilia, Russia's solution was an undermining strategy. The Russian elite on the one hand learned French, while on the other, deported and massacred the Polish elite just as the cuckoo throws away an egg in the nest it takes. This strategy successfully led to the Russo-French Rapprochement of 1891.
There are several kinds of allies just as there are several kinds of enemies. There are allies of circumstance, such as Russia, whose alliances with France have always been fragile and even constrained, and there are natural allies like Poland which endure in spite of disasters and the constants of geography ("Great Britain is an island surrounded by water on all sides"...).
To measure the capital importance of the Franco-Polish alliance and in a general way of Central Europe in our national strategic thinking, let us return to the sources of French geostrategy in the 20th century, expressed under the pen of none other than General de Gaulle. In 1919, de Gaulle gave a conference in Warsaw entitled "The Franco-Polish Alliance", the text of which is as forgotten as it is dreadful for "Russian-German" interests. For De Gaulle, it was impossible to dissociate the German problem from the Russian problem: he considered Germany and Russia as natural allies. He saw the keystone of this natural alliance as their shared interest in exploiting the other nations of Central Europe. Learning from the great mistake of Napoleon III, the then Captain de Gaulle already did not need to be in a position of power to be right and saw that the joint domination of Germany and Russia over Central Europe constituted a danger of the first order for France. Mainly, because it gave Germany proportions that could only lead to the domination of the continent and thus putting France at its mercy. To dominate the heartland of the European continent is to dominate Europe. De Gaulle opposed it in 1919 and would undoubtedly oppose it today as well.
At this point it is worth going back to the specific words of Captain de Gaulle in 1919. More than 100 years after they were uttered, they still apply to very current affairs.
"In France [of the eighteenth century] as in France of all time, the party was the many politicians who systematically refused any intervention outside their borders. It was the influence of this party that in the 18th century caused us to lose Canada and the Indies, and which caused us to refuse to give any serious help to a dying Poland. [...] France has paid a heavy price for her negligence towards Poland. She knows today how much it cost her to have let Berlin and Vienna destroy this natural counterweight to Germanism between Central and Eastern Europe."
"We want a strong Poland, because first of all, it is the just solution. This state was powerful at the time when the rapacity of its neighbors dismembered it, and its power was, in short, used only against the enemies of European civilization, thus it deserved to keep that power. And then, it is in our most obvious national interest that the Polish military be formidable. Germany is beaten, but it is already recovering as the armies of our Anglo-Saxon allies move away from the Rhine. Besides, everything must be foreseen: who guarantees us the eternal and above all immediately effective alliance of England and America? In order to keep an eye on Germany, which is slyly determined to take revenge, and if necessary, to reduce it once again, we need a continental ally on whom we can rely at all times. Poland will be that ally. Every step forward of Germanism to the West is a threat to her, like every Prussian advantage gained to the East is a danger to us."
"Bolshevism will not last forever in Russia. A day will finally come when order will be restored there and Russia, reconstituting her forces, will look around again. On that day, she will see herself as peace has left her, that is to say, deprived of Estonia, Livonia, Courland, Finland, Poland, Lithuania, Bessarabia, and perhaps even Ukraine. In a word, reduced to the limits of old Muscovy. Will she be satisfied with this? We do not believe so. The same causes producing the same effects, we will see Russia resume its march towards the West and the Southwest [...]. On which side will Russia look for help to resume the work of Peter the Great and Catherine II? Let us not say it too loudly, but let us know and think about it: it will be toward Germany that she will inevitably turn her hopes.
"I will consider myself very happy if I can strengthen in your mind the conviction that by serving here, we serve par excellence French national interest. […] Each of our efforts in Poland, gentlemen, is a little more glory for eternal France,” said a young Charles de Gaulle in 1919 in Warsaw, who, let's recall, fought the Bolsheviks alongside the Polish Army in the Battle of Warsaw a year later.
