Au Revoir Britannia by Sylvie Bermann sampler

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au revoir britannia The paradox was that if America’s power and influence seemed to be on the decline – in spite of the perennial supremacy of the dollar (‘their currency but our problem’, to invert the words of John Connally, US Treasury Secretary under Nixon), its enormous military capacity (a military budget equivalent to that of all other nations) and its capacity for technological innovation – the cause was not so much China as its own president. With his campaign slogan ‘America First’, Donald Trump decided to pull the United States out of various theatres of operation and renounce the role of policeman of the world. This was a defensible policy choice, except that he decided at the same time to disparage his European allies, deemed harmful to the United States. Rightly or wrongly, he adopted the opposite position to the interventionist approach of the Democrats at the time when Secretary of State Madeleine Albright saw the United States, with the support of its allies, as being the ‘indispensable nation’ for the defence of democracy throughout the world. By taking no interest in, and disengaging from, the Middle East, the American President left the door open to Russia. Donald Trump no doubt had his acolytes in the American Rust Belt and Midwest, but in the Middle East, as in Africa, the United States had lost influence and ‘soft power’. The strong leaders in charge of other big countries, who also wanted to make China or Russia great again, were more popular in their countries than was Trump. To such an extent that, in the words of an ambassador in the region, Moscow – thanks to its policy in Syria – became the new Mecca for Middle Eastern leaders, thus making it an indispensable interlocutor on the international scene. Putin had shown that, unlike American presidents, he was loyal and didn’t abandon his friends. Following the Chinese model, but using security rather than financial resources, the Russian President succeeded in organising a first Russia–Africa summit with 46 heads of state and government in October 2019. In this way, Beijing and Moscow were acquiring a large number of client states and support for 38
introduction their positions at the UN in direct competition with the West. Twenty years ago, the France–Africa summit was the only forum of this type involving Africa, and our candidates won the votes of Francophone African countries, while the British did the same with Anglophone ones. Most importantly, the old empires of Russia and China, which have always distrusted each other, have been enjoying a honeymoon period, unprecedented in the last 400 years, after Russia was the first to open a foreign delegation in China. It is not an alliance as strictly defined since Beijing rejects any system of alliance. It would in any event be an uneven one inasmuch as, unlike Russia, China is a real geo-economic power, but Xi Jinping went so far as to say, using most unusual language, that Putin was his ‘best friend’. The new Tsar of all Russia and the new Emperor of China understand each other well, and their interests on the international scene are similar when dealing with the West. Some in Moscow and Beijing joke that the Russians and Chinese should erect a statue of Donald Trump together, as a token of their friendship. Henry Kissinger advised the American President always to maintain better relations with each of Beijing and Moscow than the two capitals had with each other. The least that can be said is that this advice has not been followed of late. Where the two countries fought each other on the banks of the Oussouri 50 years ago, is precisely where they now choose to organise joint military manoeuvres, and their partnership is getting stronger in other strategic areas. At the United Nations, Beijing and Moscow united in their desire to block any European initiative based on human rights more than ever, as we saw in Libya, then Syria. What has changed today, especially since Xi Jinping consolidated his power and increased his control over the population, is that China, the second world power, buoyed by its economic successes, is no longer willing to be told what to do by the West. We find it difficult to understand that what to us is the normal defence of our values and the superiority of democracy, is to the 39
Page 3: SYLVIE BERMANN is a career diplomat
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Au Revoir Britannia by Sylvie Bermann sampler

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