An uncomfortable question in France: Are we still a Great Power?

The right and far right seize on the debate after submarine snub

Beneath France’s angry outbursts about a secretive “knife-in-the-back” US deal to provide nuclear-powered submarines to Australia lay a single question that, as the French say, put the finger where it hurts.

After much tiptoeing in France around the issue, the newspaper L’Opinion asked atop its front page: “Mirror, mirror on the wall, tell me if I’m still a great power?”

The question of whether France is still a great power shows how its past glory continues to shape its national psyche. The flip side — the repeated assertion that it is suffering from an existential decline — is one of the most potent themes in French domestic politics.

The submarine deal setback saw French assumptions about its foreign policy being overturned, said Bertrand Badie, an expert on French international relations at the Sciences Po university. “And we were viewed as being small. That kills a country like France.’’

Asked whether the submarine snub revealed that France was no longer a great power, Philippe Etienne, the French ambassador to the United States, said in a radio interview in Paris, “We are a balancing power and an important power. We have our means.”

But to others, the failure was an example of overreach.

Not a credible alternative

“We need a French policy in the Pacific because we have commercial, economic and territorial interests there, but the means we have now don’t allow us to be a credible alternative to the United States in facing China,” said Arnaud Danjean, a French member of the European Parliament, and a former defence official and diplomat. “At a time when even France’s greatest sphere of influence, in its former colonies in Africa, is being eroded by competition from China, Russia and Turkey, France needs to draw clear priorities in its foreign policy, he said. But trapped in its self-perception as a global power, France struggles to do just that. While President Emmanel Macron has said France’s power lies in a strong Europe, he has often forged ahead alone.

The question of whether France is still a great power shows how its past glory continues to shape its national psyche.