Why Macron wants off the Israel bandwagon

The attack on Lebanon interferes in France’s sphere of influence, but Paris can’t do anything about it without Washington

French President Emmanuel Macron would like Israel to slow its roll now, please. Because it’s acting like a spoiled brat who has been given a Ferrari by the West, and now behaves like the rules of the road don’t exist, blowing past every exit ramp en route to escalation with its neighbors.

And now the inevitable has happened: a head-on collision between Israeli and French interests. Because that’s the thing with spoiled brats – the day you say “No,” you, too, become a problem.

All this is happening now because Israel has crossed a red line for France in subjecting Lebanon to what the Western establishment would be blatantly calling an “invasion,” if Lebanon were Ukraine and Israel were Russia. French is spoken by about half of the Lebanese population and France considers the country to be within its sphere of influence, both linguistic and economic. 

Amid the Francophonie Summit in Paris, where the world’s French-speaking leaders gathered, Macron said in an interview that “the priority is that we return to a political solution, that we stop delivering weapons to fight in Gaza,” while also slamming the presence of Israel’s ground troops in Lebanon. That would be the Royal ‘we’, mostly just meaning that Macron would like for the US, which supplies Israel with 69% of its total weapons imports, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, to stop, please. I’m sure Washington will get right on that. 

Macron, meanwhile, has categorically claimed that France “doesn’t send any” weapons to Israel – like France wasn’t riding shotgun on some of these Israeli joyrides. Those words – and the present tense – seem rather carefully chosen. At the end of October 2023, weeks after Israel had started flattening Gaza, along with any civilians who happened to be in the way, the French defense industry was still shipping M27 links for 5.56mm ammo for M249 light machine guns, which couldn’t function without these parts, from a supplier in Marseille, according to an investigation by the NGO, Disclose, complete with photographic evidence. A French parliamentary report also found that France shipped €30.1 million worth of military hardware to Israel in 2023 alone, which is almost double the figure from the previous year. For purely “defensive” purposes, of course.

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Sure, it’s a drop in the bucket compared to US sales to Israel, or compared to French arms sales elsewhere, which would explain why Macron is now acting like it’s an easy write-off – but only after getting an epic self-screwing out of it. Much more critical to France’s interests are its business ties to Lebanon, which would certainly serve to explain Israel’s typically measured reaction of bombing a French TotalEnergies fuel location in Beirut, in the wake of Macron’s remarks. The fact that Israel has been musing about canceling a gas exploration deal with TotalEnergies to develop a gas field on the border of Lebanon and Israel, requiring both countries’ cooperation, is also a direct economic threat to French interests.

“As Israel fights the forces of barbarism led by Iran, all civilized countries should be standing firmly by Israel’s side,” Netanyahu replied to Macron. “Yet President Macron and other Western leaders are now calling for arms embargoes against Israel.” He sounds shocked that the usual gaslighting isn’t working on some of Washington’s vassals.

The truth is that none of these countries calling for arms embargoes really have much to lose in the first place, though. – which would also explain why the US, contrary to its vassals, has remained steadfast in its support.

During a phone call in the wake of his remarks, Macron “reminded” Netanyahu of “the mobilization of French military means in Israel’s defence” amid missile attacks from Iran and Yemen, like warships. Nice try. That’s like telling a gold-digger that you just gave them a bunch of stuff a month ago.

Israel can basically do whatever it wants. Like overseeing the invasion of another country – Lebanon, in this case – between meetings at the United Nations building in New York, while the Western world shrugs – which is why the situation has now escalated to the point of impacting France’s own economic sphere. 

This is just another one of those cases where Macron is cosplaying General Charles De Gaulle, the much-admired Second World War general and, later, French president who kicked the Americans out of France, kept Paris out of NATO’s US-controlled weapons lobby, er, “Transatlantic Alliance,” and fostered relations with the Soviet Union as a counterweight to France’s relations with the US in the interests of ensuring its independence.

It’s no coincidence that De Gaulle oversaw arguably the most industrially and economically prosperous period in French history – while Macron’s presidential mandate is now synonymous with crushing debt.

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All De Gaulle cared about was French sovereignty and strength, and succeeded to the point of becoming a nuclear and industrial power that was able to compete with Washington as a respected competitor. Macron is trying to do that without having any actual cards to play against Washington’s, which basically just leaves begging and pleading. 

Macron is in the final stretch of a two-term limit and is no doubt considering his legacy. So far, that involves doing some periodic loud barking in favor of French interests, right before getting his nose wacked with a rolled-up newspaper and crawling back into Uncle Sam’s lap. 

The French president has previously said NATO was “brain dead” with its single-minded Moscow obsession – the same obsession that militarized and neo-nazified the Ukraine border with Russia and set off the current hot conflict. Then Macron told journalists aboard his presidential plane in April 2023 that he “won the ideological battle on strategic autonomy” for the EU, viewing the bloc as a “third superpower,” and underscoring the need to avoid becoming vassals of Washington amid international crises. What happens in international airspace stays in international airspace, I guess – because all that seems to have vanished, in practice. 

Unlike De Gaulle, Macron can’t seem to go the distance in matching his rhetoric with action. Even after he went to Washington, begging for lower prices on pricy LNG to replace the Russian gas that he and his EU pals shunned to impress their girlfriend Vladimir Zelensky (aka the president of Ukraine), the Americans ultimately just blew him off. Oh well. Insert Gallic shrug here. 

Because France failed to see where actively enabling Israel’s conduct in the interest of “self-defense” could eventually lead, Macron is now fully dependent on Washington for de-escalation. But here’s the catch, which apparently Macron fails to see. If egging on Israel means weakening French and EU economic interests, much like the US is also doing in Ukraine by prolonging that conflict to the benefit of the US weapons industry, then why would Washington ever care to stop in either case?