France is struggling to cope with reality

For 200 years, the French have seen themselves as a global leader. Now, that vision is fading fast

‘France is going to war in a fit of pique,” cried an anguished elder statesman as the disastrous conflict with Prussia began in 1870, and the face of Europe changed. Another fit of pique is on display this week, as French politicians insult their allies. At stake in both cases was the need to maintain prestige, both before the French public and the outside world. Instead of being America’s poodle – as the French like to see us – they are assertive, even aggressive, and play up conflict. As Charles de Gaulle put it: “France must behave as a great power precisely because she no longer is one.”

That first fit of pique in the

19th century left a dark shadow: France’s obsession with German power. This was involved in two world wars. It also led to the adoption of a global strategy to compensate France for its defeat and to strengthen it for future struggles. If the British empire was in part acquired “as if in a fit of absence of mind”, the French empire after 1870 was purposeful and conscious – “It is through expansion,” proclaimed a great Republican statesman, “through influencing the outside world, through the place that they occupy in the general life of humanity, that nations persist and last.”

What has this to do with today’s fit of pique over Australia’s submarines? Quite a lot. To a degree unique among Western nations, France has pursued a consistent aim: to combine European leadership with the maintenance of a global role, the one reinforcing the other. Success is essential for popularity at home. As another great 19th-century statesman put it: “France would not be content to count for no more in the world than a bigger Belgium.” France’s 1950s project of European integration was not the abandonment of this strategy: on the contrary, it gave it new credibility. French politicians regularly insist on their primacy as the EU’S sole military and global power. Whereas British diplomacy saw Europe as the retreat from empire, and treated its old Commonwealth allies with wounding indifference, France saw Europe as a springboard, and it made huge efforts to retain as much post-imperial power as it could. Its costly military, political and financial presence in Africa over the decades is proof, as are its efforts to galvanise la Francophonie, its quasi commonwealth.

So Emmanuel Macron’s recent hubristic claim that France is “Europe’s leading maritime power … an Indo-pacific power … bringing dialogue not conflict… with our maritime neighbours Australia, Japan, India, the United States…” is not new. Something similar could have been said by his predecessors going back to – well, even to Louis XIV, who had ambitions in Siam, Louis XVI, who fatally bankrupted himself building a navy, or Napoleon, who dreamt of throwing the British out of India.

France’s strategy now, expounded eloquently by President Macron but certainly not his invention, is still to combine European political leadership with a strong global presence: two sides of the same coin. A danger is to convince oneself by one’s own stirring rhetoric, and overlook the possibility that others may be less impressed. The

French project for a credible European army is going nowhere. Its African presence is winding up. Now its Indo-pacific ambitions have received a humiliating rebuff. Is the strategy followed for generations falling apart?

What makes that prospect unbearable is that the humiliation comes at the hands of de Gaulle’s bugbear, les Anglo-saxons. The French seem to have believed their own rhetoric over Brexit too: that it would strengthen France, isolate Britain and force London to bend. “Bang the table and they back down,” was de Gaulle’s recipe for dealing with the British. Instead, it appears that Brexit has done the very opposite, showing up EU irrelevance and French illusions.

There are various theories as to why Paris has not withdrawn its ambassador from London. Mine is simple: France’s rulers could not bear to acknowledge that Britain, supposedly divided and rudderless, had fallen on its feet. Boris Johnson, despised by the elite, outwitted them. A fit of pique is therefore pardonable, and fortunately Boris does not seem to bear grudges. An entente cordiale is as desirable as ever. But it will not be with the chastened and pliable Britain that Paris anticipated. How much more pique before they accept this?