Counterweighting the United States
This is the logic of French policy in Central Europe as deduced from the Treaty of Versailles. This treaty, later reinforced by the Franco-Polish alliance of 1921, guaranteed France's security, just like the treaties of Westphalia in the seventeenth century (that unfortunate humiliation of the Habsburgs caused by the dangerous Richelieu and the deceitful Mazarin...). France provided political and military support to Poland, while Poland guaranteed juicy economic concessions in exchange, according to a system comparable to the petrodollar.
This system, unfortunately, collapsed when France signed the Treaty of Locarno in 1924, due to France's lack of resistance to Anglo-American pressure to normalize its relations with Germany. France abandoned its European security architecture, lost its credibility in Central Europe, and consequently abdicated its great power status. We know where this then led us.
As events unfolded, France (as well as de Gaulle) lost sight of both the Russo-German problem, which could have been considered resolved and the Polish alliance, which could have been considered impossible (especially since the Polish elite had been decimated by the joint efforts of the Nazis and the Soviets, notably 23,000 officers exterminated in Katyń by the latter).
In this context, the desire for "independence" from the United States took precedence over all other geostrategic concerns of France and led it to soften its relationship with the USSR. This is what led de Gaulle to speak of an "American protectorate installed in Europe under the cover of NATO" and to leave the integrated command of NATO in 1966, declaring that "France's will to dispose of itself is incompatible with a defense organization in which it is subordinate."
While solidly anchored in the West, France developed an anti-American sensibility, reinforced not only by the humiliation of the Suez crisis and its colonial interests but also by the power of the French Communist Party. The United States did not find favor with any of the French political parties during the Cold War, and from the 1980s onwards, France's general rejection of Anglo-Saxon neo-liberal policies was added to this.
France has had and still has difficulty detaching itself from the conception of Russia as a counterweight to the United States, clinging to what it considers sacrosanct Gaullism when it merely is a variation on the theme of the politics of grandeur. Thus, France's anti-American sentiments remain strong and there are several causes for this.
To start, France sees neo-liberalism as a threat to its paternalistic economic model, which is further exacerbated by the aggressive tax optimization of U.S. companies that pay their taxes in Ireland on profits made in the rest of the common market (which concerns about 70% of them). The second is France's pro-Arab policy. The best example of this was provided by Dominique de Villepin's speech to the UN Security Council in 2003 and France's refusal to participate in the Iraq war. The third is the error of analysis that is fashionable in France and which consists in thinking that the United States is permanently weakened in a world that has become "multipolar," a product of the Primakov doctrine, established during the Franco-Russian convergence of the late 1990s. Our world is indeed multi-polar, but one pole dominates. To think that there is some kind of equality of power between the United States, the European Union, and China is a mistake. This error has led Emmanuel Macron, in line with his predecessors, to define France as "a balancing power in the service of peace and security" and to run it as a kind of diplomatic bank. This results in occasional but recurring diplomatic crises, such as the October 2021 termination by Australia of the submarine delivery contract it had signed with France in favor of a new US-UK contract.
In line with its foreign policy during the Cold War, France is wary of an openly pro-American Central Europe. The participation of Poland, Romania, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Latvia and Estonia in the Iraq war was very badly received by Paris. The fact that these countries buy most of their military equipment from the United States is a constant cause of France's irritation with them. And finally, France finds difficulties in internationalizing and in adapting to the fluidity of the Anglo-Saxon world, influencing global governance, and participating in the definition of international standards.
The other reasons that Russia may be favored in France are mainly corruption and overt Russian influence. For example, how is it that a former French Prime Minister, François Fillon, can sit on the board of directors of a Russian company?
Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok
As for the economic relations between France and Russia, they are much less significant than those that France has with Central Europe. For example, the total value (goods and services) of trade flows between France and Central Europe (Poland, Romania, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Croatia, Estonia, and Latvia) reached $80 billion in 2019, while that between France and Russia was only $16 billion. By comparison, the value of trade with Italy, France's second-largest trading partner, was 91 billion while the first, Germany, was at 173 billion. Others include the United States at 90 billion, China at 83 billion, Spain at 82 billion, and finally the United Kingdom at 63 billion. Even for its gas, France imports only about 20% from Russia. The condescension of the Élysée Palace towards Central Europe, compared with its relentless efforts to improve relations with Russia, thus seems all the more absurd.
