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Malta Business Review
OPINION
MAY’S MACRON OPENING FORGED IN BATTLE
London welcomed cooperation with the French over Syria but critics say May lacks a foreign policy vision | By TOM MCTAGUE
French President Emmanuel Macron, US
President Donald Trump and Britain's
Prime Minister Theresa May at a G7
meeting in 2017 | Stephane de Sakutin/
AFP via Getty Images
The Franco-British military alliance is back.
Ever since the U.K. voted to leave the European
Union, British Prime Minister Theresa May
and French President Emmanuel Macron
have emphasized the continued importance
of strong defense and security relationships
after Brexit.
Several weeks after the EU and the U.S.
expelled more than 100 Russian diplomats
in response to the attempted assassination
of a former Russian spy on British soil, and
following the first military action of both May
and Macron’s premierships, May has evidence
to support the Frenchman’s reassuring
rhetoric. One senior U.K. government official
close to May said the military alliance forged
between May and Macron at January’s
Sandhurst summit has been transformed in
the heat of battle over the past weeks.
“One of the things Macron has always been
very keen on since they had their first meeting
was to focus the relationship on security and
defense,” the senior official said. “Salisbury
and Syria have given more substance to that
— he has made it play out in practice.” May’s
closest aides believe this also bodes well
for Brexit. “It shows Europe, and France in
particular, what a good security relationship
with Britain looks like,” the official said.
May and Macron spoke twice in the week
running up to the airstrikes and once again in
the hours after they had taken place. Officials
in Paris and London also spoke “multiple
times a day,” ferrying top-secret documents
too sensitive to brief over the phone to each
other’s embassies, according to diplomatic
officials. A joint position between Paris and
London was established early on, while the
U.S. administration was split between the
ultra-hawkish national security adviser, John
Bolton, and the more cautious Defense
Secretary James Mattis over how extensive
the strikes should be, diplomats said. The
French and British jointly pushed for “limited”
strikes aimed exclusively at degrading the
Assad regime’s chemical weapons capability
— and won.
Peter Ricketts, a former British ambassador
to France, said: “The French and the British
united around Mattis, who has been the
central pillar of U.S. foreign policy on this. The
prime minister found the center of gravity.
That’s where the British machine was pushing
and that’s where the government got to.” MBR
Macron and May, during a bilateral
meeting at San Domenico Palace Hotel
in Taormina, Italy | Dan Kitwood-Pool/
Getty Images
Macron-Trump bromance
The return of good France-U.K. defense
relations was welcomed across the Channel.
It also comes just as French frustration at
Germany’s lukewarm adoption of Macron’s
EU reform proposals — as well as Berlin’s
inability to step up on the world stage — is
beginning to mount. “In the area of defense,
relations between Paris and London are
naturally fluid while they are restricted and
unsatisfactory with Berlin,” one French
diplomat told Le Figaro.
However, officials in Paris said the U.K.’s
involvement in Syria was “a nice-to-have, not a
need-to-have.” Internationally, May also risks
becoming the third leg in the transatlantic
alliance, as the budding b-romance between
U.S. President Donald Trump and Macron
continues apace. Macron was quick to claim
credit for convincing Trump to act in Syria,
in an interview with French TV the following
day. Next week, Trump will host the French
president for a state visit, an honour not yet
granted to the British prime minister.
The U.K.’s continuing travails extricating
itself from the European Union continue
to cause alarm on the Continent. French
officials said Brexit appears to be sucking
up much of London’s time and energy and
would continue to do so for the foreseeable
future as talks grind to a near-halt over the
Irish border.
Domestically, however, U.K. government
ministers say May’s understated approach
to the Salisbury spy poisoning and Syrian gas
attack has played well with the British public,
which is tired of alpha-male foreign policy.
“Macron’s playing the Gaullist and that’s
all right — that’s what French presidents
do,” said one minister who is close to May.
“The PM is using the fact that there are
these two big egos to her advantage. She’s
undemonstrative, steady as you go. The fact
that she’s not a Blair or a Cameron helps.” MBR
Global Britain?
The biggest risk for the British prime minister,
according to her ministers and advisers, is
that she fails to capitalize on the two crises
because she is unable to formulate a longterm
foreign policy strategy that sets out
how Britain sees its role in the world after
Brexit. Those closest to May also insist it is
unfair to say her approach to foreign policy
is purely ad-hoc, pointing to the prime
minister’s speech to the Republican Party
conference in Philadelphia in January 2017
as the intellectual ballast holding her strategy
together. In the speech, May said the days of
Britain and the U.S. “intervening in sovereign
countries in an attempt to remake the world
in our own image” were over and that military
action should be reserved to defend the
international order.
Yet those involved in crafting May’s Syria
policy said hers is essentially a “reactive, not
proactive approach,” which means acting
only when international law is broken and not
for any other wider objectives. May is fond of
telling aides that she has little time for grand
visions or strategies, one former adviser said.
“She often says she just gets on with the job,
putting one foot in front of the other.”
“There are costs to her approach as well
as some benefits,” one of her closest allies
said. “Governing does require an overarching
narrative and it is actually quite difficult to
maintain one at the best of times.” Some
ministers close to May were more caustic.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, one said:
“Trade deals are no substitute for a vision.”
Jonathan Eyal from the London-based foreign
policy think tank RUSI said it is okay in the
short term for May to “bump along” reacting
to world events, but eventually she will need
to set out her vision if she wants to be treated
as a reliable partner. “It cannot just be small
steps,” he said. “It still requires the big speech,
the big vision. She will need to answer the
question: ‘What is Britain’s role?’ She cannot
escape this question.” MBR
Creditline POLITICO
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