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French President Emmanuel Macron announced his re-election bid on Thursday, finally entering a campaign upended by a war he tried – and failed – to avert. FRANCE 24 takes a look at five years of Macron on the international stage.
Right up to the end of his term in office, France’s youngest leader since Napoleon has stuck to the role he fashioned for himself after his momentous victory in 2017: that of a mediator-in-chief, placing French diplomacy – and himself – firmly in the spotlight.
While Macron’s last mission – staving off Europe’s biggest military invasion since World War II – ended in failure, it was not for lack of trying.
The French leader sought by every means to prevent Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, even as US officials warned that war was imminent. Macron rushed to Moscow in early February, pleading for peace during marathon talks with his Russian counterpart at a now-famously gargantuan table. He returned with Putin’s agreement to sit down for talks with his US counterpart, perhaps believing he had secured peace for our time.
Those hopes were dashed less than two weeks later, first with Russia’s recognition of the Donbas’ separatist republics, then with its invasion of Ukraine.
The crushing setback came on the heels of another French debacle on the international stage: the announcement, on February 17, of France’s precipitous pullout from Mali, where French troops had been bogged down in a seemingly intractable nine-year fight with jihadist militants roaming the Sahel region.
While the twin setbacks cannot, alone, sum up Macron’s diplomatic efforts, they symbolise France’s impotence on the international stage –…
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Source : france24