The policy of considering Russia as a partner is, in any case, a failure. In fact, since 2013, France has been gradually undoing all of its ties with Russia, but unfortunately, under duress and astonishment, not on its own strategic initiative. And this while neglecting contact with Central Europe and never consulting Central European governments before negotiating with Russia. France thus has strained relations with both Russia and Poland.
Emmanuel Macron wanted a "strategically autonomous European-power from Lisbon to Vladivostok," without taking into account the security issues of Central Europe. We see today where this has led him.
Strengthening its ties with Central Europe would allow France to obtain a useful counterweight to Germany and to strengthen its position vis-à-vis the United States, because the latter needs France to support sanctions against Russia and help Ukraine win the war, and therefore to develop European security within the framework of NATO, and not in the perspective of detached conceptions such as a strategic autonomy from Lisbon to Vladivostok.
What’s more, France constitutes a potentially valuable ally in containing China's influence in Europe, especially in the face of a reluctant Germany, which holds significant trade surpluses yet is still unwilling to be a committed member of NATO.
Without a strong commitment from France, the US will only succeed at arm's length; without any commitment from France, it will not succeed. The United States also needs a Europe that works without a strong commitment from the United States, which is the key to its strategic reorientation towards Asia. Either France will establish itself as a reliable and respected partner of the United States, or it will expose itself to increasing isolation on the international stage and expose the entire West to the Chinese threat. By pretending to act in everyone's interests in order to follow one's own, one ends up working in the interests of adversaries.
French policy in Central Europe is all the more aberrant in that there is a sort of disconnect between the behavior of the French political class vis-à-vis Central Europe and the attitude of French companies toward the region. The United States has grasped the political importance of Central Europe very well, despite relatively little investment and a relatively modest economic presence. France's negative political alignment prevents it from leveraging its economic presence. For example, the cumulative value of French FDI in Poland reached 5 billion euros in 2020, just behind German FDI (7.5 billion). Central Europe could, however, provide France with the contracts it needs to revive its economy; it is the untapped reserve of growth it is missing. The potential is considerable: arms contracts, energy contracts (nuclear), aeronautical orders, infrastructure, etc... All of France's cutting-edge products and services can contribute to the development of Central Europe, which needs France, especially since it must gain economic independence from German production chains.
The region, although populated by 120 million people and endowed with enormous potential, faces many structural difficulties, which it will overcome with or without France. The challenge is to ensure that France is not left behind. Central Europe has an infrastructure deficit of about 1.5 trillion dollars. It is incomprehensible that France, unlike Germany and the United States, has not decided to participate in the Three Seas Initiative, which is designed to transform the region.
The progress that has been made in terms of know-how, skills, and organization over the past 30 years is considerable, but the remaining potential is just as great. On the other hand, Central Europe still has much to learn from France.
To summarize, France's best ally was never Russia, Germany, or England (nor the latter's annexes), but Poland. This is a historical fact. Therefore France has to choose between: a) continuing to think of itself as a world power, becoming insignificant and being mocked on the world diplomatic stage, or b) becoming a strong and respected regional power, which is not its current situation.
Containing what lies between the Rhine and the Sudetes has been the priority of French foreign policy for more than 1000 years. Our power in the world is first and foremost our power in Europe. In recent times, our policy towards Russia has in fact been that of Germany. If we do not wake up and put France's interests where they belong, i.e. in Paris and not in Berlin or Moscow, it is the French people who will put them there, in the impetuous and chaotic way they have always done: 60% of the French people voted for anti-European political parties in the last presidential elections, in addition to the fact that Emmanuel Macron did not get a majority to lead the country. This should give us food for thought.
This was an opinion piece by Daniel Foubert of Excalibur Insight.
